Years of Learning

Temperatures in Northern California finally cooled off into the upper 90s making it possible to devote some of my weekend hours to finishing one of the first main projects at my new house.  All that remains of this project is to think of a name for this part of the garden.  Why is that gardeners have a need to assign names? 

I have spent the last decade watching Gardening by the Yard, Yard Crashers and the innumerable P. Allen Smith shows.  I have read garden design books, books about specific types of plants, and books about the lives of gardeners.  I have read, subscribed to, and written blog posts about gardening.  And all that information, all that time and energy has led me to this point.  In my new garden, I feel as if I have to prove that I actually learned something and that I can apply it to my own life.  What good is knowledge otherwise? 

With that in mind, here are some of the lessons I have learned and how I applied them to this project:

Lesson – Just Live With it for awhile

I waited a couple months before I even tackled this project.  I stood at the window in the house and just looked at this corner of the yard and wondered what it would look like if I did X, Y, or Z.  I checked the sunlight at different times of day.  I went back to the window and imagined some more.  When it came time to break ground I did one thing at a time and then I stopped and went back to the window and lived it with it some more.  From start to finish, this project took 5 or 6 weeks to complete as a result.    

The view of the new bed from our patio

Lesson – Take your time and do it right

Most of this area was grass.  There was an Aristocrat Pear tree and an Oleander that had to go as well.  I dug all these out by hand and with the help of a new “Mr. Diggy” (heartfelt thanks to Calvin).  Then I put in the drip irrigation lines because nothing non-native will grow here without supplemental watering.  And then I went back to waiting.  I waited for the grass I missed to show itself again and when it did, I dug it out with my hori hori (best garden tool I own).  That left me with a bare patch of dirt for a while and I ached to get it planted, but I knew that if I got ahead of myself I could spend a lifetime weeding unwanted grass and that it would be so much easier to do it now with nothing in the way and nothing to disturb.

Lesson – Curved beds look better

My wife doesn’t often offer up comments on my gardening.  She sees it as my realm.  She’ll comment and compliment when I show things off to her but for the most part she lets me do whatever I want and is learning to trust that I have some kind of vision for things.  But after I carved the outline for this bed she broke from tradition and told me “I like the shape of that new bed.” 

Lesson – Paths don’t have to be made of stone

I’ve always loved stone pathways.  But stone is expensive and it’s labor intensive to install.  Plus, there’s the added and ongoing chore of weeding the cracks between the stones.  This time, I’m letting the lawn be the pathway.  Besides, a green lawn when used as a foil to the rest of the garden can be quite charming. Check out these pictures I added to my "Grass Pathways" ideabook on Houzz.com:

Grass Pathways

Remodeling, decorating, and more ∨

Consider a versatile murphy bed when looking for a guest bed, find home office chairs, and work with a contractor in your area to create a fun yet functional home office.
Share photos of the cabinets and kitchen sink you like with a top kitchen remodeler in your area.

Lesson – Repetition

When I go for a walk or take a drive and notice other people’s gardens I am almost always drawn to the gardens that use repetition in their plants.  There’s something wonderful about a garden filled with ferns or large patches of ornamental grasses.  And yet, when it comes to my own garden I have always wanted to use as many different plants as I could get my hands on.  There are hundreds of Japanese maple cultivars so how in the world is a gardener supposed to live with just one?  But in this case, I really did try to limit my plant selection.  I used mondo grass along the border and punctuated the garden with Japanese blood grass.  From there, I pretty much broke the rules though.  I planted a Baby Blue Spruce, a Snow Fountains Weeping Cherry, a Jubilee blueberry bush, a Mr. Lincoln rose that was given to me last month, and a Black & Blue Sage.  Even along the symmetrical trellises, a natural place for repetition, I failed.  I planted a climbing Iceberg rose on the right but planted jasmine on the left because . . .

I love the way Japanese Blood Grass (Imperata cylindrica) catches the sunlight. 

Lesson – Never plant thorny things where people walk

I really wanted a climbing rose to grown up this shed.  It would have looked awesome to have two climbing roses growing up over the window.  But I remember how annoying it was to walk under the arbors at my last house and get my hat or my shirt sleeve stuck on a thorn.  So I planted jasmine on the trellis near the pathway because it is easily trimmed and it won’t wave a thorny fist in my face when I walk past it.

