Advice to Young Mothers and Others

"I've learned to take the hurried part of my life, slow it down, plant the seeds, and watch with patient eyes..." Emilie Barnes

Advice to young mothers. While you plan your child's education, nourish little bodies to help them grow strong- while you teach the importance of savings and discipline- provide the principals of your faith- do all this in an atmosphere where imagination flourishes. Be bold and be rewarded.

My garden celebrates the forgotten ingredient of American success: imagination. Other nations have excelled in math and science. Other nations have saved more. Other governments have been more directly involved in the welfare of the people.

What has set us above and apart thus far is what flourishes here as nowhere else, the spirit powered by imagination unleashed. Imagination propels solutions farther and faster.

When I am dispirited; a moment outside, watching bees called to the scent of lavender and roses, I am refreshed.

Keep your eyes open. I wasn't looking for this stained glass globe when I found it at Osh Hardware. The garden bauble was as good as I could make, cheaper than it would cost me, even without counting my labor's worth. To leave it on the shelf would be to regret having missed an opportunity.

How to display it: I had not a clue. Or money.

In a dream, the solution came. 4 fan trellises were robbed from where they stood as headstones to dead annuals. Spray painted white, turned upside down, screwed together at the top; a thrifty country tuteur was born.

A happy birth, but not mature as a garden statement.



A decade; many settings in the gardens tried, then abandoned. Still, the oomph factor wasn't unleashed. Studying a photo, it the little garden decoration sang the solution. She needed to be dressed in color, given a little detail at the neckline and glow.

Now the tuteur stands dressed in regal green. A collar made from scraps of wood frames frames the globe like an Elizabethan collar of a long-ago queen . A set of discontinued solar lights was bought for a song, dismantled and bulbs stuffed inside. The remote power source wired around the corner, where there is sunlight.



Imagination and Patience let the glass hummingbird do what she was meant to. Sing a smile on the face of all who knock.

Quote from Emilie Barnes Garden Moment Getaways, illustrated by Susan Rios. 2008. Harvest House Publishers