These are great, Jackie.

I certainly understand, though have no photos to demonstrate the concept in my garden. We're largely flowerless at the moment, but flowers aren't the basis of beauty in the garden. It's the interaction of order and freedom, volumes and space, and green life, that create beauty. We're in our second day of rain, and I think the drought is over.

I hesitated to post these photos again, since I recently posted them on another thread. I think everyone has seen them. But they do convey a little sense of what I feel in my space. In my garden, serenity is the goal I set for myself and for the garden. There is so much chaos and discord in the world today that I look to my garden for refuge. I've found that merely setting the goal and working toward it, whether it's grubbing in the soil or pruning a plant, it helps to smooth out the rough patches in the day. My garden is far from a Zen masterpiece, but it suffices (most days) for me.

The stone bench is one slab, the supports are two more slabs sunken vertically. This is from a few years ago. The Bloodgood maple now reaches the eaves of the house.

This is the edge of my woodland, about two acres are behind the bed you can see on the left, all of it in wildflowers and shade tolerant shrubs. Unfortunately I don't have recent photos of that most peaceful area of the garden.

This is the same area from another angle.

The front beds

EDIT: I told you the red BLoodgood maple now reaches the eaves. This is it. The stone bench is hidden behind the beds, under the huge holly.

Last one, unless there are requests, lol. This is the Spring Glade, my favorite part of the garden in March/April.

This is a wonderfully refreshing thread, Jackie! Just what we need. I especially love your birdbath areas and shady archway paths. The “gazing pool” birdbath in the first photo is pure serenity!

John, your whole garden is like a breath of fresh air, and your Spring Glade is exactly what I imagine when I travel to my happy place!

Carol

My garden

Tryon Creek State Park

George Rogers Park

Melissa - rain! That is so fabulous. We have been getting overcast and fog in SF Bay every day, which has saved our temperatures from getting too high, but no rain yet. Maybe if we are lucky three will be some by Oct. Congratulations on yours!

fig_insanity and portlandmysteryrose - thank you! Exactly what I am talking about, except of course in your gardens you planned these places on purpose. They are so tranquil and lovely - made my morning.

porches - I think I am going to start a new thread about porches - I love them!

Jackie

Your porch looks so lovely and inviting, Carol, picture-perfect! Everyone's gardens are so beautiful, I have so much work to do to create anything like these pictures but you wonderful people are such an inspiration, thank you.

Beautiful pictures, everybody: thanks. It's very evident that those who posted photos love their gardens. Jackie, I hope you get some rain. Ours has been hugely welcome after a year and counting of low precipitation. It's forecast to get hot again, not welcome but unsurprising in August, but that just means the garden will get warmth and water, which means--ROSES!!!

Thank you, everyone who posted all those soothing photos of gardens. I woke up tired this morning, not feeling like starting the day. And then I saw this thread and took the time to absorb the peaceful vibes of each garden as well as take a walk through my own garden spaces. We are still in our monsoon season here and the morning was gray and misty with a sweetness in the air that made anything lovely seem possible. By the time my children woke up, I felt refreshed and energized. Thank you again, Jackie! I am not going to include any of my garden photos myself as my garden is young and mostly under construction, therefore lacking the ability to provide much tranquility at present. I hope that with all the inspiration you gardeners provide and with a lot more hard work and planning, my garden will some day have the charm of years that your gardens possess.

John - of course we would all love to see more pictures of your beautiful garden. Meanwhile, here are some more unplanned tranquil pics I found:

Cheating - this is a pic of the creek which runs behind our cabin up in the mountains:

Shady sidewalk in front of our house:

Looking out the window down into the garden:

Another ground level bird bath:

Early Spring bluebells and another bird bath:

Jackie

Hmmm.. The looking out the window one did not post - trying again, and adding another one taken out of the same window -

Jackie

Jackie, the fawn photos are very therapeutic, especially Floppy Ears! We have a nuthatch family that visits our birdbath. I’ll try to get a picture. Carol

Thank you, @Meg-zone8aOR. I’d love to see photos of your garden! We seem to be gardening in the same area. Carol

I just moved here (about an hour east of Eugene) at the beginning of this year so there isn't much to show. I am new to growing roses (I didn't have the space for them before) and planted several this year but they're all still tiny right now. I am hoping that they all make it through the winter and I'll have some better pictures to share next spring.

