Captain Ahab's Focus

I suppose I should admit it to the world something that my wife has known for years: I’m not the best multi-tasker.  I don’t necessarily think of this as a negative though.  In the “glass half full” spirit of things, I see my propensity for avoiding multi-tasking as a direct cause of my single-minded determination.  I have an Ahab-like ability to obsess on one thing at time. 

Once my obsession has taken root, I find it difficult to move onto other things.  For the last two months, my obsession has centered on the construction of a new room off the back of our garage that we’re temporarily referring to as a “man cave”. 

A place for tables without chairs, cabinets filled with paint cans, and rusty file cabinets. 

Before it was the man cave, this room was a thrown-together catch all.  My guess is that former occupants of this house used it as a shop and a place for their kids to shoot their air soft guns.  The structure, such as it was, stood on top of a slightly raised concrete pad that takes up the majority of what was once a good sized patio.  Initially, I thought we could just tear down some of the old construction and put up new dry wall and replace some lights and we’d call it good.  But when we discovered that the entire frame was nothing more than one of those iron patio awnings we knew it was best to tear it all down and start from scratch. 

After we moved in I started filling this space with weed whackers, HD buckets, and gardening shoes.

Although this means the entire project would be much more expensive, it turned out to be a real blessing for me.  I was able to design the new room and add in all the perks that would make it truly usable as an extra space for our family.  Because this room juts out onto the patio, and the back yard as a result, I had to consider the exterior of this room as a backdrop for the garden at large.  To that end, when we designed the room I made sure that there was enough space between the windows that I could put my large planter box/trellis between the windows without blocking any of the light.  

This now fits perfectly between the room's two windows.

I also made sure we installed several exterior outlets making it easier to do things like power Christmas lights, corded power tools, low voltage lighting, irrigation timers, and anything else that comes with an electrical cord.  I also asked for an outlet to be installed just under the eaves because I thought that would be a perfect way for me to realize my Pinterest-inspired day dreams of being able to string café lights up into the mulberry tree that presides over our patio. 

Something like this is what I'm aiming for. 

After two months of construction, the keys have finally been turned over to me and the decorating will begin in earnest this weekend.  Once I have gotten the interior situated to my liking, I am going to turn my obsession to getting the patio set up the way I like it.  

A fresh start always comes with a renewed feeling of hope.

The door on the left now hides the utility meter and provides a little closet storage.

If I knew how to Photoshop, I'd erase those chairs from the picture.  Obviously I don't know how to Photoshop.

At my last residence, I was very much a container gardener.  I probably had 20 different containers on my back patio alone.  I enjoy container gardening immensely.  I used to think that I was a container gardener because I lacked the space to do more traditional gardening.  But now I understand that I enjoyed the restriction of it, the "movability" of plants in pots, the ability to easily change the scenery as my mood dictates, and the experimentation involved.

Nearly time to pull my pots and misc. containers out of storage!

I am definitely looking forward to letting myself obsess about filling up my patio with plants, pots, and power cords.  

A Modest Harvest

"If you have a garden and you like food, then it is mad not to grow your own."  -Monty Don

I like Monty Don's garden writing quite a bit.  But, man, that kinda stings, Monty.  Am I mad?  I mean I like food as much as the next guy (okay, the extra weight around my mid-section will testify that I might like it a little more than the next guy) but I prefer to grow things that aren't very edible.  Like Japanese maples.



This is the produce aisle in my paved side yard.  From left to right: an espaliered Fuji apple tree,
Early Girl tomatoes, Eversweet strawberries, Kentucky Colonel mint, and  zucchini.  

 Though I have been trying.  A little bit.  I bought some new wine barrels this year and cleaned out some of my unused pots to grow vegetables in this summer.  I knew going in that my output wouldn't be as high as it would have been if I had devoted actual earth space to this endeavor but I was okay with that because we don't eat a lot of vegetables anyway.  

With that in mind, I picked these last night:



A few strawberries and some pole beans - some Italian variety I guess.



