Gardening as a Contact Sport Etc

This is what I look like after an afternoon of heavy gardening... filthy and in need of a through cleaning. I had no idea I was so dirty as I shed my shorts, but the mud that ran off of my into the shower was impressive. I probably could have planted seeds on my knees!
Additionally, I looked like I had been cutting myself as the sharp embrace that the Miscanthus I was weeding around scored my tender fore arms:

Ouch! I'm not kidding about it being a contact sport. I will also remind you that I suffered several rounds of poison ivy as well as stings inflicted by angry hornets. Pain ans suffering to deliver that beautiful garden. But the reception by participants in the garden tour was great: everyone loved our gardens and were very impressed with all our hard work. It was so entirely worth it, on so many levels. First, our place looks terrific and we get to live with that. Check out what Bob did with the door frame behind that terrace area:

Look! No broken board. No wine corks stuck on nail heads. (Not kidding.) No baby birds living in the wall. It's sealed up and weather proof and looks clean and wonderful. Being on a garden tour is great motivation for getting all those big (and small) details completed.
Bob and I are both pleasantly exhausted and glad that we committed to the garden tour, but we're also glad that it's behind us.
And I promise my next posting will be about art- remember that?

Garden Tour

Where any tour begins: with one's feet! it would be nice if I were capable of taking good garden (overview) pictures, but alas! I have a hard time with that. But Bob and I worked very hard and weeded and edged and planted and mowed and cemented and generally worked all twenty available digits to the bones (avoiding heat stroke, unlike some unlucky gardeners I know!).
We were lucky, too, that the rain which threatened all day held off. We ran out early to another garden on tour just up the road. Totally different from ours! But really nice: lots of well maintained out buildings, stone walls, nice transitions underfoot (like gravel to pavement to bricks to moss). And the people from the two other gardens on tour came to ours, so that was nice to meet new neighbors.

All of our hard work paid off as there were comments that the garden looked very healthy and even friends who had seen our garden a few weeks ago commented on how everything had filled and and looked great. Thank you for being nice and not mentioning Japanese beetle damage and seriously chewed mallows... Three plants in particular caused comment: Plume Poppy (Macleaya Cordata), Stokes Aster (Stokesia "Blue Danube") and the native Butterfly Weed (Asclepias tuberosa). Fortunately, everyone who visited was well behaved. (Don't even go there: when we were on a garden tour back at our former garden, we received several very odd comments and even a woman who plucked flowers from our beds! Horrors!)
The vegetable garden received raves as Bob does such a great job with planting edibles, including less frequently grown things like parsnips and okra and the like. It is a beautiful as well as productive vegetable garden.

See? Not a great picture... Let's try another one:

Well, I was hoping for a nicely contrast-y photo of the very tall Thalictrum which is all fluffy and creamy and the droopy Nicotiana Sylvestris. Not easy photographing the garden! Bob's sculpture and metal work were causing jaws to drop and many appreciative oohs and ahhhs. We're lucky that our garden is not "typical", whatever that would be anyway. I suppose pastel flowers and potted geraniums? Poolside plantings? Well, we have a horse and a manure pile. (No takers on the generous offer of free buckets of manure!)

Here's that famous "Blue Plate Special Walkway". Done on time- and under budget!- for the tour. My next post will be devoted to it alone. Doesn't it make our place look down right Californian? What with the house looking modern and the pine trees looking so skeletal? Visitors were wowed...

Spring Cleaning Unlikely Anytime Soon...

Well, I did start raking up the garden today as the sun was lovely and I felt compelled to spend the day outside. When was that last possible? Interestingly, we have heard peepers that last several nights and there are mini-rosettes of sedums emerging from under the leaves. Spring is here.
I have been (unfortunately) none too motivated to do the cleaning that is apparently needed within the house- not my favorite activity! Despite Bob drawing appealing faces on the scrub brushes (see photo above) and other tricks, I am resistant. The upstairs bathroom will soon be condemned and even with semi-frequent sweepings of the kitchen, dog hair "kittens" skiddle across the floor. But isn't house work a loosing battle anyway? No sooner do you finish than you have to begin all over again... so why start in the first place? You will remark that the above scrubber brush has some random filth dribbling down over it's face.

And speaking of sedums, here's a nifty blue one that is tender, but we overwintered in the house. It's stretching a bit as it's probably not as happy as it would be if it were outside in it's native habitat, but it will look good in a few weeks. And plants, of course, grow in dirt so dirt can't be all bad...
I look forward to spending a small fortune on plants this spring as we're on a garden tour. (Don't worry Bob; I said a "small" (very) fortune.) I may not buy shoes, or lust after leather sofas, large screen tv's or things like actual furniture, but boy! we all know I never met a garden center I didn't like.
My wish list has already begun, without my setting a single foot in a nursery: a variegated yucca (had one in Bridgewater, but lost it!), another plum tree (to cross pollinate with the one we almost killed), a witch hazel, a clethra... You get the idea: the list goes on and on. Hey! My birthday is coming!

Groundhog to be Deported...

An unnecessary- nay! a gratuitous photo!- of that entirely unnecessary white stuff currently falling.
What was I saying? I was tired of winter? Oh, you have no idea... So as a punishment, we're getting more snow on Wednesday and even more snow on Saturday!
In any event, I vote to deport the groundhog (along with Justin Bieber). The Canadians seem to enjoy winter so they can have it. That winding trail in the above photo is Bob's handiwork with the famous snow blower. And if you squint really carefully, you can just see Maggie in the distance to the left. We're all hunkering down. I even missed work today because of the snow. (Well, that always is a good thing in a backasswards way; more time in the studio.)
I had spent the morning of February 2nd singing to Jules and myself about how the groundhog could not possibly see his/her shadow as it was completely overcast.But it turns out that the particular groundhog selected/elected to report on the state of all things winter, saw said shadow and fled back underground. I want spring, dammit!
However, we have signed on to do a mid-summer garden tour and I'm excited. (Something to live for!) Bob and I had volunteered our property for inclusion on the Mad Gardeners tour the first year we moved in, thinking it would be educational, instructive and cheeky to present a garden that didn't exist, sort of a "tabula rasa" that we could re-show several years later to contrast what can be done by dedicated and tireless gardeners. But I suspect the committee was utterly horrified at that notion and they declined our gracious invitation. But this year, our fourth gardening here at the BauHaus Chicken Coop, will (hopefully) be a fecund and delightful year. It will be a good excuse to buy lots of lovely and exotic plants and seeds and stuff the beds and borders!
At least the promise of some distant spring event horizon gives me hope that warmer, sunnier days will prevail. The tour is scheduled for July 12th, so mark your calendars.
In the meantime, contact the consulate and deport the bums!