BLOG #8 --Photo journal at last --THE YARD

Before we moved in, there was mud, and more mud, and even more mud.

The wall went up one year and needed to be rebuilt the next.

That was a mud hole for a year.

Then Jan started buying bulbs that I didn't know where to plant.

Pretty little flowers to fill up  HUGE space.

Jan left and it was time to begin again.

Bigger stuff!

A new bed! Spring!

                                                                       And summer!

Getting the hang of it now!

Lighting up the night.

An electrician's nightmare but they were pretty while they lasted.

A mother's day gift  --  a fire pit. 

May through Thanksgiving, it was a blessing.

There were successful experiments and some that were not so successful.  The joy came from experimenting and learning from the healing garden.  Wisdom is patience. Rewards are profound.

Still a work in progress but so am I.  We are getting there!

BLOG #7 Temptations

Well the weather has broken and the warmth comes and goes but I actually got to take the dog for a walk without a coat.  It was marvelous.  I felt like dancing around the block!

But this is also the most dangerous time.With the end of this class looming and the advent of spring racing in a collision course towards each other I am standing at the  crossroads as they barrel towards me.  Time is of the essence right now and I have no choice but to forgo the catharsis of gardening for the satisfaction of completing the assignments at hand.  A deadline is a deadline.

The gardener is here cutting more sacrificial ash trees out of the alter that was my homemade lighting border.  Floods lit the edges of the hill side via multiple extension cords (an electrician's nightmare) and shone into the lofty branches.  The silhouettes were wonderful in the evening and the extension cords were kind of lame during the day as they seemed to take great pleasure in throwing off the covers of mulch I placed upon them.  Solar lights are expensive nice ideas that did not have the umph to do what I wanted them to do.  Word to the wise...I do not recommend them.

Sticks and weeds and stuff are being collected as I sit  and type.  Things I could have done but for the cold and rainy weather.  Frustrating.  There is no question that I want to be out there getting dirty, seeing progress, feeling that satisfaction but first things first.  The final paper and two blogs are important.

Another pitfall of the season is Home Depot and Lowes, Walmart and even the grocery stores that have set out traps for my hungry eyes to devour.  Hostas?  Elephant ears?  Caladium?  Gladiolas, (wrong season, but who cares?)?  Even Asparagus and zucchini are calling my name as I look for new adventures.  I try to stay away but I am weak.  It is irresistible.

About 15 years ago I decided to go on an austerity program and save some money  Impulse buying was my nemesis. I determined that if I stayed out of the stores I could avoid any excess spending.
I dutifully drove by any temptations only to go home and find catalog after catalog, littering my mailbox.  After a dismal failure at restraint, I took the spartan high road and threw out the catalogs before even opening them and that was the solution to my problem.  It worked for a while but then I got bored.  It is the same thing with plantings.  They are everywhere and they are all beautiful to a gardener's starved soul.

The hillside is like the siren call of the season.  Hyacinths are winking at me from their pink and purple and white eyelashes, hostas have little dark pointy teeth that have been chewing their way to the surface of the earth and growl if anyone dares to come near. Creeping roses that looked dead and forlorn are sending out new pale green and pink shoots that scorn the old dead bodies that they spring from.  The daffodils are becoming profuse.  There are so many different kinds.  Teeny tiny little ones that bloom in clumps.  The big fat traditionals.  The white and orange princesses that break up the yellow gallery. And the ferocious lion headed blooms that have plumes rather than petals and look sophisticated but wild as they reign over the bedding in the driveway.

Too many choices.  Too many obligations.

I want it all.  I want it all.  I want it NOW! Queen plays its chorus in my head.  "Patience, grasshopper."  David Carradine whispers in my ear. "Grrrrrrrrrrr!" teeth say, as they clench to adhere to the task at hand.

My last blog will be a annotated photo essay if I can make it up to the ever patient IT department at Chatham. I need you to see what I see.

