Rusty Iron Arbors

Today must be day 16 in what is starting to feel like the modern version of the 40-day flood. It's rained for so long that when we had a brief respite around lunch time yesterday (Tuesday in the picture above) I took advantage of it and mowed my lawn so I could stop obsessing about when I might get another chance to get out there.

In spite of the rain, it has been warm enough that things are happening in the garden even without my input. Those vegetable seeds I planted are doing their thing even without me hovering over them worriedly wondering if they would sprout and if I needed to do something to make it happen.

In the absence of actual gardening I've been spending a little time just taking pictures and marveling at the gorgeousness of spring. It's amazing to watch a little nub on a stick burst out of its shell and become a full fledged leaf or flower in the span of just a few days.

When I walked around in the yard today it was just starting to rain again. The sky was dark gray, the air was cold, the plants were alive. But what struck me was the non-living beauty of my rusty iron arbors.

I bought these a few weeks apart from each other at Green Acres here in Sacramento. They were reasonably priced (in the $100 range) and I love the way they look in the yard. I think they provide a rustic, shabby-chic kind of feeling to this part of the garden.

Thanks to a new book by popular garden writers Rebecca Sweet and Susan Morrison that was recently published, vertical gardening is the big trend in the gardening blogosphere these days. This month it is even the focus of the Garden Designer's Roundtable. My little plot of earth often feels too small for my garden schemes. These arbors represent my rebellion against the reality of restricted horizontal space.

I love that on these two arbors I have a place to grow a second 'Iceberg' climbing rose,

a white bower vine and a white 'Shiro-kapitan' wisteria, which is not long for this world and a topic of an upcoming post.

Can you see that blue sky behind the twining vines of the wisteria? I'm so thankful that I have photographic evidence that I didn't just dream up the existence of such a thing!

It's going to be gross out for another week and the gardener in me is feeling disgruntled. But these arbors provided me with a good reminder that even in times of dreariness there are things in life to appreciate.