Labor Day, Minus the Hurricane

It was hard to capture the light that was pouring through this particular stretch of woods: almost "Thomas Kincaide Bizarrely Highlighted by a Master Highlighter". I don't think I achieved the hallucinatory quality (drat!) but the scene is certainly still pretty! All the wild asters are crazily in bloom and you can't top them for flowering in dry shade, competing with poison ivy. Tough little bastards. This path is right behind my newish shade garden...
A rambling post! Bob and I entertained our good friends Don and Elizabeth for two days. They left early this morning, trying to stay ahead of Hurricane Hermine who doesn't seem ultimately destined to make much of an appearance. We ate and drank and hung out for two days; taking a long walk, going to a flea market, playing with Robin the Good. It was restful but we're still tired and I have to go back to work tomorrow! (Bummer!)

Here's a shot of the Clematis arbor that Bob made me for my birthday. The Clematis paniculata is just coming into bloom: also white and close by another large drift of those woodland asters... quite the nice, effortless spectacle! This arbor looked amazing even before the flowers started to erupt, but now it's really beautiful. Bob painted all those little silver dots on the web so they resemble dew. It's hard to photograph but so detailed and delicate. It surpassed my initial request (a couple of years back) for "some sort of structure; maybe like a spider's web". I had imagined a pretty basic bit of metal work, but Bob imagined a lovely piece. This photograph doesn't do it justice.

I'll try again in a few of days when more flowers come out. But in the meantime, here's abigger picture to show how it embraces the tree trunk:

Not much better, I'm afraid. But the shadow underneath was nice...

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...