Yes, that is just five smallish strawberries and about a dozen pole beans.  Not enough to make a meal appetizer for myself let alone a family of three, but it was still met with some excitement when I brought them in. 



My daughter ate all but one of the strawberries I picked.  



Maybe someday more of my yard will be devoted to things we can eat but for now we're enjoying the modest harvest of this year and feeling a little less "mad" in the process. 

I Love My Dog But . . .

A while back I wrote about how the end is drawing closer for my dog, Zooey.  We don't quite feel like it's his time to go, but in recognition of that approaching day we've been spoiling him in ways that we never wanted to do when he was younger. 

We've allowed him to eat more of the table scraps.  We scramble an extra egg for him on Saturday mornings.  And maybe he gets more bacon than is healthy for him.  I liken it to when my dad was dying from lung cancer and I caught him smoking a cigarette in the side yard out of sight.  It's not like that indulgence was really going to change the inevitable. 

He's also been getting bones more regularly. 

But not from me. 

My wife and daughter, who are both kind-hearted and thoughtful, were out shopping and my daughter wanted to get Zooey a bone and Mom agreed that it was a nice idea.  Who am I to argue with that kind of thoughtfulness?  It's just a thoughtfulness that wouldn't cross my mind anymore.  Look, I love my dog and I want him to be as happy as possible in his golden years, but he torments me with these bones.  

I took this picture 7 years ago.  He's been burying his bones in the yard for at least a decade.

A few nights ago when he thought we were sleeping I heard him sneak off to the living room where he left the bone.  I knew what he was up to and it wasn't a midnight snack.  Moments later I heard his nails clicking on the tile of the kitchen floor and then came the soft plodding on the hallway carpet.  He was getting ready to sneak outside with his bone.
Now one of the greatest (and simultaneously worst) tricks Zooey has is the ability to open our sliding glass door and let himself outside by using his snout to push the door handle.  This is great when we're not awake and he needs to relieve himself.  It's not so great when it's 25 degrees outside and we're suddenly awoken by a blast of arctic air. 

On this particular night he snuck back into our room and dropped the bone on the floor so he could get his snout in there to open the door.  At that point I thought to myself "On no he didn't!" and I got out of bed in a huff.  Zooey pretended he wasn't up to anything other than answering nature's call and he went outside without the bone.  "That's right, Mister.  There will be no burying of bones tonight."  While he was outside I hid the bone in the bathroom sink and got back into bed.  I thought I was outsmarting him. 

He spent the next 30 minutes wandering around our room sniffing the side tables, poking his head under the bed, sniffing my face, pacing in circles, wandering out into the hallway to have a look around, coming back in and sniffing the side tables again in . . . I'm sure he was perplexed.  I'm sure that if he could talk he would have been scratching his head and muttering "now, where did I dwop dat darn bone?" (He would have a bit of a speech impediment, we think.)  "I swear, I weft it wight here by duh swiding gwass door so I could sneak it out waiter." 

I'm not sure who won that battle of wits.  On the one hand, Zooey didn't take the bone and bury it outside.  On the other hand, I awoke the next day extra tired since someone kept me up with his sniffing, pacing, and crying. 

Perhaps because I was so tired from that night, I slept soundly the following night.  I can't tell you how things went down when the sun fell . . . but I can show you what the light of day revealed:

I sounded like Fred Flintstone when he got locked out of his house at night shouting "Wilmmmaaaaa".  Except, of course, I was crying "Zoooooooooeeeeeeeeyyy!"  It's so depressing to nurture these plants along only to have them ripped from their potted places.  And I don't know why, exactly, but it bothered me even more that he didn't even end up burying the bone in the hole he dug.  He just dumped the evidence in plain sight.  "Come on, man."  I told him.  "If you're going to destroy everything, at least have it mean something."  He just looked at me blankly.  While he laid on the couch.  And then he closed his eyes and went back to sleep.  After all, he'd had a late night; apparently.

