wordless wednesday

wordless wednesday

garden where you find it

Pat and I are visiting Katie, Sean and the girls this week. Pat planted 4 camellias 3 months ago when she was visiting and this time I got the urge to add to the yardette. We amended the soil with 7 bags of garden soil and planted periwinkle as a ground cover till Katie can get some giant pots in the yard.  I know some people think that vinca minor is invasive. Well, I prefer to think of it as exuberant. Hardy and fast growing is what Pat and I wanted because with the twins at 4 months, Katie doesn’t have time to garden. We also put some New Guinea impatiens in the pot.  The whole thing only took about 2 hours. I got my garden fix and Katie, Sean and the girls got a nice front yard.

 

I had to put a picture of Pat and the girls in. Abigail is on the left and Fiona is on the right.



color on the horizon

Pat and I have been making weekly trips to Chicago this summer, sometimes together, but mostly alone.  It’s a five and a half hour trip whenever we leave and I can probably do it in my sleep. The trips are depressing when driving alone. About half way through the trip melancholia surrounds me like a Steven Foster song. The radio becomes an annoyance instead of a distraction. I think about how I told myself I wasn’t going to do this, this summer. I was going to stay at home and work in the garden all summer. But we make the trips to see my mom and Pat’s mom. Right about the time when I want to sink into despair I see color up ahead. Not the greens and ambers of farms, but garden colors. I pull over on the side of the road and gaze. I don’t know if it’s a sign or just serendipity but I feel refreshed and my sadness disappears.   

Ohio State Fair

Weekly visits to Chicago have not left much time for gardening or day trips for us. Luckily, Pat and I found ourselves back home during the Ohio State Fair. It is BIG! HUGE! GARGANTUAN! We saw a giant cow made from butter and a giant pig and piglets made from chocolate. We visited the various animal barns and discovered marketing at its best. You can visit cows in the cow barn and then eat them at a steak stand. You can visit the pigs in the pig barn then eat sausage at a sausage stand. Outside the hose barn there was an iced tea stand. After all, we are civilized carnivores in Ohio.

The arts and crafts barn was a cornucopia of stuff. Quilts, duck tape creations, cakes, preserves. There was a vegetable and fruit carving competition while we were there. One of the barns had flower arrangements. I find flower arrangement amazing. I can barely grow flowers, let alone create designs.

Pat and I walked around the fair for 3 hours and found ourselves at the opposite end from where we started. It was a good thing that there was a gondola ride to take us back to where we started.

Since we were heading down to Columbus, we thought why not make a detour to our favorite nursery? Scioto Gardens, in Delaware, Ohio, specializes in plants native to Ohio. They grow all the plants they sell and have an enthusiastic and knowledgeable staff. The young man who helped us last month remembered us and our plant selection. That is really good customer service, or else he knows the signs of a plant addict. Either way, I knew we would leave happy. I even kept the receipts from the last couple of visits so I could use the plants’ actual names when I blogged about them. Alas, we are visiting the grandkids in California and the list is in Ohio, so the post on our new plants will have to wait.

I am an urbanated individual. My knowledge of farm animals extends to knowing that you eat them, after you buy them at a grocery store. So when we came across the chicken barn I found Foghorn Leghorn across the aisle from Mr. Black Chicken.

wordless wednesday

you choose

Fluffy bunny?

Evil garden eating alien?

Happy tenent?

This year our rudbeckia was eaten down to the nubs. Maybe if rabbits were canrivorous they wouldn't eat my garden. It might make sitting in the garden a bit dicey. I would hate wake up from a outdoor nap with a rabbit gnawing on my arm. But at least my plants would be left alone.

wordless wednesday