Non-thorny jasmine on the left

Me So Thorny rose on the right

Lesson – Plants will grow

In my gardening life the times when I have been most pleased with something I have done was initially after I finished planting.  I arranged the small little plants just so and I stand back and congratulate myself on having an aesthetic eye.  And then the plants grow up and things don’t look like they used to.  Why I neglect to conceive of a plant’s ultimate size is beyond me.  Perhaps because I didn’t have the experience of watching them grow to maturity?  This time around I did my best to leave room for things to grow.  As a consequence, there is a whole lot of mulch being used as ground cover right now but I think that in a year or two, much of the mulch will be composting in place and the plants and trees will be filling in.  If not, I can always buy more plants to fill the spaces.

Piece By Piece

I don’t know what I’m doing anymore.  I don’t have any grand plans.  I don’t even have simple plans.  Every Saturday morning I trudge out to the shed, pull out the lawn mower and get started mowing.  It seems like it takes all day.  It really takes about 90 minutes.  But the chore of mowing the lawn is taking up too much of my mental time.  By the time I am finished I feel a little bit defeated and quite a bit overwhelmed.  I don’t know where to start.  What can I do to make this easier?  What can I do to transform this place into the Eden I found so easy to imagine when we first toured this house a few months ago? 

My new back yard is very nearly a green blank slate.

My wife has been encouraging me to hire someone to mow the lawn – at least for the summer so I can focus on the things I enjoy like planting trees, putting in pathways, and creating borders.  But I have resisted out of stubbornness.  I tell myself “I don’t want to pay someone to do what I can do for free.”  And yet I don’t think twice about paying to have someone change the oil in my car.  Surely, if I was going to have to surrender my man card for paying someone to mow my own lawn the Man card Defense Authority Department (McDAD) would have already taken it away for not changing my own oil filter, right? 

I have also resisted hiring someone to mow my lawn because part of me begrudgingly knows that this sort of angst is a necessary part of my assimilation with the new house.  This is part of the “just live with it for awhile” strategy that I know to be good advice.  It’s just that it has been harder and more discouraging than I imagined it would be.  I have missed the satisfaction that comes with creating a new bed.  I have missed the creative spark that flares up when you finally think of the perfect plant for the perfect spot.  I have missed that simple feeling of accomplishment when you stand back and realize that you have successfully addressed a problem.  But every week that I spend walking back and forth through the yard I sense that I am learning something valuable even if I can’t quite take that knowledge and transform it into a bigger picture.

This weekend I really started to sense a change though.  While I mowed the lawn, I noticed that one section of the yard was really dry in spite of being in deep shade and in spite of having given the impression of perpetual wetness earlier this spring.  I noticed that a different section of yard that was especially uneven and promised at least one gruesome ankle injury if the issue doesn’t get addressed. 

I started filling holes and discovered
many more in the process.

Though I was silently complaining to myself about the size of the lawn, the time I spent out there afforded me the luxury of day-dreaming about the summer ahead.  It occurred to me that this yard is big enough that I wouldn’t feel conflicted about filling up my daughter’s pool and just letting it sit there for a couple days.  The grass beneath it could die and it wouldn’t be a huge eyesore like it would have been in the smallness of our former yard.  As I struggled to maneuver the mower as close to the shed as I could, I had a quick vision of a small bed of flowers surrounding the shed with a trellis of sweet peas in the middle.

I think I'll remove the ornamental pear tree planted so closely to the shed and put in some kind of flower bed.

I could imagine a fall day, years from now, sitting around a stone fireplace with friends and kids while the dark came on us. I imagined friends sharing spiked hot chocolate or mulled wine while the autumn colors of trees I have yet to plant cast a quiet spell upon us.  

I found this picture on Houzz and I would love to mimic this some day.
(Traditional Patio by Portland Landscape Architect beautiful bones and purple stones)

Another view from a different angle.
(Traditional Patio by Portland Landscape Architect beautiful bones and purple stones)

I don’t know which of these things will come to pass.  Maybe I will have a different vision at some point that will inspire me to go in another direction.  But the encouraging thing is that I am starting to believe that I will, eventually, make this work.  This will become a place I can handle or at least a place that I will enjoy trying to handle. 

