Giving Thanks: The Enchanted Garden

Wishing you all a blessed and beautiful thanksgiving!

The Enchanted Garden: The Garden of Eatden
A slide show and improvised solo piano ~ Looking at the sky above, a resident hawk soars by, taking my eyes to a towering sunflower standing twelve feet tall and my attention to feeling there is more here than meets the eye... In no time at all a different world emerges. Enchanted, I am happy to be in this place and there began the building of this garden of eatden, a quiet celebration of May Day, a festival to bring forth good harvest for the coming year, and ordinarily, an unlikely place to harbor such an array of life and growth of delicious heavenly food and, yes, we have a serpent or two who have not said a word to us (its got to be the apples - we dont have any), lizards, owls, seasonal birds, beautiful bugs (we need them all) , deer, raccoon, possums, squirrels, coyote, who all frequent the sanctuary set aside for them above the garden and our beloved cats who believe they are the rulers of the universe, Smudge, Spunky and Lunita.
Ive experienced some strange things in this seemingly magical garden - I sometimes see the plants in a different state of growth for example; for moments out of time I see them further along than they actually are, and they wiggle when you sit quietly next to them and admire and appreciate them, sometimes I feel they are telling me what they need as I sit and observe in silence, although their fruits, when all things are in good balance, are not large, but certainly the tastiest food we have ever eaten. Although please note here that I have not eaten any of the fungi that frequently appear all year round - not one!
Giving thanks...
At this writing, it is November and we still have generous offerings of strawberries, tomatoes, orange bell pepper, basil, parsley, arugula, chard, lettuce, cress, carrots, sage, marjoram, lemons, lavender, calendula., parsley. Im about to collect the last of the blue lake beans and one last butternut squash. Just planted the garlic for next year, and for winter we will have broccoli, broccoli raab, cilantro, arugula, lettuces, cress, chards, kales, and baby carrots... The garden of eatden is beautiful, abundant, and we give thanks!

About the Music:
Patrick Leonard, Solo Piano, April 29, 2009 9pm
It has been a dream of mine to improvise for an audience for as long as I can remember. For the past few months Ive been playing piano improvisations every Wednesday night at 8 p.m. at the Emanual Lutheran Church in North Hollywood.
Ive not recorded any of the performances due to my own eccentric reasoning. But, on Wednesday April 29th the church has a rehearsal in the sanctuary and so I was unable to play. I decided it was important for me to do my weekly hour anyway purely for the sake of discipline, and so I did it at my studio in solitude.
Ive been curious about whats happened to my playing in these months and so I broke my self-imposed rule of not recording and recorded. In order to preserve the idea of a live performance no alterations or corrections were made. (Im now curious as to what having heard the recordings will do to my improvising. Is a bit of a pain really).
Then, as is my tendency, I had a thought. On the weeks the church isnt available Ill record, print up a few copies and give them to those who would have come but consequently missed my random interruptions to the silence of an empty church.