Blog # 6 Colors of Spring

As a kid always hated spring. It was a rainy messy time.  Going out was a perpetual step into the soggy ground and puddles of the earth.  Grey twigs on the trees, tan, thatchy grass.  Still not warm enough to go without a coat.  My grandmother yelling that I should put a hat on. Coming home muddy and dirty and feeling like a criminal for it.  School seemed like it would never end.  It was my time to be disgruntled.

I look at spring a little differently now.  Yes, the browns and tans and grays are still there. The temperature is still chilly but I am less impatient.  I am happy to wear a sweat shirt and galoshes ("that splishes and sploshes") and check out the multitudes of changes that happen day by day. Little things give me a thrill.  Patience is not for the very young.  They want all things now, they are growing like asparagus that springs up over night.  I am more like some cautious old walnut tree (the last to leaf and the first to loose those leaves) that takes its time, feels the air, watches the birds, seeks the sunshine and slowly but surely puts out tiny budletts that turn from brown, to pink, to green.  I am the pink haze in the treetops against the sometimes blue, sometimes gray sky that gives hope that spring is doing its job and nature is awakening.

As I pick up sticks and twigs for my tinder pile I examine little jewels in my garden and wonder if I should uncover them yet.  The weather can be treacherous at this time of year and I opt to keep their nestled glory intact. No need to share with everyone yet. I like secrets. Crocuses, purple, yellow and white are showing their vibrant intention of announcing spring.  Sweet hardy things that are disappointingly tiny but minuscule jewel-toned marvels.  They must be delicious for I have planted many and only the strong survive. Or maybe the strong fat bulbs are the sweetest and easiest to find and the raccoons, squirrels or skunks munch on them and leave the little ones to peep out (they will get them next year when they are bigger). No wonder my crocus are puny.

The galanthus, otherwise known as snowdrops, are blooming as well.  Funny to think that they are related to the enormous amaryllis of Christmas time fame. Tiny, white, little droopy flowers that face downwards as if longing to go back under the ground where it is relatively warm and comfy. Alongside them are the beautiful fragrant and deadly lily of the valley.  Odd to think that something so delicate and alluring could be so poisonous. They have multiplied over the years and from what I have observed, seems like wild animals and I have different ideas of what smells wonderful.  Consequently, the lily of the valley remain intact.

The daffy down dillies are coming in herds.  They are brave but foolish.  I keep thinking I should spread some bulb food on them and then they will look like the catalogues that flourish in my mailbox in the spring.  In the catalogues the are huge and crowded and make a fair field of yellow heads that cannot help but delight the eye .  In my avenue of daffodils they are short and stubby and never all bloom at the same time.  Its pretty.  Its cute, they are trying. But it's sort of pitiful at the same time.  I would have an abundance,  they give me a sprinkling.

Do I sound like I am whining?  Forgive me if I do or am.  I appreciate their efforts and am happy to watch their progress.  They herald so many other good things to come. Tulips and hyacinths, balloon flowers and daisies. sedum with their berry-like beads of leaves and hostas with their wine red spears ready to do battle with the elements. Lillies and lilacs and rhododendron and a dogwood or two , if the deer have allowed. Spring is tantalizing and I guess we all feel like kids when we get our first taste of its warm kisses.

Blog #5  WHAT NATURE KNOWS

As I opened the door this morning to let the cats out I checked the temperature.  Sixty degrees.  How can it seem so cold and yet be so warm?  It is the sound of the rain pattering on the remainder of the leaves in the back yard.  I lookout at pools of water in the depressions of my yard and see the raindrops forming rings.  The cat looks up at me as if to say you can turn off the water now.  Really, I would if I could. I love to see the sunshine in the morning. It can rain in the afternoon if it wants, but sunshine in the morning sets the day up right.

There are so many different sounds in the yard now, I don't recognize who's singing what but I do know that the caws of the crows and the honks from the geese have been joined by a chorus of other birds that are glad to be home in my backyard.  They whistle and tweet and I do my best to imitate their sounds.  They thrill me by answering my pitiful attempts at replication and we play for a while as I try to locate the source of my echoes.

