Tales From The Labyrinth

Meadow Steps

Today,
on this last warm day of April,
I worked with
Lynnette and Michelle,
of Belle Feuille Garden Design
to set the steps and walkway for our front meadow...

Here are the steps...

and here we dig out the walkway...

and then bring in
wheelbarrow after wheelbarrow of sand...

Lynnette says she's found her new calling in life,
besides being a superb gardener and designer,
manning the roller
makes her light up like a Christmas tree...

From the inner garden looking out...

This is going to be so fun to watch transform...

Lynnette and me~Lea,
pause for a photo shoot by Michelle...

And then we all took a pause for lunch...

I wish I had taken a picture...

Lynnette created a gourmet lunch
of hot roasted red peppers in olive oil
with warm goat cheese,
and fresh greens in a vinaigrette from Michelle's garden
all tucked into toasted pita bread...

Do you know any gardeners
who also provide gourmet lunches at their work site???

And then,
towards the end of the day,
we catch Michelle peaking out from under
the fragrant Cecil Bruener rose cascade...

And Michelle and Lynnette
lay the beginning stones of the walkway...

I so love digging in the dirt...

It must be my farmer's daughter's roots,
dancing in the soil...

And then to get to do so
with two of your best girlfriends...
that is a goode, goode life...

The Sphinx

My sphinx is completed...
This was a journey
that I was not so sure I would finish...

At times I was excited,
other times discouraged...

But watching this amazing being
come to shape beneath my fingers,
was a gift...

There is much symbolism in this piece that has meaning for me...

I wanted so, to have the feeling of my precious framed Sphinx picture to come forth through me into the gourd, clay, paper, and paint. The bees that adorn the headpiece and the two knobs to open the "jewel box" are a prayer. All over America, bees have just disappeared. There are many speculations as to why... my prayer is that we all learn to live in balance with our ecosystem and all that we find around us, as well as within us... the tiny spiral nautili are thousands, if not millions, of years old... they speak to our beginnings, those small, and incremental steps, of coming forth from the ocean to be here now, walking upon this earth... human, lion, ancient, new, being alive, breathing, spirit into matter...

And so... my third lesson
with artist-teacher-muse extraordinare~
Marilyn Radzat, is complete...

My Coming Home...

I came home yesterday...
to cross my own threshold...
and found an array of shells waiting for me...

Echos from the ocean,
of exotic beaches far, far away,
washed up on my doorstep,
all packed and set up to travel with me into
artistic delight...

Thank you Ulla...
for leaving me this gift of possibility!!!

Tuesdays are calling and the dragons are circling!!!!

Coming Home

Coming home…
You walk
through the door
not the same
as when you walked the other way…
Some days
over and over again
through the same door
not noticing the subtle changes…
A year,
another year
and then you are this lumbering
animal
from another country and culture
your skin no longer your own…
And those on the other side of the threshold…
They too have changed
lounging over the edge of the couch
as easily as if it were a tree branch
or slithering in and out of the tub
like a snaking river that winds for ever
through deserts and mountains
and concrete shopping malls,
circling
in and out as if in a dance,
now all in the same room,
personalities prickle, then soften,
and ceremonial masks drop away
and the essence of being
remains
no matter the miles traveled
or boundaries crossed…
for the heart remembers
what is true…

© Lea Goode-Harris
April 27, 2007

Flowers From Our Garden

I wish I could share with you the scent
of these beautiful roses and sweet-peas from our garden...

They look so old fashioned...
especially sitting on the antique lace,
in the milkglass from an era long gone...

New Path

One of the things I love best of working
with labyrinths, is how they help us to see things
from a new and different perspective...

My new point of view started with the easing
of the heavy rains we finally got this week.

The shadows you see below, are not actually shadows
but the difference between the smooth sand
and where thousands of drops of water
have fallen from the overhanging
tree branches...

Because I serendipitously placed my impromptu brick layout for my new center on the patio and realized that it lined up with the Summer Solstice, I thought, this is where the new entrance should be! So, I paid no attention to the path that was created from my husband and I moving the wheelbarrow back and forth over the grass to dump the shale and sand.

When you stand at the lip of the labyrinth from this new path, which is just to the right of where the original entrance once was, you are directly in line with the Spring and Fall Equinoxes!!! This actually feels better in my body than the Summer Solstice aspect and is very close to the original layout of eight years ago...

Actually, eight years ago... the labyrinth gently
nudged me to place it in this exact position...
but it has taken me all this time to get here!!!!

Sand & First Steps

Remember that pile of sand...

Well we ended up needing another load,
just as big as this one!

So six yards of sand later...
our "labyrinth pool" is filled...

I couldn't have done this without my husband's help...
Tuesday night was the new moon of April...

It seemed fitting to have my first labyrinth walk
to celebrate this new beginning...

I plucked a blossom from this new azalea plant for
the labyrinth, fire red, and placed it in the new center...

Which just happens to point in the new direction
that we will be orienting our labyrinth...
with the Summer Solstice...