First blooms on Eden (grafted)

This is the backyard this spring when things were greener

First blooms on Sidonie

Thank you, Meg. I find that picture of the huge lawn with the wild hill behind it particularly tranquil. Love the bird house.

Jackie

OK, Jackie, you asked for it, lol. Here ya go:

I found an older photo, taken out my front door just at moonrise. If this isn't tranquil, I don't know what is.

Here's the same view, zoomed in a bit, in daylight. I've taken probably 1000 photos of my neighbor's barn. If he knew, he'd be charging me royalties, lol.

This isn't quite as close as the photo makes it seem. The barn is probably a half mile from my front door.

I'll apologize now for all the posts with single photos. I can't get How-uzzlezz to let me upload more than one at a time. It's been that way for months.

Here's one of an open area in the woodland. It's only this pretty for about four weeks, and then I just go there long enough to mow and weed, lol. But when it's at its best, it's very tranquil. There's another stone bench just out of sight to the right.

This is my lower pasture. For anyone who's forgotten, I live on a farm ;) I think the fresh Spring grass is very restful to the eye. I don't know how none of my cows made it into the photo. Camera shy?

Most of you have seen this one, but it's one of my favorites. Again, it's the edge of the woodland, which is on the left; my patio is to the right.

Obviously, the front door. The path from the driveway to the front door is a long curve around the semi-circular beds. I've tried to make it a calming nature walk...though it's just about 40' long.

Jackie, I love the pic of the creek. Nothing is more tranquil than flowing water. Restful, peaceful, restorative, calming. Regardless of our gardening abilities, philosophies, and styles, I think Mother Nature still does it best.

Thank you, John! I think my favorites of your most recent pics are the daylight one with the barn, and your lower pasture. To me, they both make me want to walk in to them.

I totally agree with you that Mother Nature makes the best gardens - here is another one of the same creek, taken from the back deck, in Spring rather than Fall:

Jackie

I love it, Jackie. A bit wilder, a little more rambunctious, but something about it still makes me smile. I can almost hear it, swooshing and frolicking over the rocks.

THIS is a NOT TRANQUIL DIGRESSION - forgive me. "Hers is the rest of the story..." Unfortunately, along 5 miles of the two lane road which runs alongside of this creek, last Sept there was a horrible firestorm, and 30 residences burned to ashes in one night. Luckily 95% of those were vacation homes/cabins, and the few people who were still up there got out OK. The forest burned, and by morning only bare dirt and standing black tree trunks were left - total moonscape. I will spare you the photos.

The good news is that of course the creek is still there, the hills and mountains are still there, and when we went back up last time a couple of months ago (after the govt. had logged our 3 1/2 acre property for free, and removed all of the fire debris, like our melted huge generator and the 18 inch high pile of ashes and crumpled metal roof which was all that was left of our cabin), new life was sprouting everywhere. Every tree stump was sprouting, except of course the pines, but I did see some pine seedlings (the cones open during fires). There were wildflowers up and blooming everywhere, too, and there were even hillsides covered in wild lupine. I went to look for a wild rose which had been growing at the side of the road ("before" pic below), and low and behold, it had re-sprouted from its roots, and was setting buds! Mother Nature will prevail, as always.

Jackie

Jackie, I remember when you lost the cabin to the fire. I know it was heartbreaking, but I was just glad you weren't up there at the time. You guys out west have had it rough. I've been hearing about the aftermath of the devastating New Mexico fire (the one caused by out-of-control "controlled burns" the gov't set to PREVENT big fires). They're now having flooding from the monsoon season, and contamination of water supplies. Las Vegas, NM (not Nevada!) has only a 30 day supply of water left, because their main source of water, the local river, is a sludge of ash and mud. I hope your retreat manages more re-growth of ground cover before the winter rains begin.

