Friendship...as sweet as any fragrance from the garden.

 If you have been blogging for very long, more than likely you have placed  Aiken House and Gardens as one of your favorite garden blogs to visit.   With her welcoming photographs, since 2008, Carolyn Aiken has been setting a perfect cup of tea for her readers,  inviting us into her beautiful home and gardens.  Each visit to her blog, is met with fresh flowers so beautiful you can almost smell them.    Her gardens have graced several magazines with 10 enchanting acres that have had the tender care of this very lovely, humble and talented lady.   With her own two hands and most certainly the help of her loving husband they have created what was first breathed into Eden itself.   

 I recently had the privilege of meeting Carolyn for an afternoon visit at the Barn in Lake Alfred and then off to Lavender and Lace for wonderful lunch and tea.    Lucky for me, her family chose Florida to be their vacation destination this year with the need to see green after the long winter on her Prince Edward Island, where springtime comes a bit slow. From what she told me, PEI did not want her to leave, almost capturing the taxi cab driver in the snow laden drive the morning they were ready to leave for the airport.

 I use to get nervous when I would go meet fellow bloggers for  the first time.  I now find that this rarely happens.  After spending time reading of their lives and hobbies, their pictures usually reveal their spirit and with that there is just something so natural and easy about the visit.   It's like spending time with a dear old friend.  No matter how much distance may separate you, the meeting is like picking up  where you left off.   

With Carolyn it was so and I felt as though I was certainly meeting with a dear old friend.

After walking the property of the Shabby Old House and finding her blog, I am sure that my first comment to her back in 2008   must have read, "  The Shabby Old House needs your touch Carolyn!" Most certainly I have dreamed of having gardens around my home like hers.  So for years I have studied her home and gardens and dreamed of the day when the inside of our house would be complete and the landscape outside would start.  Each dreaming experience on Carolyn's blog would also add to my pleasure the experience of getting to know the loving caretaker of Aiken Gardens.  

 As we spoke of her garden's her face lit up with her anxious anticipation of returning to a glorious display of spring daffodils around her property on PEI, it made me realize what a connection gardeners and plant lovers all have.  Whether it be glorious acres of splendor, a very small garden patch,  or even fresh cut flowers in a vase, the beauty stirs us with the ability to stir others as well.   Nature moves us deep within to smiles on discovery of plants bursting forth with buds and blossoms.    It's as though they remind us to bloom where we are planted and leave a sweet fragrance behind and encourage others along the way.  Each of us have a seed inside with the ability to bring forth beauty.  It's God's gift to us all.  

Our purpose is to plant and  share as much beauty in this lifetime as we can and for those of us who blog we know that the encouraging comments of others is the precious water poured over our seed. Encouragement is as necessary as the seed!

So to you my sweet friend Carolyn.  I just want you to know....

You have certainly shared beauty and been the kind words of encouragement to me and so many others.  Meeting you was such a pleasure and  I think of a quote I saw written on a garden stake that read,

 "If friends were flowers,   I'd pick you."
Consider yourself picked my friend!
God Bless you and your family as you return to your beautiful Aiken House and Gardens.

If you want to read more about Carolyn's garden's, her story is currently in this month's issue of Romantic Homes.