What is it that inspires us and how do we best express our internal truths through our self-expression?
The design of our yard and gardens is illustrative of our appreciation not only for nature, but how we are to show this respect to those around us but also those who have come before us. We live in and as a continuum of collective spirit. There is a great line in the series Ancient Aliens. that says, “We are not alone; we have never been alone”.
I feel strongly that this continuum is like a calling card asking that we should open our heart and mind to express as ourselves. This becomes a subconscious approach to how we see ourselves “fitting in” with universal vibrations that are always present. 
This is why learning how to express the virtue we possess for what may be defined as “our highest endeavor”. Thinking again of what inspires us in our gardens, I think first of the French Impressionism expressed best by Claude Monet’s paintings.
For our gardens and how we utilize the landscape has always served as the mechanism or way we best can use our own innate talents. To express our connection with the unknown or what we see as unfinished and making it into something that is. We can then define what we can see through our actions using nature as our guide.
It is first what we find in the silence while we discover the attributes we can build on that bring out the best in what we can contribute to that which defines us as well. It is what every great artist has always done as they leave behind something that someone else can see, capture and build on for themselves.
Eternal spirit depends on vibrations and connections to become whole. When you learn to truly listen to what the birds are singing, the animals are saying, even to what the trees and plants are yearning for, it becomes how to best contributes for the benefit of all things found in nature.
For thousands of years this is what Indigenous peoples have nurtured through myth and legends, rituals, and storytelling that convey eternal truths. When we take care of our surroundings and environment it will take care of us. 
When we don’t nature cannot protect us from the results. When I think of garden design of adding what contributes, and removing what doesn’t, I like Monet’s approach which is the essence of Taoism in that it speak to nature’s intent. Especially the term impressionism in that the results can be made to change with color and hue and making what appears as something universal. During his long career, he was the most consistent and prolific practitioner of Impressionism’s philosophy of expressing one’s perceptions of nature.
Many years ago, in 1977 in my first trip to Washington DC, just by chance I visited the National Gallery of Art and saw paintings by Monet really for the first time. It was as though they spoke to me. Not literally, but by spirit. That what Impressionistic paintings were intended to do was to show the results were unclear as to what the finished painting with finite lines would show. As if we are always reflecting life as a work in progress. His paintings were criticized at the time as being “unfinished”. Monet felt that his painting was meant to illustrate the continuum of spirit that we could identify and capture for ourselves. The term Impressionism was initially mean to be derision but was later said to be correct.
Both he and his contemporaries’ experiment with new methods of depicting reality gives each of us the opportunity to find it (reality) for ourselves. It is what the passion for nature and gardening illustrates as spirit with various scenes depicting our various moods. I especially like his method of painting the same scene many times so as to capture the changing of light and the passing of the seasons. This led me to like to plant perennials in my front yard that have different colors of flowers at different times over the summer and fall, then adding annuals that can be alternated or changed every year. For Monet it was his painting of water lilies in his garden in Giverny and haystacks that were most popular along with his painting of sunflowers.
I bought three Monet prints that day in Washington DC, they are hanging in my living room here in Springfield forty-eight years later.
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