Ruling Passions

Once upon a time...there was a charming little quiz in a gardening book. (I don't remember which one, alas.) After making a  list of 21 favorite plants/uses/accessories, you played them against each other in 'survival of the fittest' until only one remained. 

These are the "Ruling Passions" for my dream garden:

{Ruling Use: A quiet place to drink tea and think.}

{Ruling Sensory Pleasure: Something to taste at every bend.}

{Ruling Emotion: A place to inspire.}

{Ruling Accoutrement: A garden gate that clicks or squeaks.}

{Ruling Plant Category: Herbs.}

{Ruling Plant: Old-fashioned climbing roses.}

www.gardenrooms.typepad.com

http://www.flickr.com/photos/june-oka/129224213/

Carnation Lily Lily Rose - John Singer Sargent

http://www.flickr.com/photos/medicalvegetable/3791404288/in/pool-herbs

http://www.flickr.com/photos/liquidskyarts/163210529/

Musing in Color

Yes, I am addicted to photo collages, thank you for asking. :)

As the 3rd project of my English Gardening Course is working out, I thought having a visual picture of some of our ideas would be a good idea. Turned out that I have a more distinct picture of what I want in my head than I thought! And that it's very hard to find someone else's photograph to fit the one in my head.... This collage, for instance, turned out far more rustic than I imagined. Hmm...

Anyway, no one tell Daddy about the bamboo. I'd put it in pots! Promise! :D

Baby, It's Cold Outside!

Wait, that's the wrong season! Nope. It's April in the Carolinas. How does there always happen to be a big freeze, just as the second flush of green comes up? It's snowing now, just a light constant flurry that I hope doesn't get to my baby forsythia. 

However I may despise the crushing of wisteria buds by frost, this weather is making me feel less guilty. My green thumbs (that really lean more towards violet) have been cowering in shame over the scramble of empty pots and lonely soil outside. I must have been subconsciously prepared for this winter-esqe weather, yes. Of course yes.

Now I find myself in a giddy readiness to be decorating inside and out. Ideas have settled in my head and seem positively possible.

Join with me, procrastinators! Raise your trowel, your brush, your unbelievably delicious flower catalogs and toast to the possible!

Image from CountryLiving - this article, which I am dying to replicate. How dare the latest issue be so good!

Brain Overlaod <<<

I want to tell you all about all the cool things that I'm learning in Master Gardeners. I want to show you doodle-notes and the super-thick Training Manual. I want to tell you that I'm helping with the newspaper's gardening column. (!!!) I want to tell you that gardeners make awesome food and are really fun, gentle folks to hang around. I want to tell you that the weather lecture was fascinating and that words like "morphology" and "physiology" and "winged schizocarp" make my brain tickle. I want to tell you that onions and potatoes are actually stem modifications - but that sweet potatoes are not. (??)

But alas, the brain has wandered off and found a hot cup of tea to steep in without me... 

See you tomorrow!

Armchair Gardening

 

(images mostly from davesgarden- whoops! I got the roses twice!)

Now this is the way to spend a January afternoon....Pulling together some images for my Plant Notebook, enjoying the sunny snowy day and watching parts of the Inauguration on TV...I was pleased to see that all the assorted plants I had chosen so far look rather pretty together! I like armchair gardening - when I'm planting and pruning and picking flowers in my mind, they all grow up so nice and fluffy. :)

Finis

And that would seem to be the end of a lovely, color-soaked autumn. Rain and wind have bared most of the leaves, which now lie in a moat two feet deep along our street curb. 

Tell me why, then did this little wren wake up this morning with a spring song in his heart? It was the first thing I heard and ran from window to window trying to figure out the source. Well, there he sits, pretty as a pea on the rooftop. 

Let's go to the quarry!

I can't seem to gather my wits about me to make all the posts this month has inspired. (Those wits are always jumping up and running every which-a-way on me!)

So, dipping into iPhoto and seeing what comes up first...

You get to hear all about rocks!

One of my English Gardening School projects had to do with gathering information about all types of hardscaping, so Daddy and I went to scope out the local stone yard.

I thought it was cool.

(Taking pictures of the pallets and their little sunbleached tags is as good as taking notes, right?)

Daddy was my hand model for the smaller

 selections. Thank you, Daddy. :)

There are so many types - even locally! Colors and textures reflecting warmth from the sun...even smells good...the quarry dust licking at your heels...misplaced gravel crunching underfoot....

Let me tell you - this is a nice place to be, come a chilly day! (Nice and toasty!)

And in case you didn't think that the piles of fieldstone and flagstone and potatoes wallstone in their tidy wire cradles were not pretty...