Blankets and the TV remote and he's set for the day and ready for us to leave him alone.

I thought about throwing the bone away but I didn't for some reason.  Call it a momentary lapse of compassion.  I cleaned it off and gave it back to him.

This morning I awoke to a different crime scene and, once again, the bone wasn't buried there.  The difference this time though is that a complete search of the yard turned up nothing.  If I find it before he does, I'm sorry buddy, it's going in the trash this time.    

I Take Pictures

When I was a kid I asked for a camera for a birthday and I must have received one because I remember playing with it.  I have no idea what kind of camera it was but it took the standard Kodak film (probably 35 mm, right?).  Depending upon the film, you'd either get 24 or 36 pictures.  And when you took them you just looked through the view finder and trusted that what you were looking at would eventually show up on the film.

It was expensive.  First you had to pay a couple bucks for the film.  Then you had to pay a few bucks to have it developed.  Most of the time you got about 3 or 4 pictures that were worth taping to your wall or to the inside of your locker.  

Photography has certainly changed, but my success rates with taking pictures hasn't necessarily kept pace.  I'm more of a writer than a photographer.  I would like to take better pictures and hopefully some day I will have extra time to devote to that pursuit.  But for now, the quality of my pictures is pretty much dictated by luck and whatever random acts of kindness mother nature bestows upon me.

Having said that, I'd like to share a few photos that I've taken recently that I am more or less happy with.  These are the few that I wouldn't have thrown away if I'd paid for them to be developed.

This first one was taken yesterday evening.  Sometimes I take pictures of my garden just so I can refer back to them later on and remember what was in bloom at that time of year.  This one will remind me that the container-grown carrots still weren't ready to harvest, that the tulips were still hanging on, and that my four-legged buddy was looking old and sleepy.

I wouldn't be so presumptuous as to title a photo, but if I had to, I might call this "Happily Accidental" because I really thought I had dug up the iris rhizomes and tulip bulbs.  Apparently I missed a few.  I think I'll just let them stay as long as they insist on making things look good in spite of my efforts to eradicate them.

I find Japanese maples to be impossible to photograph well.  If you back up far enough to get the whole tree it seems like you miss some of the finer details that make them so special.  But if you get too close and focus on the leaves, you miss the awesome structure of the branches.  But the leaves are easier to photograph, especially this time of year, so here are some of my favorites of the moment:

Beni Schichihenge

Red Dragon by my iron chair

Katsura leaves

Otto's Dissectum

Murasaki Kiyohime

And here are a couple pictures that, when I look at, I find myself saying, "Man, flowers can be really cool."  

That's all for now.  Thanks for indulging my little photo essay.  

Kamagata Part II

Acer palmatum 'Katsura'

Part I can be read here.
****

I tend to get really involved in the things that I like.  Gardening, obviously, is one of those things.  I really like reading too.  But the most enduring pastime in my life has been baseball.  And for the last 20 years I’ve been pursuing the geekiest of passions: Fantasy Baseball.  Among the cast of characters that are part of my life, fantasy baseball is more accepted than gardening so I am not teased about my obsessing over On Base Percentages and Strikeout per 9 Innings ratios. 

This last weekend was one of my favorite weekends of the year.  It was my current league’s 6^th annual fantasy draft.  The guy that hosted the draft this year lives out in the boonies which ordinarily would have felt like an inconvenience, but in this case, his neck of the boonies was awfully close to Lakes Nursery . . . a nursery that just so happens to specialize in Japanese maples.  I made the trip out there about a month ago and purchased three new trees.  While I was there, I told the owner, Joe, the story of my stolen ‘Kamagata’. 

Upon having written that, I realize that I am turning into an old man.  Suddenly I’ve reached the age where it becomes normal to tell the same story to anyone who will listen, perfecting it, embellishing it, tweaking it just a little for my audience.  I would like to apologize to my wife now for the person I will be 30 years from now.  I hope that she will still “lichen me” when I’m old and mossy.  You see what I mean?  I’m even telling old man jokes now. 

