The Night Blooming Cereus and Other Miraculous Events

The world is
not with us enough
O taste and see

grief, mercy, language,
tangerine, weather, to
breathe them, bite,
savor, chew, swallow, transform

into our flesh our
deaths, crossing the street, plum, quince,
living in the orchard and being

hungry, and plucking
the fruit.

Denise Levertov

Here is one of the loveliest milagros  of the desert, the  Night Blooming Cereus (which you can get a picture of if you get up really early in the morning, before the flowers close as the heat of the day advances).  This cactus only blooms for one night, opening after the sun goes down.   It is pollinated by moths, another resident of the night world of the Sonoran Desert summer.

I seem to write about this every June that I find myself here, in Tucson, where I live.  Because the event never seems to become something one gets used to or takes for granted.

I like to think of this extravagant generosity on the part of the Cactus Deva as being made to be seen with "night vision", because truly, they are "flowers of the moon", belonging to a different and less visible world.   There are miracles going on in your own backyard, all the time, astonishing events of beauty, cooperation, generosity, procreation, and hope.  That's what gardens teach me...........

Garden Goddesses

I noticed that my garden seems to be filling up with garden Goddesses, most recently, an ambitious Quon Yin, which my roomate Queeny kindly posed for.  Took  quite a while to do the mosaic part, and now I'm thinking She needs a little pool at the base. 

Here's one I did in 2013 which also adorns the garden, thanks to my friend Annie posing for it - "Our Lady of the Waters".  And I always seem to feel the need to include the beautiful pressings from antique Afghani fabric presses I have (they were used to put designs on fabric, before they had access to machines that did it, so each is hand carved).  

My longtime Collaborator Mana sat for "Our Lady of the Shards", the Lady who bears witness to the past, the nameless lives and hands that have brought us, their descendants, here.

Here's a little "Flower Deva" that turned up this year, the face thanks to Elise, who has been providing a beautiful face to my art for many a long year.  My garden evolves, and is the first place I go to commune with the rising sun in the morning.  I guess all of these Personae protect and bless it.

Another Flower Deva, or perhaps a Quon Yin.  This I gave to my friend the composer  Joanna Brouk, who passed away this year.  It was her, dreaming beauty and color and hope into the world.  

A box, with my favorite Afghani fabric press, a gorgeous Zinnia with a cascade of  water, or blessings, or both.  An artist with great skill whose name none of us will ever know, but I like to know that his or her gift remains, travelling forward to other lives..........

Oziama, from Nigeria, who lived by the River Oshun provided the face for this Butterfly Goddess in the garden.  Reminding me, as always, that we are pollinators, that we are always transforming.

And of course, I have Spider Woman all over the place, this a  young artist from the Tohono Odum people here in Southern  Arizona who so kindly sat for me.  Spider Woman's Hands weave all around us,  the Web contains us all, strongly felt in the Southwest.

English Gardens.....

 "Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping 
than you can understand."

....Yeats

I find so many fey  personae,  among the amazing English  gardens.....this little fairy was in Lacock.

And an angel, presiding over a public garden in Bath.

I think I understand the English delight in gardens, and also their pursuit of the illusive sunbeam.

And, as I passed through the Roman Baths on my way to get the bus to Glastonbury (and next week's Goddess Conference)..........how about this for a "Sign"?