Garden deco

I have to say that, when I first started gardening (less than 2 months ago) I really did not favor garden art. I thought it was, hmmmmmm how can I say this......CORNY! I realize I'm the minority here and truth be told I have a very long list of perfectly normal things that I find exceptionally corny like ivy in kitchens, "save something or somebody" email forwards and almost all chain emails that are suppose to be heart warming.

To me, garden art was one of those things that you mostly think "why the hell did they put that here?" But then I went on that garden walk. The gardens with the garden art seemed much more welcoming. I think when you place something deep in a garden in the midst of the flowers it begs people to come closer and investigate and that screams "I'm not uptight!" Conversely, those gardens with no corny garden deco felt like I should walk like a soldier, hands by my sides and they may as well have had signs all over that said YOU BREAK IT YOU BUY IT or DO NOT TOUCH!

I'm not a formal person. I love the kind of house you walk into and just never want to leave because you feel so comfortable. My furniture is big and soft and durable and the style I'm going for is "wow this is so cozy." That's how I want my garden to feel someday. That's why I love cottage gardens.

I bought this Buddha last weekend. It reminds me of a Buddha print my good friend E gave me for my desk at work. We put the print in a very corny frame and we'd rub it when we were trying to conjure up something special like workplace peace or a new job.

The color of this Buddha is pretty uneven and in some places it almost looks like the paint accidentally ran down it's face while the artist looked away, but I like that. I didn't pay a lot for this thing which is good because I wasn't even sure it would get to stay. Right now it is sitting by the Silver Mound. I'm hoping when the SM grows and fills in this area, it will look extremely cool. I'm also planning to add a few other pieces of garden art eventually. I doubt you will ever see things like ducks or frogs or dogs or cats in my garden, but I do admire a unique looking fairies and garden gnomes and things of that nature. Oh, and flowers, I'll have lots and lots of beautiful flowers, someday.

Rainy Day Garden Walk

Garden buddy accompanied me on my first ever garden walk yesterday. We have similar plant perusing style so I think we made a great team. Get in - Get out! "Like that, hate that, what the heck is that, I gotta get that..."It rained all day but who cares!

The garden walk consisted of 11 houses in 2 of the villages near me. We pulled up at the curb of the conservatory and the little old lady passed us our books with maps and off we went. Garden buddy had the great idea of starting at house number 11 instead of house number 1 to avoid crowds. Great idea, garden buddy! Each garden had a bio in the garden walk guide that seemed to be written by the gardeners themselves. While I drove to each house, garden buddy read the bio so that when we arrived we had the garden's background.


One thing we noticed after the first couple of houses is that, the gardeners who had help from designers started out their bio by describing the look of their garden and what was planted there. In the last paragraph we always found out what designer or landscaper did the work. Contrastingly, the gardeners who did their own work started out their story by telling us how much hard work they had put into their gardens and described their trials and errors, saying much less about the actual plantings. Before I started gardening myself I might have guessed that they described their gardens like this to make apologies for not having "proper gardens" but now that Ive put in all this sweat equity, I realize we gardeners who dig our own beds need for people to know I DID THIS! I DID IT ALL BY MYSELF! AREN'T YOU PROUD OF ME?? I'm not knocking landscape designers. I have said before that if I could afford it, I would hire one myself. But since I did all this myself, I can relate to others like me.


Well, those I-did-it-myself gardens turned out to be our favorites. For me, the gardeners story really reeled me in. Before we even got to the house we had decided "I love this lady and I love her garden!" A few of my favorites were a father-son garden team whose garden began with a son pressuring a father to help him build a pond, then going off to college and leaving the pond for dad to maintain. The garden was beautiful and although we did not get to meet Mr. Gardener, garden buddy decided he was rather romantic because of the iron candle chandelier he placed in one of his outdoor dining areas which seated only two. They called their garden "Shangri La". Here's a picture.




Another favorite was a lady who called herself a "plant collector" rather than a gardener. I loved that she had her big strawberry pot (filled with actual strawberries) on a column so that it stood tall as a centerpiece in one garden even though she knew placing it there meant even easier access for strawberry-loving birds. Take a look.





My I WANT THAT moment came when I spotted this Tamarisk (I think that's what the lady said it was). I think this is the most beautiful thing I've seen in a long time. It's so delicate and feminine and it just screams TOUCH ME....which we did. I'm gettin one of these if I can locate one and find a place for it! One of the volunteers said this was actually suppose to be a shrub but the lady didn't know she was suppose to prune it so I got really big.

My absolute favorite garden was house number 1 (house 11 for us because we went backward.) This gardener was an organic one who said that she set out to draw her children in by growing things that would "tickle their senses like lamb's ear and feather grass to touch, roses and lilies to smell, lady's mantle and balloon flower to admire." She said she wanted her kids to be able to eat directly from her garden so it was important for her to use organic gardening technique. I loved that this gardener was out in her garden while people roamed around gawking at her stuff. I could see the sense of pride in her face as she answered millions of questions. She was much younger than I expected and since I'm struggling with this does-my-garden-obsession-mean-I'm-officially-old attitude, this was nice to see. I also noticed that this gardener had a gardening guy hovering around. It turned out to be her husband. He jumped right in happy to answer my questions about the rain barrels which he had obviously installed. I think it was so cool that he 1. helps her garden 2. participated in a "garden walk" and 3. was eager to say HEY I DID THAT, LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT IT!

Every garden was beautiful and I really admire these gardeners for opening their homes to all these strangers. I bet they have spent the entire summer planning for that one day. I heard one of the gardeners tell someone that she had just had fresh mulch delivered yesterday in an effort to downplay her weedlessness.

It turned out to be a wonderful rainy day. I told garden buddy that, when my house is on the garden walk someday, my bio will say "I did all this myself, with consultation, motivation, and digging help from my garden buddy."

Cute things I saw in my garden today

This thing nearly made me pee my pants, in a bad way. I know it's very very cute and all but that whole Cicada incident has really got me on edge. Every time I hear any kind of rustling going on I jump and spin around expecting to see a big swarm of Cicadas ready to eat my eyeballs out. I was bent over looking at the Lavender that I planted near these dead Iris and I heard something. I spun around scared to death and this is what I saw. Do you know how stupid I felt???? My little sister thought it was hilarious that I was so startled by a baby rabbit and I thought she might be a little more sympathetic once I explained how I was almost killed by a ban of Cicadas but she was unimpressed. Then again, the people down the road from her have Emus. If you are not familiar with these, just imagine big dirty Ostrich. I have no clue what they do from the farm animal standpoint, but they are very ugly and way scarier than this little guy.Just when I started to get worried that my Cantaloupe wasn't going to bloom, BAM!

I wanted to document this bloom on one of my 2 strawberry plants. The other plant had a bloom that lasted about 2 hours before it was eaten by something. I do not expect this one to survive, they must be very tasty, even in floral form.

This is a tomato on one of my 2 Big Boys. Is it just me or does this look two-toned?

This is a baby tomato on my one Roma plant. I think these are so cute because they are oblong and I never get to use that word "oblong" so I thought I'd better seize this opportunity. Plus, I LOVE ROMAS and I LOVE MARINARA and you know what that means!

That's it for the pictures. In other news, I'm going on my first Garden Walk on Saturday with garden buddy and I have been planting seeds like crazy. In addition to the last seeds I told you about, I have now planted Double Hollyhock, Zinnias and Scabiosa. I also have Moon Flower (or is it Vine) seeds soaking per the instructions and they will be planted bright and early tomorrow morning. I really excited about the moon ones!