Thank you. Yes, the National Forest fire folks did set off this overnight firestorm by setting a backfire on a VERY windy evening ( wind was blowing in the opposite direction from the direction they wanted the backfire to go, evidently against ALL of their own protocols). They had been fighting a slow moving, huge, dry lightening started fire for 3 months, but this action created a disaster. The local volunteer fire departments came out and fought it, and saved half of the historic gold rush town. I read about them burning up vast swaths of NM, and was not surprised - hopefully they will be more careful, or someone will be looking more carefully at what they get up to now.

I did not want to get off the theme of tranquil photos, so here is one of our great nephew "fishing" in the creek behind our cabin in the Spring of 2021:

That's adorable, Jackie, and just the ideal of "tranquil".

Jackie,

Your window framed with roses is so enchanting! What rose did you plant there? It's beautiful!

It would be a lot more tranquil here if the mosquito population were less. I'm looking forward to the end of dog days.

Meg - Our bedroom is on the second story of our house. The rose which my DH trained around our window is a very large Cl Cecile Bruner. Here is what it looked like from the outside:

Melissa - you have to be careful what you wish for! Lots of rain brings mosquitoes; at least it does here - I don't like them at all, but prefer them to no rain.

Jackie

Jackie, I agree. I know rain brings mosquitos, and rain and mosquitos is better than no rain and no mosquitos. But I feel that it's my human right to whine about the bugs. P.S. We have rain forecast for the weekend, though quantities are diminishing. I hope bart's storm brought water with it.

This is so beautiful and romantic, Jackie!

Hmmm... Those weird adds from Houzz are back - they claim to be "related" to the thread, but most of them I have seen (they show up directly below the last post) are not related at all. In one thread, the OP was talking about smooth roses, and bunches of adds showed up for "a smooth running home" - they don't even have very good computer programming!

Jackie

Thanks, Meg - that was my original idea. We did enjoy those roses around our window for 20+ years but recently the Fire Dept in our town asked us to take them down - they call them "fire ladders". I did understand - our house is wood shingled, and 117 years old, so we did take down this rose. Cl Cecile Brunner will certainly grow in Oregon, so you could try this yourself if it does not cause fire danger.

Jackie

I wanted to bump this up for anyone needing a little tranquility right now, like me. If anyone has more photos to post, I'm sure Jackie wouldn't mind. We all need to step back now and then, and realize there is still peace and quiet to be found in this madcap world.

There are two crape myrtles which are blooming for the second time in my front yard, and they have never bloomed in September before, which have given me a very lovely feeling over the last week or two. I can't take their photograph since it's 1:27 a.m. but I'll do so in the morning.

Edited: These pictures are hit or miss as on this cloudy day there is so much glare that I couldn't see anything in the view finder.

fig_insanity - Thank you for revving this thread. I had forgotten about it - I re-read the entire thing, spending most time of course on the pics. It was very calming and made me happy. I would love it if anyone would add to the photos. I have one - it is looking up at the inside of a giant Scarlet Oak tree in my back yard. We used to have another one, in the front yard (it got a fungus infection and we had to take it out). I used to lay on the grass beneath it and stare up into the 80 ft tall inside of it - almost hypnotic. Anyway, here is an inside photo of its sibling, not taken from directly underneath it, as its trunk is 1 ft away from our back fence. Looking forward to seeing more photos from others! Ingrid?

@Ingrid_vc zone 9b, San Diego Co. inland Ingrid, didn't you get some of that out of season rain? I'm betting that's what spurred the crepe myrtles to bloom again. Here, they're just winding down after blooming since July. This year was perfect weather for them, up until the last couple of weeks. We had high temps and lots of rain, which they loved. They thought they were home in monsoon India, lol.

I agree that your cm are restful to the eye. As Yoda would say, "Tranquil they are. Peaceful are they".

Fig, now that you mention it, it must have been the unseasonable rain that surprised the crapes into another bloom cycle. It was a delightful surprise, especially since the ground squirrels ate most of the first crop of blooms. Since I stopped feeding the squirrels they seem to have decreased in number and they haven't touched this crop of flowers. This has been a hard lesson to learn but one that was needed.

Ingrid - I also think your cms are gorgeous! Our city has been putting them in on our street as street trees in some places - I love them!

Jackie

P.S. Here is another pic, of some maple trees (wild in the forest) next to our cabin - I took the pic out a window.