On making clients laugh

 

pic courtesy of landscape contractor, Jim Pranger, Teufel Special Services

Me as a lilac tree.  

Why pose as a lilac tree?  It made her laugh.

(And I do do other plant impersonations as well.)

And so the work of Remembrance & healing gardens goes… we talk design layout & style, next maybe about irrigation, next we decide what-tree-would-you-be-in-this-spot, and then… quietly, the painful loss that prompts the planting of that tree & the design of that garden.   In this work, my God this work, my clients and I share so much.  We deal with hard things, and thankfully, oh God thankfully, we enjoy funny things.  The medium of a garden makes it so easy.  

Humbled lilac, am I. 

Immediate restorative garden experience = massage outside!

Like many, my landscape – the different gardens and “rooms” – is underway.  I am somewhere between phase 2 of garden design implementation and phase infinity.   Progress takes a rhumba-like rhythm:  quick, quick, s-l-o-w and with that comes a bit of frustration, from time to time.  To counteract this non-restorative outdoor experience, I delighted in a most wonderful garden experience. I blissed out during a 90 minute (!) massage out-of-doors!  How many times have I had a wonderful massage, only to realize as I rise out of the massage stupor that now I have to get in my car and drive in traffic.  Yuck and incongruous = blissness interruptous.