Living with it for a while is still going to take a while.  But piece by piece I am putting this puzzle together and it’s starting to feel okay that I’m doing it all without the picture on the box to guide me. 

Me and J-Lo and Outdoor Twister

Last night we were watching TV when a clip of Jennifer Lopez came on.  She’s beautiful.  Really beautiful, but I noticed that she had a few wrinkles around her eyes which is something I hadn’t noticed before.  Who knows?  Maybe those wrinkles have always been there and I’ve just been looking at other things . . . At any rate, I took the observation and ran with it.  “Hey honey, do you ever think that celebrities are aging faster than we are?  I mean, it seems like it wasn't that long ago when J-Lo was the fresh face of Hollywood and now she’s looking older than we do.” 

There was a brief pause while my wife thought of a nice way to put it.  “I think we look a lot older than we think we do.” 

I’m squarely in my mid-30s (dangerously close to adding the -to-late to that "mid") and, like most people, I still think of myself as a much younger version of myself.  But there are some signs, which I suppose I have chosen to ignore, that I am aging at least as quickly as Jennifer Lopez is.

Exhibit A – The other night I was tucking my daughter into bed and her entire prayer that night consisted of this: “Dear God, thank you for a very good day.  Thank you for Daddy and Mommy.  Please help Daddy not to get any more gray hairs.  Amen.”

Where did that come from?  Sure, I’m not a toe-headed, sun-bleached-blond kid anymore, but I’m not really gray yet.  Not unless you count my facial hair which is shockingly grey when I let it grow out (something I’m less and less likely to allow). 

Exhibit B – We keep our dishwasher detergent under the kitchen sink.  Every time I bend down to grab a Pre-Soaking Powerball thing I find myself thinking, “Wow, I need to stretch more.” 

Photo courtesy of Wikipedia.  I love using these things.

Exhibit C – For at least a dozen years after I turned 21 I would be asked to produce my ID when purchasing alcohol.  Now when I go through the self-checkout lane at the grocery store all I have to do is look up at the attendant and hold my 6-pack of beer up so they can see it and override the system controls so I can complete my purchase.  There’s simply no doubt I’m old enough to drink legally.  Perhaps I should be thankful that California law has recently changed and the purchase of alcohol is no longer permitted in the self-checkout lanes.  It’ll give the clerks a chance to flatter me once more . . . or confirm the truth. 

Final Exhibit – I went out for a little late winter clean up in the garden recently.  Our winters are mild enough that weeds and seedlings seem to grow all year so there was a lot of hands-and-knees kinds of chores for me to do.  Weeding on your hands and knees is hard enough by itself.  Mix in a few plants that you are trying to work around and it becomes a game of outdoor Twisters.  Right foot mulch, left foot brick, left hand pushing on tree trunk, right hand weeding!  I was able to manage for a while* but somewhere between crouching like a baseball catcher with one leg out

and lunging forward to grab a weed like an Olympic curler, my body decided to revolt.

As I lay on my side in the leaf mold and mulch of the garden bed, unable to move because my out of shape butt cheeks and quads had constricted to the point where I was momentarily paralyzed from the waist down, I had no delusions of youth whatsoever.  Nor dignity for that matter. 

What do I take away from all this?  Aside from the obvious, which is that I’m no longer 18 with the flexibility of a Gumby doll, I am starting to realize and accept that I am not immune to the ailments of aging.  And suddenly I regret having fast-forwarded through all those segments of Gardening by the Yard that talked about pre-gardening stretching, the correct way to use a shovel and how to stay hydrated while working.  

*a relative term, to be sure.

Gifts for Gardeners - And How We Can Get Them!

During my extensive web wanderings, I see a lot of internet ads targeted at people who know a gardener that would love something related to their obsession for Christmas.  But the non-gardener is almost always at a complete loss when it comes to buying a gift that the receiver would actually need or want.  And, I fear, all too often the purchaser overpays for something that will be gratefully accepted but ultimately underused or under-appreciated.   For example Red Envelope's garden tote and set of tools for $69.95.  It's a nice thought, but any serious gardener already has these tools. And besides, has anyone in the history of the world ever made a practice of hauling their pruners, hand forks and trowels around their yard in a tote bag?    

