When I was designing the gardens in Maine, working with some very cool garden planners, I knew pretty much what I wanted.

Well, the feeling of what I wanted.

It was very similar to building or renovating a house, I always know the ‘feeling’ I want to have when I walk into it, and am in it.

That is not usually what a builder or architect or garden designing create-y expert wants to hear.

So they tell me to get photos, and I do.

Ones that ‘feel’ right.

And the translation they hope for never works correctly because all the other people see the actual photo and I ‘see’ the feeling.

Example:

Me (excited): Here is a photo of what I’m talking about!

Creative Professional: Ah! Okay, now I get it, you want a twenty-foot by forty-foot barn in the post and beam style, sided in clapboard with a four-inch reveal and painted Benjamin Moore White number 02.

Me: No. See that flower in the corner there and how it feels so natural and not stuffy at all?

Creative Professional: Sigh. Yes.

Me: (all excited again): That!

Happens like that every single time.

I think it is because that software company that helps you learn languages…, Rosetta Stone? I think it is because there is no Rosetta Stone software for how to speak Lisa Dingle.

I think that the world might be at a disadvantage. So I have to be patient.

Also, I think the idea might be a monster money-maker for the Rosetta Stone people.

Just sayin’.

But when we were planning the gardens, I was in heaven because it ‘felt’ like this was a place that I could plan my own gardens. And by ‘gardens’ I mean not just the shrubs I stick along the foundation in the front of my house.

I am happy to report that, in Maine, there are exactly zero shrubs in the front of my house.

Because trimming, that’s why.

I need a garden that requires no trimming.

Because procrastination and the fact that foundation plantings, untrimmed and leaning on my house can cause, like, rot. Which costs dollars to fix.

And you would think I would learn this from the first time that happened, but no.

Why?

Because of Shiny Object Syndrome.

Yes, it is too a real thing.

I know this because my friend has this long-time partner who is a professional therapist. And he refers to the inability to give the appropriate amount of attention to foundation plantings, that must be periodically trimmed, as Shiny Object Syndrome.

Fine.

My friend never mentioned foundation plantings when she told me that story.

But the point is that she could have.

So, ya. My attention span is that of… oh I don’t know… Marshal Dillon Dingle. This means that when I have the absolute intention of going out and trimming shrubbery, there is a 94.7 percent chance that something else (the ‘shiny object’) will show up and divert my attention.

This is not an issue if you have, as I have, not put foundation plantings in front of your house in Maine, but it is an issue for other things.

Like, you know, meditation.

Which I don’t do well and anyone who has ever met me (or, you know, read these posts) knows that it is an absolutely indisputable fact.

So it is rather strange, most people who know me think, that in Maine I actually have a labyrinth as a part of the gardens.

True.

It is cool and calming and, no, David Bowie doesn’t live in it.

It is a meditative, healing tool that goes back really really far (like, before the 80’s) and we designed it based on ancient layouts focused on healing. It is very simple, has a stone path that winds between grass berms. It also has stones, placed here and there, that seem to reach upward. The idea having something to do with energy.

Also, it is very funny that some people see it from far away and think it is supposed to be like an odd, miniature Stonehenge (made of only 3 or four stones, which is strange).

Or maybe it’s a graveyard.

We get both.

And even though I don’t meditate in it, every single time I walk it I feel calm.

So, with all that’s going on with diagnoses and surgeries and the ebbs and flows of emotions around those things, I’ve been drawn to walking my little labyrinth in the back garden of my house in Maine.

Where I walk slowly and feed my faith that everything will unfold as it should.

And where, for some reason, there doesn’t seem to be a shiny thing in sight.

Thanks for readin’.

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