So about that ‘Kamagata’.  Joe told me that they didn’t normally stock ‘Kamagatas’ but he would check with his growers in Oregon to see if they have any.  He told me to come back in a few weeks.  As it turned out, the weekend of the fantasy baseball draft was a “few weeks” later.  A side trip was in order.  I would drive out to the nursery and buy my tree and have a look around and then I’d take a few back roads and make my way to the baseball draft and it would be a great day. 

But then my friend, Mark, who has teased me about my “fairly rare” Japanese maples asked for a ride to the draft since it was out in the boonies and the price of gasoline is catching up to the price of bottled water.


Cut to Inner Monologue: “Do I tell him the truth?  Should I make up a reason why I can’t give him a ride?  I could tell him the baby seat in the truck is stuck so I can’t fit anyone over 45 pounds.  I could tell him I needed to practice my singing the whole way up and I wouldn't want to subject him to that.  Maybe he wouldn't want to go with me if I told him I had resolved not to speak at all while in vehicles this year?” 

The 'Katsura' planted in full shade.  Most Japanese Maples prefer at least some shade.
This one, I'm told totally resents direct sunlight during the hottest summer months.

None of those lies sounded right to me, so I told the truth and braced for the inevitable mocking.  And then I told him he was welcome to hitch a ride with me if he “still wanted to go and didn’t mind me looking around a bit.”  He said that would be fine and maybe he’d just sit in the truck and prepare for the draft.

My tiny 'Kamagata' planted in the ground
this time.  Hopefully that will make it just
a bit harder to steal if someone is so inclined.

I put the truck in park just outside the gates of the nursery.  Mark immediately unbuckled his seatbelt and jumped out of the truck.  I thought maybe he just needed to stretch his legs for a bit and that he'd get back in an finish his draft preparations but he followed me into the nursery where we were warmly greeted by a little cockapoo guard dog named Pancho and all the brilliant colors of Spring in a forest of Japanese maples.  Within seconds, Mark was remarking on the awesomeness of the colors and shapes.  I nodded, knowingly.  It was like watching someone get drunk for the first time. 

Several times he stopped and asked, “what’s this one called?” or “how big will this one get?”  By the time we left the nursery with my tiny new 1-gallon ‘Kamagata’ and a ‘Katsura’ for good measure, Mark was asking about where he could put a Japanese maple in his yard and he was planning a tranquil Japanese-style makeover for his private front yard patio.  And for a few minutes that day our minds were cleared of thoughts on batting averages, home run totals and placement on depth charts and replaced by daydreams of sitting on a patio and enjoying a couple beers or looking out a kitchen window during a quiet September moment and reveling in the color. 

When I recall how it felt to have someone steal my tree last year it still bothers me.  Who does that sort of thing anyway?  It's going to take a few years before this twig resembles anything close to a tree, but I'm okay with that because this tree is now my visible symbol that I chose not to let the riff raff dictate my life.  I have learned a few things through this experience.  I have learned that nothing physical is permanent.  I have learned that when I place too much value in something that can be taken or destroyed that I have let my priorities get out of whack.  But I have also learned that things, like trees, can inspire people with their beauty.  And I have learned that I don't need people to be as passionate about the same things as I am but when I am brave enough to share those passions with them, it's a pretty cool feeling.

Kamagata Part I

Last summer I spent a couple weekends creating a new bed in my front yard.  I tore out a sprawling jasmine that was probably quite stunning before I moved in and before the mulberry tree grew to the point of changing my yard from full sun to full shade. 

