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.  

Serenity now!

The scene:  my very own deck (which allowed for a provision of privacy) set within my “blues to purples sliver garden”.  Thanks to my wonderful licensed massage therapist, Gypsy (my own Florence Nightingale, advocating for fresh air in the repair of one’s health), I had THE most restorative, healing, rejuvenating garden experience that I have had in awhile.  Why? Because I wasn’t do anything but breathing in and out – in and out. No planting, no weeding, no scheming.  Relishing in the product of that aforementioned hard work, letting nature – my garden – wrap me up in goodness. How delightful to be draped in the surround of my restorative garden with its ambient sounds of bird chatter, distant train whistles, rustle of leaves, and HELLO! silence.  The warm of the early fall sun was quite assistive preparing my soul, muscles and mind for an inward journey of healing and “fueling”.  So with Gypsy’s nurturing guidance to secure the most perfect and private spot, I could just be in my garden afterwards, slowly returning to the larger world. (Deep breath.)  

With the warm sun hitting my arms and face, eyes slowly opening to see the puffs of white clouds set on the backdrop of light blue sky, I was transported back to graduate school days, reminded of Sam Bass Warner Jr., author / historian and his accounting of the role of gardens (and nature) in medicine from the Medieval Times to the beginning of the 20th century.  Together with Gerlach-Spriggs and Kaufman in  Restorative Gardens, the Healing Landscape, he wrote of, among other things, monasteries and convents, caring for the sick, often using courtyard areas for patients and patient beds to wheeled out on to.  And there I was, going back in time… using my garden to “restore” in the most basic sense.   Go call your massage therapist and schedule that restorative garden massage!  Or better yet, talk with Gypsy, who knows how to help.