Art is in the stone yard too.

{Hornet's Nest in Concrete Block, unknown}

{Sandman Takes A Break - unknown}

See? What'd I tell you?

(The formatting on this post is driving me bonkers. Hopefully I'll be back to fix it before anyone peeks!)

The "Yarden" Adventures Continue

The Mighty Tomato (nigh 4" 'round!)

Sometimes abandoning one's garden for a week or two can yield a delightful harvest.

I plucked this as soon as we got back, excited over the biggest tomato I'd ever grown and greedy lest an early frost should crust it. So we'll be having fried green tomatoes. There's even another one still on the vine and a green pepper so heavy it broke the stem. I could get used to this. :)

News From The Rainy "Yarden"

Loving these early September colors.

Postscript: I hope you who read this don't mind the small mountains of blurry garden pics. I'm nowhere near a top-notch photographer, but I do love taking pictures of my flowers! :) I'm going to eat a peach now. Mmm...I want to live on a peach farm one day. And go out shooting pictures on dewy mornings. Oh yeah....

News From The "Yarden"

The cosmos are tall, fluffy and blooming! Not prolifically, as you can see, but they make me happy. I'm really fond of the feathery foliage too.



Fringing around them (everywhere that I didn't scratch up for seeds - what else could we be missing?) are these vivid red cardinal flowers. I'm guessing, but it sounds right. Checking...yes, that's the right name. And no wonder lobelia kept coming to mind! The Latin name is Lobelia cardinalis.

More crazy spider/surprise lilies, this time in red with seriously fancy stamens going on.

That's all for now! Just don't forget about Actually Laura's Free Blog Makeover!

County Fair Roses

This is our first fall in a new county in a loooong while. It's fair week here and we spent Sunday evening exploring our new autumn playground. Besides the sparkly rides, the Brahman bull, the llamas, the baby goats, the boxing kangaroos...I loved the roses.

A whole towering booth of roses!

In coke bottles. The whole area smelled sweet. I hovered there for a solid ten minutes, trying to take in the beauty of each blossom, feeling a little weak at the knees. Roses do that to me. 

Miniature arrangements are cute too. As are mushroom displays, which I forgot to get a picture of.

I had a caramel apple! (Looking slightly Nimmish here...)

And ate it while admiring the Redwood Log House. Now there's a cozy trailer for you!

"I got daisies...in green pastures."

This song is stuck in my head.

(as taken through a window screen. Adds texture, eh? ;) )

Days can be sunny,
With never a sigh ;
Don't need what money can buy.
Birds in the tree sing
Their dayful of song,
Why shouldn't we sing along ?
I'm chipper all the day,
Happy with my lot.
How do I get that way ?
Look at what I've got :


I got rhythm
I got music
I got my man/girl
Who could ask for anything more ?
I got daisies
In green pastures,
I got my man/girl
Who could ask for anything more ?
Ol'Man Trouble,
I don't mind him.
You won't find him
'Round my door.
I got starlight,
I got sweet dreams,
I got my man/girl,
Who could ask for anything more ?
Who could ask for anything more ?

- George and Ira Gershwin

What I've Been Up To:

Working on my next project for the English Gardening School's distance course:


(I love how smart and architect-y the tracing paper looks. Even rolled up in a pot on my bedside bookshelf - gotta have one of those, you know.)


Wandering around Kirtsy: (cute! Design & Style, 'specially)

Playing with Picnik: (which explains all the little corners)

And doing a few other little things you'll be getting a peek of soon. :)

Ciao!

Our crape myrtle is finally blooming!

It's a nice hot magenta. We might have guessed from the magenta azaleas, the magenta rhododendrons...some previous owner really liked a nice hot magenta! I'm hoping to tone it down with cooler blues and lavenders come next spring. I was going to go on, but as I was googling for pictures to describe what I'm thinking of, this site came up: Garden Picture Library.

from ww3.gardenpicture.com

See, now that's a cool garden! But the warmer schemes get me too, hot magenta or no.(Especially when it's done in crisp, cottagey flowers! Or an awesome red window frame. Love those blocky trellises.) The fluffy sunset-colored cloud (bottom) I would seriously love to recreate. Penstemon, rudabekia and solidago, the tags say. Hey - that's goldenrod! And I spy purple coneflower...

from ww3.gardenpicture.com

Okay - that's it. I'm spending the rest of the day drooling over roses. Why haven't I googled "garden pictures" before now?

Oh yeah, but back to the myrtle. As soon as the blooms...bloomed, its silky bark started to peel off!

Is this normal?? Weird looking, isn't it? Adds a nice exotic texture to the yard!