Garden can change your life - story of the Reader

From my working station today :) I share this story.... One day an email poped up in my inbox....

Hi,

This might sound strange, but a garden changed my life.

My wife started a garden last year, and while I knew there were physical and mental benefits to the hobby, I never expected it to have such a wide positive impact on my entire family. Our diets have improved, we get plenty of exercise and sunshine from garden work, our collective stress is at an all-time low, and my kids are now actually excited about eating healthy. We’ve even inspired other neighbors to follow suit!

My hope is that I can inspire your audience, too. These are some great resources on gardening that I thought would look great here: 

Ewa in the Garden

10 BestGarden Crops for Beginners

Gardeningwith Kids: How It Affects Your Child’s Brain, Body and Soul

How toGet Your Children Excited About Gardening

The Guideto Garden Maintenance & Improvement

By Hookor By Crook: Gardening with Disabilities

How toStart Your Own Urban Garden

GrowingConnections: Gardening with Seniors

TheUltimate Guide to Turning Your Home’s Yard into a Community Garden

I hope you’ll consider adding these to your site, but I also don’t want to be a bother. If you’re not interested in this kind of outreach, please shoot me a quick email letting me know.

Thanks in advance,

Luke

*****************

This was my answer:

Hello :) thank you very much for your message :) I am really happy to read it.

Its truly inspiring for me :)

Could I share your story with my audience?

Ewa

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Luke answer was following:

You are most welcome, Ewa! I'm glad that you appreciate the information I sent over!

Feel free to share the resources and my story with your audience so they can benefit from the list as well.  It is my sincere hope that the information gets out there for people to learn from.

Thank you!

*****************

THANK YOU Luke for sharing your story and resources that helped you.

In these days when the world is getting more and more anty-human, we gardeners need to stand firm by our soil maintaining tasks and helping the EARTH to protect our HEART.

There is no coincidence that HEART is anagram* of HEART

Have a great weekend!

*anagram - a word or phrase spelled by rearranging the letters of another word or phrase.

 

20 Best Post in 2014 You Don't Want to Miss... aha?

While going already up and forward to 2015, but also looking backwards at what 2014 has brought, I just made a list of best posts of Ewa In The Garden in 2014. Just in case if you have missed any them, you can now go through the list and choose which one to check. 

They got most hits this year and when I mean the number of hits it counts in tens of thousands for each post. 

Catch up now and happy reading! 

1. Pea trellis

2. Lavender harvesting

3. Vegetable garden ideas

4. Wisteria collection

5. Beautiful edible landscape ideas

6. Ideas for bean poles

7. English vegetable garden

8. Recycle greenhouse idea

9. Low maintenance succulent vertical garden

10. Inspiring fruit trees espaliers

11. Beautiful ideas for herb garden

12. Pruning hydrangea after winter

13. Top water gardens

14. Pruning lavender for more flowers

15. Excellent uses of lavender

16. Propagating hydrangea

17. Authentic Polish pierogi recipe

18. Cute affordable fencing

19. Hydrangea propagation easiest way

20. Most beautiful rose arbors

Happy 2015!

Ewa in the Garden 2010

As usually end of the year brings plans for next year and also looking back at what happened in the passing year, whether was there anything worth to be proud of. 2010 was remarkable year for me personally and for Ewa in Garden. In May I've met fellow bloggers, in December I've completed garden design course, and blog got its momentum with stable readership. It was great year! This is why tomorrow or on 1st of January I will write 'good bye letter' again. I made it first time and it seems to be working. Why not to invite even better things to life in the upcoming year? This ritual has nothing to do with white magic or so, rather codes our brain to attract better things and get disattached from all bad things in life.

Turning back to Ewa in the Garden, if you like reading my blog maybe you are interested which post got most attention and were viewed most often. I made little digging in my analytics account and found out which posts published in 2010 were most popular. This list is different than best of all posts written since the first one, because the older posts are, the stronger they get in search engines.
 
So, I'd like to present 10 best posts of 2010. Maybe you missed some of them, so this will be the chance to view them:

• Vegetable garden ideas
• Hydrangea propagation easiest way
• 15 Ideas of diy pea trellis
• Pruning lavender for more flowers
• 10 most beautiful rhodo pictures
• Lonicera caerulea var kamtschatica
• Propagate hydrangea
• How to grow alpine strawberries from seeds
• Polish monk clematis and daylilies breeder
• Winter hedge full of red berries

PS. Do you think you will also write goodby letter to old year? 

