“I don’t think of all the misery, but of the beauty that still remains.” ~ Anne Frank
We began thinking of our backyard as a sanctuary during the early days of COVID. Since at the time sheltering in place was a necessity, why not create a space that evoked calm and inspired peace-of-mind? We planted tall grasses along the fence, hung happy lights and prayer flags, we made special seating areas and placed a table on the deck where we ate our meals, painted rocks and listened to records on a suitcase record player. We were gifted with a beautiful chime. We hung bird feeders and installed a bird bath.
Our sanctuary filled us with light and sustained us through a very dark chapter.
Now, finding ourselves once again in a very dark time – and getting darker by the day – we’ve returned to the original impulse. We are consciously reinvigorating our backyard sanctuary. We are amazed each day as the sweet potato plants spill out of their pots. Tending the herb garden grounds us and we delight that it thrives. The jalapeño harvest is eye-popping. We cook each night with basil or rosemary or cilantro or parsley that we clip from our garden. The tomato plant is almost as tall as I am.
For us, sanctuary-creation is more a process of finding than a design-and-installation game. We evolve as we go. We are not flush with resources – and, thankfully, our aesthetic leans to raw wood and peeling paint – so we wander through antique stores or restore discards that, to us, look like treasure. Half the fun is in the finding. It fills our sanctuary with serendipity stories.
We stopped at our favorite antique shop to pick up a piece of old ladder. The moment we stepped out of the truck, a small garden table called out to us. It was tucked into an unlikely spot, a few yards from the chicken coop. Kerri, always the master bargainer, asked the shopkeeper, “What’ll you take for it?” We bought it for half-price and loaded the little table into the truck with the piece of old ladder.
Both are now fixtures in our haven, our safe space. The ladder is adorned with a purple sweet potato plant that is already exploding out of its pot and draping toward the lower rungs. The little table is nestled on the end of deck and looks like it was made for that particular spot. It is home – and also provides a home to a licorice plant.
“I love it,” she said. Me, too.
Our sanctuary once again inspires quiet. It is like a magnet that pulls our minds and hearts out of the darkness. We sit in our safe haven, breathe deeply, filling ourselves with goodness that is as big as the sky itself, alive with growing things, grasses that wave in the breezes, an aspen tree that joy-quakes, cardinals that sing to us, and is now home to a little table that called our name.
read Kerri’s blogpost about THE TABLE
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