I planted a couple hydrangeas, a hedge of Gumpo White dwarf azaleas and what I had intended to be the star of the show, a potted Japanese maple (JM) called ‘Kamagata.’  If you’re not familiar with this particular cultivar, I don’t blame you.  There are over 400 JM cultivars and that number is steadily growing even if most garden centers continue to carry only the 15 or so most common cultivars like ‘Bloodgood’ ‘Crimson Queen,’ ‘Sango Kaku’ and ‘Garnet.’  To help keep track of all these trees with the hard-to-pronounce names, most JM enthusiasts turn to J.D. Vertree’s aptly (but boringly) named bible “Japanese Maples”.  Vertrees is to JM fans what Stephen Hawking is to really smart people that like science and space stuff.  Vertrees is to JM fans what Mr. Miyagi was to “Danielson”.  So, when J.D. Vertrees selected ‘Kamagata’ as one of only two JMs that he would name and cultivate, you know it’s a good tree. 

I was so proud of my little tree in its bright white pot.  I felt like it was the keystone that held together the new bed I had just created.  Unfortunately, as I wrote last July, someone else decided that they liked it too and they figured they would deprive me of my little tree. 

In addition to blogging about this, I made the mistake of posting about it on Facebook.  I wrote something along the lines of “Someone stole a fairly rare Japanese maple out of my front yard last night.”  Now, my friends are good guys that I would trust my life with, but they are not the type of guys who will just let you say stuff and get away with it.  Because they, in their foolish ways, do not consider gardening a very manly pursuit, the responses ranged from the sympathetic “someone once stole our bench” to the downright cruel: “Hey everybody, I just acquired a fairly rare Japanese maple.  Send me a message if you’re interested in buying it.”  Since then it’s become a bit of an inside joke (always at my expense) and it’s the most common refrain I hear whenever I mention something about working in my garden. 

The bed hasn’t looked right to me since the ‘Kamagata’ was stolen, but I have been reluctant to replace it for fear that whomever took it would just do it again.  But I have thrown caution to the wind!  Stay tuned for Part II.

Redwood Boxes

Continuing my theme of having too many containers, I present my latest additions to my garden:

Redwood boxes with finger joints

I can’t take any credit for these.  I stole the design idea from Essence of the Tree’s web site.  I’ve been lusting after their version of these boxes for years.  The wood used in their boxes was collected from structures in the San Francisco area dating back to the 1880s and they have a ton of character as a result.  Character comes at a price those.  At $350 a piece, I could never pull the trigger.  And if I did, I would feel guilty if I put anything in them that would cause them to deteriorate. 

I can’t take credit for the construction of these boxes either.  I commissioned my friend, Jordan, to build them for me.  Jordan is a talented young carpenter who also built a large planter box/trellis structure for me, but the design of these boxes presented him with a challenge because he had never built anything with finger joints before. 

The wood from these boxes is signicantly less than the 130-year-old versions that inspired them, but there is still some charm in the differing grains and how those differences are amplified at the corners.
 

A little wood glue helped stabilize the joints while this was being built.

Jordan confessed that the first box he built was actually easier because the redwood he used was straighter.  The second box required a lot more shaving, sanding, and salty language to complete. 

I really enjoy having pieces in my yard that were made by friends.  For one, it’s a nice reminder that I am surrounded by gifted people who are willing to share their talents.  But it’s also nice because it saves me money while also providing a little extra money for my friends. 

One of these will house a dwarf Japanese maple called 'Murasaki Kiyohime'. 
I'll post a picture when it leafs out.

You’ll have to excuse me now.  I’m off to see if I can make friends with someone who knows how to weld.  

Orchard Boxes

For a while now I have been spending a lot of my mental energy on de-cluttering my life one closet at a time.  I have too many books; too many shirts I can’t fit into anymore; and too many hobbies that take my spare time, require too much of my thoughts, and occupy too many square feet of my physical space.

It feels good to donate a shelf’s worth of books and to clear out enough space to actually hang a jacket in the hall closet.  There’s something therapeutic about it. 

But if de-cluttering is a drug, the dosage is not nearly strong enough to help me overcome my insatiable need for more planting containers. 

My dog playing the part of customs agent.

We went to a monthly antique fair last weekend and while it’s always fun to people watch and browse the amazing and bizarre things that can be bought at such a place, I really went with just one intention: find something cool to plant things in.

