Garden

UM … NOTHING??? This has never happened to me before.

After looking around the house for awhile (still nothing), I spent some time finishing the few tiny pieces leftover from my last project … and then I looked around the room again. I tried moving some furniture here and there. Eh. I cleaned up those leftover tiny pieces, and then I wondered if I should start on the next piece, but I wasn’t really ready for that. And then I finally decided to go to the plant store and ogle some plants.

Ogling is pretty much always a good way to spend time, don’t you think? I managed to buy a few and hope they live. “Hope” is the key word here. In truth, I’ve never been good at keeping plants alive. Ever. Any kind of plant — even the ones that say “foolproof.” And I can’t help wondering … why not???? Seriously, why not? I know how to do pretty much everything involved, and it isn’t that hard. And yet . . .

On second thought, I noticed that the girl who checked me out did remove the soil from the vase (dumped it, actually) and added all fresh soil, which seemed a novel and really good idea. Nonetheless I’m hopeful, even if not particularly optimistic on the turnout.

Now, my husband is a different egg. He can grow anything, and by anything, I mean everything. I don’t have that gene and I’ll likely never get better at trying, and that’s okay. It’s also why he takes care of the garden — well, … and the food, and the dusting, and the miscellanea, but that’s okay too, because I’m really, really good at other things: great ideas, lots of girlfriends, playing with babies, and saying “let’s go out to dinner!” All necessities, I promise.

And of course it doesn’t really matter how we spend time. Somehow, we all pretty much find the right path.

@PamGoodeWrites

Remember when you were a kid and loved to play games in the park like hide and seek or some mangled version of hop scotch? Remember those days when you were a teenager and loved to hang out in the parks for, well, other reasons? Parks — gotta love em! But if you haven’t been to Barcelona, I bet you haven’t seen one like this.

Once a rocky hill with little else in sight, this area that would soon become famous was known as Muntanya Pelada (Bare Mountain). The first plan was to build a residential area for affluent families … and then Antoni Gaudi got hold of it and magic followed. Inspired by the English garden city movement, the original name for this ethereal tract of land was Park Güell. In Catalan the name became “Parc Güell”, and in Spanish, “Parque Güell”. Gaudi’s luscious public park was begun in 1900, officially opened in 1926, and was recognized as an artistic monument in 1969 and a UNESCO world heritage site in 1984. There are spaces both large and small, ornate and calm, the quiet and the raucous. The park is 12 hectares, or roughly 2.5 acres, of magic.