Today is the sunrise for a new year! It is a time to look forward to the new challenges and opportunities the new year will bring. There are wonderful times ahead to spend with family and friends. There are new adventures around the corner with new things to learn. There are times for work and for enjoying the results. There are times for quiet contemplation on what is most important in life. It will be our challenge to act on the most important things and make the best of each and every day.
“Mother Teresa and Mahatma Gandhi Mural by Eduardo Korbra” New York City
I was walking along the Highline in New York on a quiet drizzly morning admiring the wonderful landscape design on the old railroad tracks. I looked up and was stopped dead in my tracks when I saw this huge mural painted on the side of a nearby building. I stood frozen for minutes, just gazing, admiring the art, and contemplating how much these two people have given to the world. In our troubled world today, why can’t we all take a lesson from these two and make it a better place to live.
“Looking North Through Japanese Garden” Heatherwood Winter
Work is about to start on our 2021 spring project at Heatherwood. Our garden will continuously change over time. Additions and modifications are designed to highlight key plants, frame views, and hide distractions. From the perspective of the above image, we want to focus the attention to the plants in the Japanese garden then draw the view to the 1890’s irrigation flume in the background. This year we plan to add medium sized Japanese holly evergreens to hide the road leading up the hill and mid-sized conifers to hide the bare hillside at the right of the image. These additions will provide a background layer for the Japanese garden as well as frame the irrigation flume in the distant background.
As we walk through our garden, we are content enjoying the current state of our existing plants. Concurrently we visualize how the plants will mature as well as look for new opportunities to enhance the garden. Change is an ever-present part of Heatherwood.
Today started with a bright sunrise as a harbinger of the start of a new chapter. Biden’s Inaugural speech on “Unity” was a bright way to start the path for the new Administration. Patience, persistence, honesty, compassion, compromise, and a lot of hard work will be required by all of us.
I see the light and hope of a New Year rising above the shadows of the past difficult year. It may be a little blurry around the edges, but hope clearly shines through.
We have many difficult challenges to face: health, political, economic, cultural, social, and many that we cannot predict. But with every challenge, there is hope and opportunity. It is the responsibility of each of us to make the most of every moment and make the world we live in a better place.
Many things are moving in a positive direction. Vaccines are becoming available to cure the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic. Political change is on the horizon; hopefully it will bring our nation together instead of pulling us apart. Cultural and social awareness were brought to the forefront this past year. Positive change will be on all our minds. Economic issues will impact all of us differently, but financial resources are available to provide more, new, and different means to pull us forward.
Life has changed. This year will be a transition to bring us back to a new equilibrium. Things may first continue to get worse before they stabilize and get better. Patience, faith, hard work, and persistence will be required by all of us to move forward. Light and hope are ahead. It is up to all of us to pull together and proactively make it happen.
It has been a long and difficult year. But, that is not a reason to let my head hang down. With the Covid-19 pandemic and all the political discord our lives have changed. They will never be the same. We have learned to cope with uncertainty and adjust. New ways of doing things have entered our life styles. That is not all bad.
Being newly-weds, the “stay-at-home” initiative has given Mary and me a lot of quality time to really get to know each other’s habits and interests. We have had a lot of time to discuss our feelings and opinions. We have had time to plan for many things we would like to do in the future. We miss not spending time with our families and friends but look even more forward to what the future will bring.
We are thankful for the challenge and joy that our new garden brings us. We excitedly have watched the garden form during the last two years. We enjoy our frequent strolls through the garden and appreciate those special moments as we sip our morning coffee or afternoon wine.
It has been a long and hard year! But, I can look up with a smile to the challenges and opportunities that a New Year will bring.
After 3 weeks of smoke-filled skies and hazardous air quality warnings, blue skies finally emerged. The local and other western state wild fires had filled our little place of peace with a heavy layer of smoke. It was hard to spend much time outside without a burning sensation in my lungs. Finally a strong breeze pushed the smoke out of †he valley. It felt so good to walk around our garden and breath fresh clean air.
