Gardens are full of moments of grace and beauty.  To see them, we have to stop and focus our point of view.  A camera is very helpful in teaching us how to see into the depth of beauty in a garden.  The Limelight Hydrangea leaps out of the dappled shadows in a beam of light and distinguishes itself when viewed through the zoom lens in the afternoon light that skims through the tall trees below us on the mountain.

I didn't really see the cloud of asparagus behind the Red Bee Balm until I had this photo in my computer.  I was looking at all the different shades of red, but I don't think they would have been so lovely or distinct without the contrast the asparagus provided in the foreground.

This Blue Hydrangea is in the same bed as the Limelight shown above.  It was in a far too shady location when we moved here, so  after a couple of years we cut it back severely and moved it.  It's hard to describe how it feels to see that our intervention was so beneficial.  I'll call it Grace.

 Sometimes we just see something we didn't notice from any other point of view in the garden... I don't know where that burgandy daylily came from.  I planted Stella D'Oro in this area. By happy accident this taller contrasting plant is in a good location behind the shorter Stella.

We started planting this Ribbon Grass and Bee Balm along our crushed granite road to catch the dust of our neighbors travels.  What gorgeous protection it provides us.

I tried pastel types of Yarrow about three years ago.  It turns out it is a very friendly perennial that comes back year after year and volunteers are manageable and make great gifts.

We have a vegetable garden right in the middle of our yard.  We live on a corner with our house tucked back into the far corner so that we can take advantage of the yard.  Still, since it is in the front of the house we try to make sure that it has some grace about it too.  Those are pole beans in the foreground of the photo and cucumbers behind them.  We have potatoes growing in our front yard and corn.  The left corner of the picture shows a pretty way we found to support a tomato plant.

Symmetry helps and keeping it neat, though that gets more difficult near harvest. It starts out pretty nice every year. We started with this apple tree and a truckload of good topsoil which we have added to each year. A drunk driver took out the tree and much of our early garden. But here's proof that this garden was our work and didn't come with the house:

Gardens are a powerful form of self-expression and self-examination in the same way that any of the arts are forms of self-expression and exploration of both interior space and the natural world itself.   Sometimes I wonder if it is also my soul that is a tangle of intense flowers grasping for light.  But then again, I'd just as soon curl up like Firecat and just enjoy the Peace.