And find I did.  I found these old orchard boxes from Auburn, California which is not too far from Sacramento.  They were $8 bucks a piece.  I thought about asking him to sell me 3 for $20 but figured the $4 difference wasn’t worth going through the uncomfortable bartering process (uncomfortable for me anyway). 

I love the faded paint on these.  I'd also like to find out what the stenciled "F-10" meant.

I’m not sure what I will plant in these boxes or even where I’ll put them, but I thought they would look great with some sunny annuals spilling over the edges.  If I wanted, I could plant them with herbs and put them on the patio table where they will get plenty of sun.  Or perhaps I should finally try growing succulents.  The sky is the limit and just daydreaming about the possibilities makes me happy. 

Call Me Starbuck

“‘Vengeance on a dumb brute!’ cried Starbuck, 'that simply smote thee from blindest instinct!  Madness!  To be enraged with a dumb thing, Captain Ahab, seems blasphemous.’” 

-Herman Melville, Moby Dick; or The Whale

Hanging on with just one leg!

If you are paying attention, many of us garden bloggers are focusing on the squirrels in our lives.  The attention they are receiving from garden bloggers must have something to do with the leafless trees and how the nakedness of those trees reveals the dastardly deeds of the cute but annoying rodents in our yards. 

My issues with squirrels are nothing out of the ordinary.  Well, except this one squirrel that looked to be pregnant or cancerous.  For the most part, the squirrels in my yard are little more than bird feed stealing acrobats.  They are annoying in that regard but watching them try amuses me in spite of the frustrating consequences. 

I have another critter that has caused me more problems in the garden than any squirrel ever has: my beloved dog.

Recently, I went out to check my newly seeded containers.  I was hoping for signs of sprouting and instead discovered that an entire wine barrel had been ransacked.  Potting soil had been piled up with chaotic abandon on one side of the barrel, burrowed into on another . . . and I immediately blamed my dog. 

But the telltale evidence wasn't there.  There were no bones buried.  There were no stolen socks hidden for later.  I did not hear Ray LaMontagne singing "Trouble". 

 
Maybe it was those villanous squirrels!  Could they have been stealing my seeds?  Or were they burying their nuts in my potting soil?  Or do I fault birds looking for seeds?  I didn’t know who to blame or what to do about it.  I certainly wanted revenge though; swift, thoughtless, and unflinching revenge.

Revenge for what though, exactly?   

I am currently halfway through reading Moby Dick for my “Finer Things Club”.  I’m ashamed to admit that I somehow got through high school plus four years of college (where I earned a degree in English) and never managed to read this American classic.  While some of the book’s questions and answers still await me, I’ve read enough of it to know that one of its central themes is dealing with our desire for vengeance.  The quoted passage above reflects ship mate Starbuck's reaction to Captain Ahab when he finally tells the crew that they will travel to the ends of the earth to make the white whale pay for taking Ahab’s leg off without prior written consent to do so.  What is the point in seeking revenge against creatures who are simply acting according to blind instinct?  It really is madness.

Loitering with Intent to Harass, I'm sure.

So there will be no BB gun vigils and no scarecrows erected - not this year anyway.  There will only be hardware cloth, some heavy duty staples, some crossed fingers, and lots of hoping that some of those seeds will sprout and that my patience with life’s little challenges will grow as quickly as whatever lettuce is left to me. 

(P.S. For those of you with inquiring minds, the coffee company, Starbucks, was, in fact, named after the character in Moby Dick.  They thought it made a better name than the original suggestion of naming it after the ship in the book: the Pequod.  That's pronounced "Pee-quod" so they made the right decision, methinks.) 

If You Build It, I Will Plant It

My mom and her husband flew down to visit my daughter and put up with me for the weekend so I wasn't able to blog about anything while they were here.  It's not that I was too busy to blog, of course, it's just that I had to keep up the ruse that I don't have a blog called "Me So Thorny" so my sweet, sheltered, good-natured mother wouldn't discover it and become more disappointed with me.  Besides the title, I may have written a thing or two over the course of this blog's existence that weren't intended for motherly consumption. 

