10/20/11

OMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOMG!!!!!!!!!

OHMYF@$&INGG@D!!!!!

The Steve Jobs of horticulture just Flickr-favorited two of my pictures of his garden. I COULD DIE.

10/16/11

Garden glimpses

Sigh. The garden...

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I found a few hours last week to do some cleaning down here. It was not enough.

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I also hung up five of these little glass balls I bought at a glass shop in Rome. They were just a couple euros each; instead of 5, I should have bought 20. When you buy little things for the garden, it is always better to buy several, not just a few. Go for the big theme, not the bitty half-measure.

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Or, instead of buying a bunch at once, buy many over time. We have a couple larger glass ornaments too. The garden has a growing concern in glass.

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Maintaining one's opposition to clutter can be difficult in the garden.

Bartlettina sordida

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That goes for plants as well.

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The gradual incorporation of more and more monocots has exerted some calming effect on the chaos. But then it prompts me to consider removing more and more of the small herbaceous dicots interrupting the theme. It's a push-pull thing.

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Nerine! The only thing showy in the garden right now.

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I don't remember the name of the campanula whose leaves you see growing here amid the oxalis, but I am happy to see it. It was one of the first plants I bought as a gardener after seeing it in the garden of a design show home. The flowers are white, and as I recall they have an old fashioned look. They were growing in an "old fashioned" theme garden. I thought I'd killed it, but apparently not.

forgotten campanula, Oxalis oregana

Won't you please come over and prune the raspberry canes? You can have as much of that marjoram as you want.

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And you can have that strawberry.

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A couple rainy days and cold nights and the moss has emphatically reasserted its claim to the birdbath.

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I moved all the pots of dormant bulbs out of the garage and back into the garden. I don't know when it's going to rain again.

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The grape leaves are hanging on. I think the next good rain will knock them all off and then I'll cut back the woody vine. As relaxed as I am about a lot of things in the garden, I've always been ready to prune. I have to say part of me would like to let the grape vine wander a bit. It's a terrible idea, I'm sure. But we'll see.

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Finally, we might have a big year for lemons...finally. Usually people have more lemons than they know what to do with, like tomatoes and zucchini. Not me. But I've never had this many flowers before. I used to spend a lot of time on the blog talking about how my lemon isn't growing. I don't have to do that anymore. It's grown quite a bit just in the last year or two.

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