The squirrels have been playing and bickering in the trees.  I am sure they are somewhat dismayed to find that some of their bridges from one tree to the next have been taken down.  Beautiful ash trees that had many years before them had it not been for the emerald ash borer and their wraith of destruction.  The squirrels seem a little disgruntled and it makes me sad as well.

But the most distinctive thing in the yard to date is the little green teeth that are biting their way to the surface of the black mulch.   Iris have very pointy leaves and they look fierce against the foundation of the house.  They will not be denied the sunshine any longer. They are willful plants that claw their way to the surface, strong and thick and vibrant.  The daffodils have struggled to the surface and one tiny soul has even bloomed -- a yellow star mashed into the mud by the dog and or the torrential rains.  The tulips look a a little lost, lots of soft green cup shaped leaves but scattered and lonely, their friends and companions eaten throughout the winter by skunks or raccoons.  They are the survivors of the bucketfuls I planted and they seem to wonder where their friends are.

The biggest success is the hyacinths.  I tried to cover a part of a hill side with them one year and although they came up faithfully I'm afraid I would have needed about ten thousand bulbs to do what I had envisioned for the area, so I transplanted them in the fall. They are coming up along the top of a retaining wall and look like promising flirty ballerinas ready to take the stage.

There are twigs all over the garden.  Trees that have been mutilated by the deer. Weeds are also finding their footing on the sprawl of the yard.  There is much work to be done but the plants know. Winter is winding its way downhill.  Spring is scaling the hillside and holding on for all it is worth. It gives one pause and a reason to smile as the rain pelts down and the dog looks to me for his walk.

#4 BEST LAID PLANS

One of my best friends has PLS. It is a not too distant cousin of ALS.  It develops much more slowly and will not kill you quickly the way ALS does but it can be equally disabling and in some ways more tragic.

Jan lived with me for approximately 3 years and although we were both alphas for the most part we got along.

She had to have some minor surgery about a year and a half ago and due to a reaction to the anesthesia she became less able to function in my home.  It was one of the hardest things I ever had to do :  to ask my friend to leave my home.  But that is not what this piece about.

Jan's brother was a very talented amateur carpenter.  He and his brother in law made boxes and jars and dishes and vases of wood pieces.  They were beautiful, inlaid masterpieces.  He also made bird houses.  Jan was interested in "birding" so her brother made her a wonderful birdhouse.  It was modeled loosely after my house and painted in the same colors.  We both loved it.  I bought Jan a pair of binoculars for her birthday and so she watched the birds. (and the neighbors, occasionally).

Because she could not maneuver very well outside.  I filled the feeder, cleaned it up and picked up the seed at the store.  We did not keep lists of the birds we saw but there were cardinals and blue jays, robins and oriels, sparrows and woodpeckers who all came to feed at the beautiful birdhouse.  There were trees surrounding my 1/2 acre and the birds happily made their nests in my gutters, outside lighting and front and back porch, and of course in my grill -- not the trees.  What was really inconvenient though was that the deer found the feeder irresistible as well.  At least twice a week I would go out to find the bird feeder empty and the whole thing tilted askew.  This was a great idea going nowhere fast.  Not only did the deer find the bird seed flavorful but once the feeder was empty they felt compelled to repay my kindness by ridding my garden of all those pesky buds and bulbs that were getting ready to bloom.

Jan also loved flowers and our plan was that I would plant bushes, bulbs, whatever and she would weed as she could sit and work on small patches at a time.  That did not work out as we had hoped either.  She tried valiantly the first summer but the heat and the work became too much for her quickly and by the following spring, after a fall planting of hundreds of bulbs, she could not help in the garden.

As a fledgling birder and gardener I was floundering quickly.  The cats would chase the birds.  The birds would build nests in and on my house because the tenacious cats could climb trees with some acuity. The dog was going berserk as the unimpressed deer meandered eating and destroying the birdhouse and my garden plants as well.  There were sunflowers coming up where I had not planted them.  There bulb holes where flowers were supposed to be and a skunk moved in under my front porch.  Yeah!!!!!!!