The point where this image is taken is the future site of a small outdoor room/sitting area from which we can hide and enjoy a peaceful view of our garden, house, and ridge above. The lawn area will be closed in with shrubs and small trees providing a private shady area for a cozy bench. It will be a peaceful area to take an afternoon break in the shade and enjoy the scene above. Planning for the future keeps my imagination going.
Space Shuttle Atlantis Abstract Kennedy Space Center Museum, Florida
We have finally returned to launching Americans on a US launch vehicle from US soil. The SpaceX launch vehicle with the Crew Dragon onboard provided this signifiant milestone in our revitalized Space Program on 30 May. We have a new horizon of Space exploration ahead of us with defined programs to return to the moon and send Americans to Mars. This will happen in my life time!
I remember the launch of the Sputnik when I was in grade school. This was followed by our country’s aggressive program to put a man on the moon by the end of the decade. I remember the Gemini Program highlighted by Shepard’s first flight into space and John Glenn’s record orbit around the earth. I remember the failures and successes of the Apollo program, culminating in Armstrong’s first step on the Moon in the summer of 1969. I also remember the miracle of Apollo 13.
While at Boeing, I had the opportunity to work with several of the engineers and leaders who were an integral part of the Apollo Saturn V rocket program, the Lunar Rover program and the Space Shuttle program. I moved to Washington, DC and was Boeing’s technical liaison between our Seattle staff and NASA. I met Michael Collins, the astronaut who stayed in the command module while Armstrong and Aldrin walked on the moon. I worked with General Abramson, the ex-Shuttle Program Manager, on Strategic Defense Initiative programs. I watched the Challenger disaster with several of my Boeing associates in our Washington, DC Control Room. One of my bosses became the leader of the Space Station Integration program. I was part of our National Space Program.
When we exited from space launch programs with the last Shuttle flight in 2011, I felt a deep loss of US leadership in Space. Now after 9 years, we have made our first significant step toward the World’s New Horizon. We have returned … How proud it makes me feel.
“Hosta, Japanese Maple, & Ground Cover” Fountainville, PA Garden
Tones, textures, and shapes all combine to provide vignettes of enjoyment for me. Simple things perk my interest. I first see the bright chartreuse of the hosta jump out at me. I stop, focus, and follow the lines and shapes of the leaves. I am drawn into the details. The dense and darker ground cover creates a base supporting the hosta leaves. I raise my eyes and see the small, delicate leaves of the Japanese Maple trickling down over the large hosta leaves protecting them from the bright sun. What a wonderful moment I experience just enjoying the simple beauty of a garden.
It took many years to create this vignette. First, we dug up a portion of our yard and added a good quanty of fill dirt and top soil to create a planting bed. We edged the bed with Pennsylvania blue stone to keep the dirt from flowing over to the grass and gravel walk way. Our first planting was a bed of petunias. They were beautiful but took a lot of maintenance to keep them looking neat. After a couple of years, we planted a Sango Kaku Japanese Maple on the corner of the bed. We planted several sun loving plants around the base of the maple and patiently waited until the maple created enough shade to plant shade-loving plants. We gradually pulled out and transplanted the sun-lovers and replaced them with hostas and other shade plants. Over the years the ground cover spread as the hostas grew. The bottom branches of the Sango Kaku flowed down to provide the shade the hosta needed. Fifteen years after we moved in, we had a beautiful bed with Japanese Maples at each end, medium sized shrubs in the middle, and all the ground covered with ground cover and shade-loving plants. Small vignettes were scattered all around.
Now on the other side of the country, we are starting over to develop a landscape that will have a similar feeling. Now we have small trees and shrubs and a lot of sun-loving plants. The areas between are covered with bark. We patiently will wait for nature to do its work to develop the mini environments to create vignettes like the one above. We celebrate the little things that make up the wonder of nature and life.
Let us not forget all those who have given their lives to give us the freedom that we now have. Let us look back in history and understand all the difficult situations we have encountered and faced as a nation. Let us remember what it took to overcome those times.
Our current situation with the Covid-19 virus is minor compared to what we have faced before. Yet we are fighting amongst ourselves on how to move forward. Rather than fight, let all of us focus on how we can move forward to assure a strong recovery and a safe environment. It will take patience, compromise, and sacrifice. But as many times before, we can do it!