At this point in my life I find myself in the fortunate position where I can buy for myself some of the things I need and many of the things I just flat out want.  So when Christmas rolls around and people ask me what I want for a gift this year, there just isn't that much left to ask for.  I wish I could say that my lack of a wish list this time of year had more to do with recognizing the true meaning of the season than it does with my year-long tendency to gratify myself instantly.  That sounds "dirty."  What I mean is that as long as I buy myself whatever I want all year there's really nothing special I need in December. 

Obviously, that doesn't help those people in my life who, for whatever reason, think they would like to get me a gift.  So I have been learning to do a few things to make it easier on them and I thought I'd share those things with you just in case you find yourself in a similar predicament.

Stop Buying Stuff!

The first change I implemented was that I stopped buying myself things starting around mid-October.  For most gardeners, that's not the hardest thing to do because so many of us have already finished our gardening seasons by then.  But in Zone 9A, where I garden, mid-October through mid-November is prime tree and perennial planting season.  So, on some level, this is an actual sacrifice for me (a sacrifice for which I don't get enough credit, I think).  Of course, I found a way to get around my self-imposed spending hiatus and still get trees in the ground at the best time.  I simply buy my trees earlier in the season like I did with this Strawberry Tree.  I bought back in July and kept it in the pot until it was time to plant.  Disclosure time: I've read that this is unnecessary for trees that have been in nursery pots as they will almost always be better off being planted out even in the heat of summer than they are while stuck in a black plastic cauldron.

Books

Another change I implemented was that I started paying attention to the kinds of information I was going to Google for.  Although it seems that the world's secrets have all been recorded in HTML somewhere, inevitably, my online searches would lead me to blog postings or reviews about gardening books that promised even more information.  I find that although the gardening community is pretty subdued in its criticisms about all gardening efforts whether they be books, videos, or garden designs, the cream still rises to the top and the books with truly good information or inspiring prose would surface time and again.  If you've been paying attention to the books in the blogosphere, chances are that you've read about Dirr's Encyclopedia of Trees and Shrubs or one of the many books written by the Garden Rant contributors like Garden Up! and Wicked Bugs.  I could easily list another 7 or 8 books just off the top of my head that have struck me as particularly interesting but I think you get the point.  But instead of buying these books for myself like I would the rest of the year, I added them to my Amazon wish list.  The great thing about the Amazon wish list is that people know about it and they can get exactly the book you want without worrying about buying the wrong addition or getting the wrong book entirely.  ("Was it Joy of Gardening or was it The Joy of Gardening?")  Even if you aren't much of a reader, gardening books can provide you with helpful data and inspiring photos.  I tend to read mine more in the winter as I stare out the window and wait for spring so they make wonderful and timely Christmas presents.   

Not gardening related, but I appreciate literal literature.

Gift Cards

Another option is gift cards.  I know, I know.  "How impersonal."  "How unthoughtful."  Well, say what you will about the worthiness of gift cards as presents; I adore them when I receive them even if I wouldn't dare to buy one for someone else without knowing that they also appreciated their plasticy promise of just what you need when you need it.  Gifts cards make good gifts for the gardener because they are easy for people to buy and they can be shipped without having to wait in line at the post office.  And, if they really want to, gift-givers can put them in a Hallmark card that says all the thoughtful things they think that the gift card doesn't communicate on its own.  But here is why a gift card is great for gardeners at Christmas time: very few things can be purchased from a nursery this time of year and put in the ground.  Heck, in many parts of the country, the plant sections of nurseries aren't even open this time of year.  So a gift card to a favorite garden center or online retailer is one way someone can give you a gardening present and still be sure that you'll eventually get exactly what you want.  Lest they think that it's still not a good gift, reassure them that the prospect of getting to use that gift card in spring will excite you throughout the winter months.  And, come spring, it will be like receiving a second gift when you actually get to use it.

Closed for the winter?

Expand Your Horizons

"Gardening" is a pretty encompassing term.  Underneath the umbrella of this one word is a plethora of genres.  You can be a vegetable gardener, a water plant gardener, a bonsai enthusiast, a daylily hybridizer, a plant propagator, a backyard orchardist, an urban farmer, a guerrilla gardener, a cottage gardener, a greenhouse grower, a fairy garden creator, a strawbale gardener and now, at least for the time being, you can even be a marijuana grower.  If you've been doing nothing but growing daylilies for the last decade, consider trying something different.  By doing so, you'll expand both your knowledge base and your shopping list.  Take bonsai, as an example.  As a new hobby you would need to get all new materials: how-to books, shallow pots, copper wiring, a concave cutter, pruning shears, planting soil, and a fresh supply of patience.  By taking up a new interest, you give someone else the opportunity to get you started off on the right foot.  You'd practically be doing them a favor by starting something new because it would be so easy for them to buy you something. 

