The garden

Remember that old hymn "I come to the garden alone, while the dew is still on the roses...and He walks with me and He talks with me..." I can't help but remember that when I'm doing my daily turn in the garden. I try to walk out here every morning, do any deadheading, pull a weed or two, maybe give a little water. It's a very peaceful transition from our quiet morning ritual to my hectic work day. I can't really do too much out there in the evening because the mosquitoes are so bad and I hate to lather myself up with repellant. So, I go out in the mornings when there's still a breeze and some coolness in the air. Apparently mosquitoes don't like that.

I always say that my beds take 10 minutes a day + 2 hours most weekends + 2 weekends a year. And, really, that's about all the time I put into them. So, it has taken a few years to get here. I'm going for an old Southern garden feel, like the old gardens I saw as a kid. Tucked back behind a crumbling mansion behind my grandparents house or that I saw on a country drive when I was a teen. (Did anybody else do that? Gas was cheap and my friends and I would just pick a direction and drive. Were we that desparate for entertainment? Or were our cars our only real private domains?) The kind of house where there was a lot of old broken brickwork and everything looked like it was tilting a little and the paths were not level. That overgrown, untended look. And, that as a goal means I don't have to spend a lot of time at it. I've also managed to create a garden where things poke out, do their thing and then shrink back so something else can take the spotlight. There is always something blooming. Somewhere. But there are only a few really big shows. One of thse shows is the daylily bed and it will continue to bloom like this for about a month and then that part of the show will be over and the purple cannas that are behind them will take over.



This is my "green" daylily. It's such a pale yellow that it looks green...greener than this photo shows anyway and the throat is green. I keep this one off to the side so I don't have to worry about the color changing.


And, John, a British smallholder whose blog I follow at Going Gently took some pictures of his garden from above (of course I can't find them now to link you right to that), so I climbed up on the furniture to take some shots of mine this morning. BTW, when you're picking furniture to climb on, don't pick a glider. I nearly fell and broke my neck!

This is the garden to the right. It hasn't really started yet. These plants are my shade loving late summer bloomers while all the sun-loving plants are sweltering in the heat and dying back. This area used to die back completely in winter, but Sydney and I put in some evergreen plants this year so that won't happen again. That is indeed a mailbox. I have it out there on a 4x4 post and keep a hand trowel, clippers, gloves and a knife in it so I don't have to tromp back to the shed for tools.


And, this is the garden to the left, where all the early spring action takes place. These are my sun-loving plants. The daylilies are in the background and in the foreground is a collection of perennials that will poke out, bloom and then fade behind something else. Each has to compete for its space and time in the spotlight.



Okay, so that's my Garden today.

And, I'm still humming "...and He walks with me and He talks with me, and He tells me I am his own...."

Nothing like an old hymn to start a day.

If you're interested in the witty antics of a movie critic and gentleman farmer, then you really should start following John's blog. You never know if he'll be talking about turkey sex or baby chicks or the vege plots. Oh, and he's a big Russell Crowe fan, so prepare to swoon with him.

Lane