“Eat the day lily in moderation as it is a mild laxative” says Delena Tull…

…in her book “Edible and Useful Plants of Texas and the Southwest: A Practical Guide”

“In the spring the crisp white tuberous swellings on the roots yield a delicious succulent vegetable. After scrubbing them, eat the raw, boil for 15 minutes, or bake them like potatoes. (…) You can even eat the large showy flowers of the day lily. Add the fresh petals to a salad. In China and Japan the flowers are dried ad stored for year-round use as a thickener for soups. The petals also add a delicate flavor to clear soups. Add the fresh, withered, or dries flowers to soup in the last few minutes of cooking.”

Hemerocallis fulva

Read more in the book

Second 10 best blog posts in the last 12 months

I checked also what posts make the second 10 of the best blog posts of Ewa in the Garden, visited most often. Thank you so much for visiting!

23 most beautiful lavender photos - hand picked 
Drought tolerant gardening - chinese peony
How to get rid of pond algae bloom
Biggest auction of Polish paintings
Santolina - cotton lavender - pruning
Authentic pierogi recipe - Polish cuisine
Spring flower galore
Truly beautiful city garden in Warsaw
5 top best evergreen landscaping winter plants
Kitteh hotel haz no vacancy

List of the first 10 best blog posts you may see here.

10 best blog posts of last 12 months

I wondered what are the the best blog posts of Ewa in the Garden in the last year. Here is the list 10 best of. Some of them were visited over 5 000 times - thank you!

Click the link to see the post.

33 amazing pictures of wisteria - hand picked 
Top 10 most beautiful water gardens
Most loved old apple tree - without pesticides
Hydrangea pruning
Terrace garden
Rose arbor - 12 beautiful photos
How to root brugmansia cuttings
Eremurus himalaicus - foxtail lily as showstopper
7 most beautiful pictures of brugmansia
Barefoot contessa walking on the snow

Nature book that changed my understanding of the garden.

Do you also feel sometimes that plants are greeting you?
If you know why plants in your garden are something more that just bunch of atoms, you may not only become a better gardener, but learn more about your spirituality. Nature heals and leads us through life, if you only let it happen.
10 years it was waiting on the shelf until I reached for it last July. I bought it, flipped through and placed away on the shelf. NEVER touched it again until that day. In the meantime I got closer to nature and became passionate gardener. Garden seems to me something more than separate plants and other parts. Every time while being in the garden or when I look at nature's wonders, I had the feeling there must be something more than only physical manifestation of the Nature's power.
That day I reached for this small but very interesting book: The Deva Handbook by Nathaniel Altman, and now I know what is that 'something much more' than physical appearance of plants. I feel I am getting closer to achieve what the author is writing about.
What is Devas?
"Power, life, light; these are gifts which companionship with the angels shall place in human hands. Power that are limitless; life that is inexhaustible; light before which all darkness melts away" ~ Geoffrey Hodson 'Devas and Men'.
"Devas can be defined as forms, images or expressions through which the essences and energy forces of the Creator or Great Spirit can be transmitted for a specific purpose. (...) Devas have been variously portrayed in the Bible, the Koran, the Vedas, and the Bhagavad Gita - in myths and legends from ancient Greece and Rome, from countries including Mexico, China, Japan, and from throughout Africa and Oceania - as messengers, members of heavenly court, helpers, groups of warriors, sources of healing power, guardian angels, and spirit guides. They have been considered luminous energy principles that stand behind all phenomena, and they work both with nature and with the cosmos to guide the evolution of life" ~ Nathaniel Altman 'The Deva Handbook'.
I know somebody who has seen Devas in her garden. Only one time. She told me that it happened one sunny summer day, very early in the morning, something like 5 a.m. She went out to the garden and after sitting calmly on the bench, she saw kind of steamy light over every plant. She was describing it as reminding glowy steam or smoke
This little book is very interesting because it explains nature wisdom, nature energy, earth wisdom and our spirituality from surprisingly different perspective. You may learn many new things to your surprise e.g. there were christian mystics such as Saint Francis of Assisi, Julian of Norwich and Teresa of Avila who believed that humans are very closely connected with nature. Surprising, isn't it? Especially that christian religion deprives spirituality from the nature. Saint Francis of Assisi until today is the patron saint of animals and the environment.
In current times most of us lost the touch with nature so much, that we believe we can control it or nature is there only to serve us. Bah! What can I say more, read The Deva Handbook and you will not only become better gardener, but also there is a chance that you will understand better your own spirituality.
Stay tuned!
Picture by Per Ola Wiberg (thanks!)