So there was no showing off of the blog, but I did get to show my mom around the yard so she could see what I've done with the place since she was last here.  I guess I passed her test because she wants me to come up with a design she can use for a narrow space between the L-shaped walkway that leads up to her house and the 6-foot privacy wall that borders it.  Although I'm not a professional garden designer, I decided I could still give her the family and friends rate on my services as long as she agreed to fly me down to her place in Florida and feed me for as long as the installation took.  I doubt she'll hire me.

I think we'll reach a compromise though - I'll make a few suggestions and she'll keep my name in the will.  Although my price demands won't be met, I have to admit that I was, and I remain, happy to help.  It's nice when people recognize your talents (or at least your interests) and want you to share that with them. 

Which leads me to the real point of this post.  Several months ago I ran across this planter box/trellis combo at a nursery and loved the design but not the price tag. 

I've tried to zoom in and read the price tag for the sake of accuracy but I still can't tell if it says $389 or $589.  Either way, it's a lot plus $89 more than I wanted to spend so I never pulled the trigger.  And because I chose to take Greek and Latin roots as my high school elective instead of Wood Shop, I never acquired the requisite skills to build such a contraption. 

But the other day a friend of mine, Jordan, posted a picture on Facebook of a wooden bed frame he wanted to build.  It was a pretty cool bed frame and it occurred to me that if he could build something with some artistry to it and that was also sturdy enough to sleep on every night he could probably build something that would look good in the yard and still be sturdy enough to hold some potting soil.  So I sent him the picture above and asked him if he could replicate it.  He said yes and he quoted me a price I liked and the next thing I knew I had commissioned my first piece of anything.  

Like many woodworkers, Jordan is a perfectionist.  I suppose that trait is a necessity given the high cost of both lumber and the reattachment of phalanges.  As part of his preparation for this project he decided that it would be a good idea to go to the nursery where I originally found this design and take a closer look.  Being the honest guy he is, he reported back to me that the original unit was still there and they had marked it down to $299.  "But," he said, "it's really weathered and it's a lot smaller than I thought it would be.  My price quote was for a much bigger unit.  What do you want to do?"

I have a small yard so I try to get things that fit the scale of my garden.  But, and these are big buts, I had already struck a deal with him and I wanted to honor that deal especially since he'd already put forth some effort and you can't just tell another guy that you want the smaller thing no matter what it is.  If you have any choice in the matter, things like trucks, barbecues, gigabytes on your iPad, TV screens, and Subway sandwiches all have to be as big as possible if you want to save face.  Of course, you have to be careful you don't go too big because that just encourages Napoleon Complex jokes.  You see, being a modern man requires the balance of a funambulist. 

Naturally, I yelled "build it, build it, build it!" in response to Jordan's question.  A day later I had a message from him saying he was done.  When he said he had something bigger in mind, he wasn't kidding.

This mammoth creation stands 6'4" tall and is nearly as wide.  I have no idea how much it weighs, but I can tell you that once I decide where to put it, I won't be moving it again.

I learned a couple things in this process: 1. It's more fun and more rewarding to pay your friends for their talents than it is to pay a store (although I still want to support my local garden centers!).  2. Buying large pieces of anything require some extra thought.  You know, simple questions like "where will it go?" should have a readily-apparent answer.  3. If you're going to have house guests for the weekend, make sure they have a good back so they can help you unload heavy objects and 4. bigger may not always be better but it is more fun.  [Insert "that's what she said" joke here.]  

Now the fun part: what should I put in my new planter box?  I'm in zone 9A and it'll probably end up in full sun.  I'm leaning towards something like Chilean Jasmine or an espaliered apple tree but I'd love to hear your suggestions.   