I love pots.  I have several unused bonsai pots in my pot ghetto and in my garage. 

Consider Becoming a Collector

This is dangerous for a number of reasons, but it will make purchasing a gift for you easier for years to come.  My sister-in-law is a sweet lady.  She's so quiet, so polite, and so afraid to say anything that could possibly be construed as contrarian.  I'm not sure how she ended up in my family.  When she was a newlywed, she made the catastrophic mistake of telling my mother that she collected ceramic cow figurines.  At the time, it was just a new trend in her life and I'm sure it wasn't something she intended to make a permanent part of her life.  Two decades have passed and people are still buying her cow magnents for her refrigerator, cow-shaped cookie jars, cow-print hand towels, and yummy steaks.  Okay, not steaks; I was just kidding about that.  But now that I've mentioned it, I might have to consider that as a possibility this year.  So, if you want to collect something garden related, be sure it's something you can tolerate getting a lot of.  You should probably avoid a collection of gazing balls unless you want your flower bed to look like the ball crawl at Chuck E Cheese's. 



Which is which?  Is this the ball crawl?



Or is this the ball crawl?


Wish Lists

Finally, I'd like to revisit Amazon for a moment.  Although most people know that Amazon sells a bazillion different products, one of the coolest features of Amazon is how it puts you in touch with other retailers.  Many of the items being sold on Amazon are not actually products that will be shipped to you from Amazon but from retail partners.  But wait, there's more!  Recently Amazon featured a new tool that will help you keep track of all the wonderful things you could ever want in one simple list regardless of who has the item.  It's called the Amazon Wishlist Browser Button.  It's basically an add-on for your internet browser that you install and then, while visiting any web site if you find something you'd like, you simply click the "Add to Wish List" button and that item will be added to your list on Amazon so people don't have to hunt all over the World Wide Web to find the exact items you want.  I'm using this myself this year and hoping that my wife will get me this Hori-Hori from Annie's Annuals!

Little Victories

One of several buckets of compost
this year!

I like to know that what I’m doing is correct.  If I think I’m doing something wrong, there’s a pretty good chance that I’ll freeze in my tracks and do nothing.  This applies to most areas in my life but it was especially true in my life as an inexperienced gardener.

Not knowing when to prune the azaleas (or if you prune them at all) meant that they didn’t get pruned.  Not knowing when to plant cool season vegetable seeds meant that I bought my carrots from the grocery store.  And not knowing when my compost was done meant I just kept adding to it and made it so that it never was, in fact, finished composting.

But I’ve been learning more about these types of things over the years and gaining confidence as a reuslt.  It’s always a little surprising to me when I actually learn something that is halfway technical - a botanical name, for instance.  But what is more surprising than eventually learning a few impressive sounding names and when to perform specific chores was the realization that as far as hobbies go, gardening is pretty forgiving and it doesn’t matter if I do everything right.  The expert advice may say to plant your Japanese maple in the fall, but if you decide to plant in spring, everything should eventually work out.  I like this about gardening.  It keeps it relaxing to me and makes it more than just a scientific experiment with a strict set of rules that need to be followed.    

I like that I can buy the wrong plant for the wrong space and that my penance for the mistake might be nothing more serious than having to dig up that plant and put it somewhere else or give it away to someone who has the perfect spot for it.  How many other hobbies do you know where you can turn a mistake into a gift? 

Compost ready to be spread.

Although I’m upfront about my lack of a scientific background I have fallen in love with the very scientific act of composting.  I am pretty sure that composting is the only thing in the world that could make me interested in learning about carbon to nitrogen ratios.  It’s amazing how you can fill a bin with shredded leaves and lawn clippings and come back in a couple days to a steaming pile that has shrunk in half. 

Just how hot is your pile, anyway?