I guess the moral of this rant is that challenging nature is not for the feint hearted.  Jan had had PLS for several years when she moved in with me.  The progression had been so slow that it was hardly noticeable.  We figured we had a good ten years. That was not the case.  Strike one!

The birdhouse was a lovely idea that became a uphill battle.  I filled it less and less often, to no avail.  The deer were content  and actually preferred my fresh greens.  Hostas are not only pretty, but they must be delicious.  Strike two!

Tulips and all the other bulbs look beautiful for a week or two but in order for them to thrive and multiply you have to let the green leaves die their slow and messy death before you remove the waste that is left -- it gives the skunks plenty of time to find those bulbs and dig them up.  Strike three!

The game was not over and I learned so many things about gardening from Jan's advice and experience.   We enjoyed what did come up and laughed and puzzled over what did not. I revised planting strategies and found that zinnias were bountiful and cheaper, and seem to have no natural predators. Some plants thrived, some did not.  I grew as a person and unfortunately Jan's health declined more quickly than we expected.  

Jan lives in an assisted living community now.  They have many more accommodations than I could have ever provided for her.  It was sad to see her go and I know in her heart she felt that she would rally and be able to come back.  That has not been the case and I guess I am wickedly relieved. Nothing is as easy as you think it is going to be.

When Jan moved. Her daughters and family came and moved most of her stuff out.  She got rid of some things and sold others and downsized to the apartment that she has now.  Her daughter took the bird feeder back to Boston with her.  My yard is filled with zinnias.

Nature always wins   

Soggy Synopsis rant#3

The world has been gray for days.  Even when it has not been raining, the sky is rumbly --so many different shades of gray that bode nothing but an unpalatable atmosphere for observing the outdoors. Pools of cold rainwater are accumulating in the unevenness of the yard and give evidence to the lack of expertise or care that the builders had when planning this piece of property.  I look out my kitchen window and see the black skeletal remains of trees silhouetted against a dusky sky that will soon be opaque.  Was it only two days ago the sun and temperatures allowed me some time outside to consider the earthy smells and sights of this piece of land.

Yes. Christmas decorations must come down and a wise woman seizes the day.  January 21, temperature in 50's, the new president has already eased some of the regulations on pollution and the problem of global warming is no more. Presto.  Everything is gonna be all right.  But this is not a political rant only an observation of the things that are.  After all I am quite a polluter, myself.  I have always loved Christmas lights on the house and between artificial light pollution and electrical waste I have done my part to hurt the environment this holiday season.  But all good things must come to an end and the ornamentation must be put away for another year.  I pile strings of lights on the sidewalk, organize wreaths to be stacked away, gather artificial lighted trees into bundles and study the squirming nest of extension cords that look like they belong in the snake pit scene of the first Indiana Jones movie. I am an electrician's worst nightmare.

Taking the stuff down is not really problem,  but putting it away is another story all together.  I have a shed.  It is at the top of my garden.  It matches my house. I know you are thinking "How cute (ich)".
That is where I store all the outdoor decorations. It is a steep trudge.  It takes many trips for this old lady to drag all the crap up to the safety of this shelter.  I have to "gird my loins" (what an archaic expression -- what does it actually mean?) to gather bundle after bundle of stuff and get it up to the shed.  And yet, I sort of love it.  It is the time that I can look at the garden from several different viewpoints and see what's going on.

The garden is strewn with branches.  Some fresh, as I did have some trees taken out this fall due to the emerald borer beetle which has decimated the woodlands around my house.  There are old growth branches that lay in the way of the path to the shed.  They are covered with the palest of green lichen that soften and embrace the black dead branches that cover my pathway.  It is not soft--I have on more than one occasion put my fingers out to touch the vision of furriness that is not real.  It is cold and damp and rough--maybe a little spongey, but not soft and fuzzy as it appears.  It is doing its job; disassembling one nature for another.  There are the effervescent weeds that no matter what the weather, resume their unending task of distracting from the pristine beauty of my systematic plantings.  They know...they know that this plant painting I am trying to achieve isn't right.  Isn't authentic.  It is the hypocritical dream of a gardener, not a nature lover. Sometimes I love my garden, sometimes I feel like I have betrayed it.  For what?  Why do I strive for a picture that is not real?

