The "Famous" Blue Garden

 

 

If I do say so myself, The Blue Garden (or "The Booze Garden" lovingly dubbed thusly because of all those delightful blue beer and wine bottles) is really looking good this year. When I am feeling overwhelmed by the amount of planting/edging/weeding/maintenance that the totality of our horticultural empire requires, I visit The Blue Garden and feel at peace. It's filled in, it has texture and color (blue) and flowers and foliage and it looks pretty great!

It's hard to convey just how blue things really are. There's tall Delphinium (here in the center but hard to see!) that are the same light blue as the sky (guess that's why this cultivar is named "Summer Skies".) and a nifty blue bird's nest spruce that looks spectacular this year (thank you Beatrice and John! a birthday gift a few years back) and my Blue Atlas Cedar- nicknamed "The Etch-A-Sketch Tree" as it's very narrow...

 

That's a detail of the Bird's Nest. And you can sorta see the truly brilliant blue of the Veronica directly above it (if you squint!) Blue is a notoriously hard color to photograph as it's recessive and tends to disappear... don't I know!

Slightly (?) better photo of the "Summer Skies" Delphinium and  the Blue Atlas Cedar (It's the ratty looking thing just to the left of the bushy Chamaecyparis in the center. I LIKE those spindly odd-ball trees!!) And of course, blue bottles in buckets and on stalks and edging the walkway...

And yes, that's the lovely Robin the Good photobombing on the mosaic walk way! She's very reticent about letting me actually photograph her; I'm lucky I got her tail end! (But she's never far away.)

Ooops! I shot this picture before I mulched the Agave with white quartz rocks; it looks even more dramatic now! But this sucker is mighty impressive! I had to wear leather gloves when I transferred it from the container I purchased him to this metal urn. Did I mention that I like spindly, spiky plants? I guess I also like chunky, spiky plants! And it really is a great metallic blue. 

I know in past years of posting, I have featured The Blue Garden but it really has matured. And I do keep having fun seeking out those elusive blue flowers. Still to come are Heavenly Blue Morning Glories and hopefully, some Bachelor's Buttons. Somehow I lost the seeds for my Forget-Me-Nots (Cynoglossum "firmament"): not sure if I threw them away or some crazy bird stole the packet but poof! they were gone!

Behind the Green Door

Hahhahahaa! Isn't that the name of a 1970's porn movie? (*1) Well, behind this green door there is our living room and- nothing to see here! Anyway, the picture is simply to show our attempt at a "classic" "formal" container planting by our front door as we're clearly such classic, formal individuals!
So as a complete break from the COVID 19 crisis and the newly minted crisis of The Orange Menace threatening to call in the military to squelch protesters after a million too many deaths of Black Americans at the hands of racists, I've been gardening! And making ART! Two entirely wholesome activities that help keep me from having panic attacks...(*2). I'm sure I have company in alternately despairing over the violence and hatred in this country and trying to avoid the news altogether.
So here are some recent wholesome activity updates:

Here's a view of the newly weeded and resurrected Blue Garden. This are was so full of escaped run-amok Blue Lyme Grass (elymus arenarius to those with a penchant for Latin) which does tend towards being an aggressive- but attractive!- grass. I dug up about three hundred cubic miles of the stuff and re-planted it in two metal surrounds. Hopefully, I can enjoy its powdery blueness while controlling its zeal to conquer. I also planted two more sky blue truly beautiful Delphinium; a close up please!

And that color is accurate. I am holding off planting the deep purple Delphinium here as we're still enjoying its company on the terrace in a pot. The Blue Garden is an endlessly entertaining exercise in pigment restraint; so few flowers are really blue. Most tend towards a smudgy off-lavendar kind of shade. As most of you will notice that I tend to be pretty rampant in my color interactions in other parts of the garden. In general, I like a lot of color.
But what else did I rip out beside Blue Lyme Grass? This bed was (and parts still are!) totally overrun with poison ivy. The bane of my gardening existence! Here's a lovely shot of what I'm up against:

Weaving its evil way through everything. I carefully donned dirty clothes, latex gloves and tall boots and commenced to rip it out. Then I stuffed it all in a trash bag and left it to rot. I carefully peeled all my clothes off, jettisoned them to the washing machine and scrubbed my hands, wrist and face (as I knew I touched it) with Dawn dish soap. It was interesting because I think the poison ivy juices that contacted my face wanted to erupt, but couldn't so my face felt "funny" for a day and then nothing happened. But look at knee where I had a tear in my pants:

I got a minor case there! I wish I had thought to wash my knee. But I'll live and I did remove most of that noxious weed. Not bad for a day's digging.





(*1) Yup! A "classic" of the kind (apparently).
(*2) And no, I am not denying the awfulness of what is occurring. You know me: I have three pieces going in my studio- directly in response to The Orange Menace and his evil ways! The newest one is "Human Scum", inspired by his description of Never Trumper Republicans. Really?