And I’ve finally gotten it down “to a science”.  I’ve finally gotten in tune with the way my garden produces debris and I’ve finally made it work for me.  This is my little victory.  I finally timed it so that I could harvest my compost bin in its entirety before the leaves of autumn began to fall. 

Spread out nice and neat - at least until the leaves fell.

That means that I have not only been able to add to my yard buckets and buckets of beautiful worm poop and whatever else makes up compost, but I’ve freed up all the space in my bin for my garden’s busiest composting months just in time. 

And if I do it right, all this should be ready for a new harvest when spring, at the opposite edge of time’s orbit, finally circles back around. 

This is a newly renovated section and that space between the Japanese maples is begging for a few
more plants.  I apologize for the over exposure.  This photo was taken with my phone at midday.

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.

October - Support Your Independent Nursery Month

"The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it." -Henry David Thoreau 



My favorite local IGC

The end of September is a busy time of year for me what with NFL games to watch, the baseball season wrapping up, and the inevitable list of social obligations to attend to.  A lot of the "busyness" is self-inflicted so I can’t complain and still expect to receive loads of sympathy like I normally would.  But my schedule has kept me from spending anything but the bare minimum of time in the garden and, as a result, I haven’t had much to write about that would be of any interest.

However, I have had a little time to read and yesterday I visited one of the blogs I find most interesting: “The Blogging Nurseryman by Trey Pitsenberger”.  I like Trey’s blog because it gives readers an inside look at the challenges of running an Independent Garden Center (or IGC) and, as a gardener who relies on independent nurseries to satiate my desire for quality and uncommon plants, I find Trey's topics to be both insightful and useful. 

Yesterday, Trey wrote about Pam Pennick’s latest post on her blog, “Digging”.  Pam decided that she wanted to declare October “Support Your Independent Nursery Month”.  Trey acknowledges the struggles that independent garden centers are going through in the recession and his blog deals with those challenges and offers up ideas on how to compete in a market that is not very competitive (at least not in the sense that the little guys have a real chance to compete) thanks to the long advertising arms of corporations like Home Depot and Lowe’s. 

I felt compelled to comment on Trey’s blog to say that I do like to align myself with the little guy and that I fully support indepedent nurseries.  But I also admitted that I frequently give my money to larger corporations like Apple, Starbucks, and Amazon even though I recognize that I am turning my back on the "Mom and Pop" music, coffee, and book shops that need my business just as much as nurseries do.  To (attempt to) paraphrase myself, I said that I had long ago decided that I wouldn’t spend my gardening dollars at Home Depot even if I happened to already be shopping there for other products.  I don’t have a problem with Home Depot at all – they have been there for me when I needed their products, they have been helpful to me as a customer, and I certainly didn't mind collecting a dividend when I was a shareholder.  But they get enough of my money when I purchase tools, ceiling fans, and PVC pipe.  My local nurseries offer me both better quality plants and a better shopping experience so I really try to honor my commitment to support those companies that support my gardening.  The nurseries I shop at offer me a place to seek advice from people who actually care about what they sell and my success with their products.  They do things to build authentic relationships with their customers.  And they genuinely seem happy to have me as a customer which is more than I can say for many of the checkout clerks that I routinely interrupt at Home Depot when I'm ready to pay for my items.  

In that vein, I would like to join with Pam in encouraging gardeners and garden bloggers to remember their favorite independent nurseries this October - and every month.  I think about how my enjoyment of gardening would suffer if my favorite nursery were to close.  I owe it to myself to support them in any way I can.  It is a tough economy and it seems no one is immune to that reality.  But if you still have money to spend on your garden, I hope you will consider spending that money where you think it will do the most good both for you and for the company you give it to.

And while we're at it, I suppose it wouldn't hurt to give some more thought to the other places we give our money (I'm looking at you Amazon.com) and make sure that those are places we truly want to support as well.  

The Salesman, Spiders, and the Heebie-Jeebies

I hate it when strangers come to the front door.  I don't personally despise the people that do it.  I know they've got products to sell or beliefs to share and I support that.  I just don't enjoy telling people no thanks, not interested, or not today.

Once upon a time I was the person that would show up at people's front doors.  But I wasn't selling anything or bringing Good News.  I wasn't even bringing lower case good news.  I worked as a process server throughout my college years.  If you don't know, process servers are the people that show up with eviction notices, divorce papers, or subpoenas to appear in court.  Like I said, not good news.  So I've got some level of sympathy for these guys.