I walk that night... without any lines, just letting
the Santa Rosa pattern move me...

Milt manages to get a few pictures, above me walking...

below... tracing a heart in the heart space...

And the next day...

The sun blazes through the water
prepping the sand for the heavy roller...

Rays of sparkling delight blessing the new day
and my first steps in the labyrinth...

My Roots

This past Sunday morning,
on the spur of the moment,
I took a road-trip with my father...

Along the way,
dad pulled over so I could take some pictures
of hundred year-old grape vines,
new in leaf...

My dad and I were on a quest...
to the resting place
of my great, great, great grandparents
in the Pleasant Grove Cemetery
just North-East of Sacramento...

It was a bit eerie, but so special to find their graves
in the Goode Family plot...

I wonder what their lives were like...
and... I wonder what California was like,
this gorgeous land, back in 1848,
when my great, great, great grandfather
brought his first of two wagon trains to this area...

So here is where one of the many threads
that weaves the DNA
of my genes lie,
with my shadow looking over...

My great, great, great Grandmother~Minerva Goode...

and her husband and my great, great, great grandfather
Daniel Boone Goode...

My g,g,g grandfather's parents were good friends
with the Daniel Boone, his father, a comrade and companion
on explorations with his son's namesake...

My dad's brother, my uncle Lee (who I am quite fond of,
and named after!!!) has been putting together
our family history, gathering photos, dates,
sleuthing out our history... he sent me these photos last year...

Here is Minerva...

and here is Daniel Boone Goode...

Also deep within the earth,
were the family of one of DB and Minerva's four children...
some with full lives, one who left this earth
at a very young age...

Perry A. Goode... 6 years old...

The inscription on his marker reads
this beautiful and touching verse...

Fold him Oh Father in thy arms.
And let him hence forth be
a messenger of love between
our human hearts and thee~

How grateful I am to these people
for their courage and fortitude
and for living life so I could be here...

My dad and I further explored the surrounding countryside,
taking in majestic oaks, stately mansions and ranches,
and perusing up and down the old streets of Woodland,
full of beautiful homes and ancient California Sycamores...

On the way home,
we went through the town of Davis,
where my dad and mom lived while my father
attended UCDavis in the 50s.
He showed me the apartment where they lived.

This is where I entered the picture,
not far from where my great, great, great grandparents
traveled to, 150 years ago...
setting down their roots,
so I could find my own...

A Day of Shredding...

I have so many things I want to post about...
Hawaii, the woodpecker condo,
my Sphinx lesson that I'm soooooo behind on!

But Monday,
the shredding truck is coming
and finally, I decided to do it.

My graduate school records,
that filled three file boxes,
are gone, into the recycle went reams,
and reams, and reams of paper...

and years of chaining myself to the computer
to rewrite nature and earn my Ph.D.

As some  of you know by now...
I don't easily let go... but this felt so good and so right...

I did find a few things worth saving,
precious photos, a couple of papers from before
the dark night of the soul endless maze of dissertation writing...

And this poem,
written by Mary Oliver,
given to Kimberly by one of our beloved administrators,
who didn't stay long...
tumbled out of one of the many folders...

I wept when I read this,
and that too felt as good as letting all the papers go...

The Return
by Mary Oliver

The deed took all my heart.
I did not think of you,
Not 'til the thing was done.
I put my sword away
And then no more the cold
And perfect fury ran
Along my narrow bones
And then no more the black
And dripping corridors
Held anywhere the shape
That I had come to slay.
Then for the first time,
I saw in the cave's belly
The dark and clotted webs,
The green and sucking pools,
The rank and crumbling walls,
The maze of passages.

And I thought then
Of the far earth,
Of the spring sun
And the slow wind,
And a young girl,
And I looked then
At the white thread.

Hunting the minotaur
I was no common man
And had no need of love.
I trailed the shining thread
Behind me, for a vow,
And did not think of you.
It lay there, like a sign,
Coiled on the bull's great hoof.
And back into the world,
Half blind with weariness
I touched the thread and wept.
O, it was frail as air,

And I turned then
With the white spool
Through the cold rocks,
Through the black rocks.
Through the long webs,
And the mist fell,
And the webs clung.
And the rocks tumbled,
And the earth shook.

And the thread held.

Dogwoods!!!

A few weekend ago...

Milt and I went out to Wildwood Nursery & Sculpture Garden
in Kenwood to look at the dogwoods. Well,
today Michelle Bellefeuille, of Belle Feuille Garden Design,
and I returned and brought home
three gorgeous dogwoods and a peony tree!

I forgot to bring my camera to Wildwood Nursery,
where owner Sara Monte was most helpful
in assisting us to make our choices...

So here they are when we got them home in the back
of Michelle's station wagon...

A very happy Michelle stands next to these beauties...

Now, you have to use your imagination, as these beds
are going to completely change in the next few weeks...

Do you see the peony to the right and down low?

I just love them...

and feel so honored to have them grace our home...