Songs for the garden

Synchronicity speaks...the words of the Universe.

Recently I got my hands super dirty washing potting soil. I had to do it because it was shitty soil...literally and I needed to wash some of the manure out of it so that it wouldn't burn my plants. It's not great quality soil to be honest, but I'll transform it into a decent growing medium.

It's funny because while I was doing that, I had a few songs come up on my playlist that I've included here and they were absolutely perfect for that moment. These songs take me back to my childhood. Songs my mom would play on the vinyl record player and from movies that I watched way too many times. So many times in fact, that I knew all the words back then, all the moves too. I've all but forgotten them from back then, but the lyrics stay with me always and remind me of much simpler times when school holidays were shared between gardening work like weeding and playing under the trees. Or in the trees. Gosh, I was fearless as a kid back then when it came to climbing six meters in the air and not thinking for a second that I might fall.

I decided to take a walk down memory lane of that era. It feels like suuuccchhhh a long time ago, but these songs take me back there in an instant.

My mom was a big fan of the old movies with Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly. Some of these hits were just embedded in my mind after the repetition. One of these instantly makes me cry now. It's interesting how those simple things back then make such an impact and even if you don't understand them at the time, later on in life when you end up back there, they transform into so much more. The beautiful blissful innocence of being a kid.

This next one is probably one of my favourite songs at the moment. It was written by Electric Light Orchestra's Jeff Lynne and came about after he had been feeling depressed and uninspired after many weeks of gloomy, rainy weather when one day he woke up to a bright blue sky which completely transformed his mood from bleak to empowered. He felt as if Mr Blue Sky was a superhero and he was able to write 13 other songs in the space of two weeks. It has been classified as one of the happiest songs ever recorded and for good reason. This is the absolute bomb of a song for getting productive in the garden, even when you're just doing those menial chores like weeding. The reason I know this song is that it was on one of the episodes of CSI where Hodges has a lucky day and everything seems to go right for him, including getting freebie out of the vending machine and being smiled at by a sexy woman. He later breaks the case as a result.

I started writing this post many days ago for the Creative Garden challenge, then chaos erupted and it got shelved. It's probably late but I figured it was worth finishing up and putting out there anyway...because these songs are gold whether you're in the garden or not.

Do any of you remember these tracks? Do they bring back any memories for you? Let me know in the comments.