Steps!

Wednesday, July 9, 2008 at 1:07 pm (Cottage Industry, Heavy Clay)
Tags: ,

I get so out of sorts when I haven’t posted for a while. More than a week has gone by — a family visit, a holiday, a few fun day trips, plenty of work (home & garden and the paying kind), a lot of good food, some ups & downs with my mother. Nothing earth-shattering — just life as we know it.

But, I did want to give a quick follow-up to Wall!

Yes, the contractor finished the steps to our satisfaction (mostly). What a treat to have easy access to the back yard! We still need to cap off the top corners where Mike wasn’t pleased with how the top step juts up over the adjoining wall. We’re scouting out a decorative feature to put on either side as well. And adding stepping stones or some other transition between the top step and the grass. 

We worked like dogs in tropical humidity once the steps were done. Mike filled in both sides with 2 truckloads of topsoil and I moved a bunch of plants around, readying the space for a new look. The birdbath fountain we bought last year on clearance finally made it out of the box (and promptly started shedding its Chinese paint, sigh) and I got a few new things planted, including the poor little tree we’ve had in its pot for weeks and weeks. There’s lots more space to fill — you know what that means, another trip to the garden center — or two or three. Yay!

 In summer, the song sings itself.
         ~ William Carlos Williams

1 Comment

Admiring the laurel, not resting on it.

Tuesday, June 10, 2008 at 9:40 am (Heavy Clay)
Tags: , ,

One of the nicest things we inherited with this house is a mountain laurel, the state flower of Pennsylvania (also of Connecticut — they were first). It’s a special treat because I’ve tried to grow these lovely shrubs a few times — they’re expensive to buy and I’ve never had any luck getting one to live let alone thrive.

If you’ve never seen one before (I didn’t until I was an adult), the blossoms are little engineering marvels. Each petal is delicately held in place by a tiny “spoke,” sort of like a tiny pink and white umbrella. And the buds are mini starbursts waiting to pop. Definitely a highlight of June.

After saying I wasn’t going to do any new planting this year “until the retaining wall was done,” I completely went the other way, buying plants like some women buy clothes or shoes — obsessively. We ended up adding over 20 perennials and 14 shrubs along the driveway and in the back yard, plus moving many things around (as gardeners always do). And there’s still so much more to do “after the wall” and “after the front porch.” I’m not convinced these projects will happen this year (or in my lifetime) — it’s frustrating waiting for something you want SO BAD. Like the Christmas that never comes.

But, patience is a virtue, no? We still have much beauty to look at and much to keep us busy maintaining and “perfecting” what we have. For such a small lot, we’ve cleared out and burned a mountain of plant debris and planted so many new things over the past 3 years. Even these crazy 90-degree temps haven’t dampened our enthusiasm (our shirts, but not our enthusiasm). We spent most of the weekend outside (and the truck is still half full of mulch — yay!).

But that’s enough about gardening for now — there’s that other work to be done (the paying kind), and with the Lowe’s bills poised to start rolling in, I better get busy. (But I’d rather be pulling weeds — yes, really.)

There can be no other occupation like gardening
in which, if you were to creep up behind someone
at their work, you would find them smiling. 
                                              ~ Mirabel Osler

4 Comments

If you dream it, it will come?

Thursday, May 29, 2008 at 3:02 pm (Cottage Industry, Heavy Clay)
Tags: , , , ,

There’s been a terrible mistake. I’m supposed to be living in a cottage surrounded by flowers. It’s as plain as day, right on my office wall.

Remember Richard Dreyfuss’ character in Close Encounters of the Third Kind? He obsessively builds his mound/mountain without really knowing why, until that eureka moment when he finds it in real life.

I like to think my cottage obsession is like that. That someday I’ll be moseying along, minding my own business, and come upon my dream cottage…for sale…cheap… and Mike and I will buy it and live out our days there. (OK, honey?)

It could happen, right? I’ve read many articles in my home & garden magazines that begin, “Well we weren’t even LOOKING for a house, but we came around the corner and there it was. We had to have it (even though we had to sell our current house, quit our jobs, move 3 states away, and spend $100K renovating it).”

 It could happen, right?    Yeah, right.

But I can envision it anyway — the chair here, table there, tiled fireplace, gardens all around.

In the meantime, like Richard, I keep trying to create my dream right where I am.

It’s not so bad, really. 

There are more far-fetched futures to dream about. (That place on the beach, for example.)

But on a day as glorious as this one — clear, sunny, just warm enough — even cottages in the air seem not only possible, but probable. I’ll just stumble onto it.

I know it.

 I have never had any other desire so strong, and so like to covetousness,
as that one which I have had always,
that I might be master at last of a small house and a large Garden.
                                       ~ Abraham Cowley, The Garden, 1666  

Leave a Comment

« Older entries Newer entries »