But this last week I saw a uniformed guy going door-to-door while we were eating dinner so I did what every sympathetic person would do.  I closed the blinds and pulled the curtains closed so we could pretend like we weren't home.  I told my wife and child not to make a peep and then I spied on him.  I saw him go up the steps at the next-door neighbor's house and ring the door bell.  He glanced toward my house while he waited and I darted back from my hiding spot between the curtains.  Twenty minutes went by and there had been no knock on the door so I assumed my non-verbal message was received clearly.  I opened the curtains and the blinds and went about my normal post-dinner routine.





And then it came.  Knock, knock.  Who's there?  Interrupting cow.  Interrupting cow [Moooooo].  (That's my daughter's favorite joke right now except when she tells it, she politely waits for you to finish asking "Interrupting cow, who?" before she says "moooooo" and breaks into hysterics.)

This guy had caught me with my blinds open so I had to at least give him the courtesy of listening to his pitch.  He was selling a discounted neighborhood rate for organic poison that they would guarantee would kill all our ants and spiders from the foundation of the house all the way to the curb.  If all the neighbors did it, we could rid the entire block of pests!  But wait, there was more!  As part of their expert service they also look for spider egg sacks so they not only kill the existing spiders but future generations as well.  It sounded like a great deal if you hate living things.

Spider webs are all over this geranium.

I don't want to get too preachy because I know people have different views on this (including one friend of mine who may or may not read this blog).  But since this is my blog I'll tell you where I stand.  I don't like spiders.  They creep me out.  I'm pretty sure there is dead tissue in my arm from a black widow's bite.  But the worst thing about spiders are their webs.  They are everywhere this time of year and they not only collect dead bugs but every bit of yard debris small enough to get kicked up in the wind.  It's a giant, ugly, ghastly mess. 


Blades of cut grass caught up in spider webs along my fence.

Every time I want to relax in my Adirondack chair I have to bring my "spider stick" so I can knock down the webs that I know will be all over the chair and threaded through the slats of it.  It's a pain in the butt but it beats the feeling that you are sitting on top of a spider's nest.  And really, is there a worse feeling in the world than running your face through a spider web?  No, there isn't.  Plus, once you run your face through a spider web, you are bound to get the heebie-jeebies all day long and every time you feel something you have to assume it's the hairy legs of the spider who built that web and it is about to crawl into your ear and exact gruesome revenge on you for having destroyed its hard work.  (In my mind, "gruesome revenge" could mean any of the following: biting your ear drum, laying eggs in your ear canal, or simply taking up camp in your ear and refusing to leave.)

In spite of my loveless relationship with spiders, I have so far avoided the temptation to spray my yard to destroy them because I have read enough about beneficial bugs (spiders aren't insects, apparently) to be concerned about preserving the predator-prey balance in my yard.  I know that if I destroyed generations of spiders in my yard I would only be trading one pest for several others and right now I'm not dealing with aphids or mites or scale and I don't want to.  I just have to put up with the inconvenience of spider webs and, from time to time, I have to smash one in a Kleenex and flush it down the toilet if it decides to take up residence inside.

Like the weeds in my lawn, the spider webs that adorn my fences, eaves and corners are visual representations of my reluctant acceptance of the idea that in order to maintain my garden in a way that I feel good about, I have to accept that there will sometimes be aspects of it that I don't necessarily like.

So, I've been researching non-toxic deterrents for spiders for those areas where I would prefer them to stay away.  The one suggestion that seems to come up most often is to use lavender.  Um, that picture right above this with the spider web attached to the flower . . . that's lavender.  Any other recommendations?

How's it Growing?

I was pretty excited to get my plants from Annie's Annuals planted and for the most part they are doing great. Except for the Double Innocence Delphinium which was evidently a delicacy for the snails in the yard:

'Double Innocence' eaten faster than a Double Stuffed Oreo

Speaking of delicacies, beer is one of my favorite yummy treats so I shared a bowl of Pyramid's Apricot Ale with the critters in the yard and in just over a day I was rewarded with this lovely bowl full of escargot:

Yummy

This may surprise you, but I chose not to sample my score and elected to dump it in the trash bin with the week's bucket of dog poop. I haven't decided which was more repulsive.