More Grace Please

I dozed off last night at 7:15 and why shouldn’t I?  It was raining, it was cold, and it was really dark.  Besides, we had turned off Monday Night Football so my daughter could watch an episode of The Berenstain Bears and, try as I might, I just can’t maintain interest in the "Mystery of Stinky Cow Milk" since the mystery is missing after 5 or 6 viewings.  So I fell asleep.  Two months ago I would have been outside doing something in the yard instead of drooling in my chair.   

A season's worth of rampant growth and this salvia is out of control and you can't even see the other plants.

Because I work pretty standard hours, most of my gardening takes place on the weekends or, during the summer months, after work.  So when the nights are dark and the weekends are packed with other things that need to be done, it presents scheduling challenges for me as a gardener.  What I have done lately in the yard can only be described as the bare minimum - maintaining a “someone probably still lives here” appearance.  In other words, I’ve mowed the lawn, picked up buckets of dog poop, and recycled about a dozen fliers advertising landscaping services (I think they have been targeting my house since it looks like I could use their help). 

These Kangaroo Paw blooms last forever - or until mid-October, whichever comes first.

During my lunch break today I went home and had a look around the yard since the sun had finally come out and I have missed connecting with my yard.  What I saw depressed me though.  Everything looks gross.  Crepe myrtle blossoms that once looked great on the tree are now slippery booger-looking things on my pathway.  Our rainy season finally arrived but I failed to adjust the drip irrigation timer so everything that hates wet feet is looking worse for wear.  Most of the plants that were in their glory this summer now look spent and gangly.  It's almost as if it never looked good . . . 

This is just too messy for me.

There are plenty of lessons I can learn from this experience.  I could remember to adjust the sprinkler systems earlier next year.  I could schedule a vacation day next October to devote to fall clean up chores.  I could change my pathway to something easier to sweep and keep clean since it’s apparent that the stepping stone look I thought I loved is not actually compatible with my personality . . . or, I could take the advice of Deborah Silver who recently wrote this bit of gardening wisdom:

I do not have the means or space to mount and maintain a garden that is lovely every moment of the entire season.  I have to make choices.  I like a late and a later season garden . . . This has every bit as much to do with my availability, as their form and flowers. There are very few garden plants I do not like.  I would have them all, if I could.           

But there are those plants that get special care and attention, as their time to be corresponds with my time to give. The big late blooming perennials-they occupy a special place in my gardening heart.  As for your garden, I would make this suggestion.  Choose the season that delights you the most-and go for broke.  If you want to grow great vegetables, organize your gardening efforts accordingly, and make plans for rocking pots of basil.  If you have a summer house elsewhere, make spring your season.  If you are a working person, plan for a glorious garden when you are the least busy.

Trying to be all things at all times sounds way too much like a competition.  A great garden that engages and satisfies an individual gardener is all about enabling a certain quality of life.  Those astonishingly beautiful pictures you see of gardens in magazines-they are all about a specific moment chosen by a gardener.  Choose your moment.

If Oprah and I were friends, I’d confide in her that reading the paragraphs above provided me with my “Aha! Moment” as a gardener.  As much as I would love to have a perfect looking garden in October it is, apparently, the time of year when I have the least to give my garden.  So I’m going to give myself a little more grace and I’m going to try to be happy with giving what I can. 

My Aha! Moment needs a light bulb above my head, but all I have is this lantern.

I Have the Green Thumb

I may not be the most talented or successful gardener in the world, but at least in my household, I'm the one with the green thumb.  If you needed any proof here it is:

My wife received these lovely flowers for a job well done at the office:

Like many bouquets, it came with plant food.  Wanting the blooms to last as long as possible, my wife added the plant food to the water.

                     

Don't those look nice?  Except . . . what is that?  There's something floating in the vase.  Um, yeah . . .  Whatever is floating in the water, and this is just an educated guess, but I think it should probably not be there.

I really wanted to give her the benefit of the doubt here.  Maybe the packet was supposed to dissolve and allow the fertilizer to seep out at a slower pace? 

Unfortunately, I can see from the directions that you are, in fact, supposed to open the packet and poor the fertilizer into the water. 

Oh well, at least she tried.