Occasionally in the evening, in midsummer or early fall, I build a fire in the fire pit that my daughter bought me for Mother's Day.  She appreciates how hard I have worked to make this picture beautiful and will watch as I light candles on the wall, stoke the fire and pour the wine.  It is a romantic setting and she wonders why.  She looks at me with some dismay as I light the fire, put on some soft music and dream of people who are not there.  It is almost a religious experience.  A toast ... to present company and absent friends.  It is almost more than she can bear.  The mosquitoes make their meal from our pink flesh until she cannot stand it any longer and adjourns to the air conditioned interior, but I linger.  I light a cigar...just a little one, but hopefully pungent enough to keep the monsters away and dream--of better days, of days to come,  dreams of peacefulness that have come true, and of a hope that only fools can indulge in.  But those are warm summer nights and this is the unpredictable winter.

My picture perfect garden is not so picture perfect in the winter.  The mulch is blackish,  The day lilies are caramel colored sprays that have wilted.  The Leyland Cypress corner I planted is minus one tree (or will be by spring) due to the appetite of the foraging deer. And the place looks dreary.  There are spots of fresh sawdust where my handyman has cut down tragically dead ash trees.  The emerald borer has had its way with them and they quickly succumbed to the bug wrath.  Probably the 17 year locusts helped in this mass murder but it hard to say right now.  I had marked the dead trees with day-glow orange landscaper's spray paint but Matt waited until now to do the cutting and of course most of the paint has washed away.  One can only hope that he knows an ash tree from a dogwood. Such is the fate of a foolish woman who hires a sweet struggling man with six children and a million demands on his time.  We are all interdependent.  Matt, me, the garden, the plantings and the deer.  Everybody's got to live.

Lee spoke of his uncertainty concerning deer.  I guess they can be aggressive, I know that they can be stubborn.  Many is the time that my dog Max has unnerved them and sent them on their way in the fields across the street.  They bolt and he half strangles himself at the end of his tether as I take him for his daily walks.  It always amazes me that when the deer find their way into my yard Max is silent and it is up to me to open the back door and do my best mad dog imitation.  They were impressed only once or twice and now they watch me make a fool of myself  as they munch .  Very frustrating.

So as I put the rest of the decorations away in the shed, I look at the hoof prints of the deer and could almost feel sorry for the lovely animals that have lost their habitat to this housing development.  I do qualify this sympathy grudgingly as I think of the blood, sweat and cash that has been invested in this fantasy that I call a garden.  I remember planting a vegetable garden at my house on the mountain and waking up to find that the milking cows from the neighboring farm had broken through their fence and had a magnificent midnight repast there among the corn, tomatoes, broccoli and beans that I had planted.  It was devastating.  The city girl and her first veggie garden in shambles.  I am such a head banger. When will I ever learn?

Nature always wins.

#2 Time to settle down

I believe that I am slowly but surely working my way towards understanding how to "do" this on line course.  It has been a dreadful struggle as I am old and completely illiterate about computers, but nontheless, I am making progress.

The place that I am going to be concentrating on is my own yard.  I moved from a "home" six years ago to this new place and attempting to make this place be home has been an uphill struggle.  As is everything!  Do I sound like I am whining?? Probably, sorry!

The "home" that I left was a log home on thirty-five acres.  We had no neighbors, that we could see from our front door.  It was bare-bones and rugged and quite beautiful in its own way but as I planted flowers, or bushes to decorate the home, everything seemed out of place. Not big enough, not strong enough, not anything enough to enhance the stark beauty of the place.  How do you decorate the grand canyon?  Answer:  you don't.

So, when I sold the "homestead" and decided to move closer to civilization  I had a much smaller palette in which to work.  A neighborhood.  I had not lived in a neighborhood for a long time.  I missed the seclusion of the mountain on which I had lived and so I chose a homestead that was surrounded by trees on three sides.  Privacy.   Yes.  And as I look at the damned daffodils that are now trying to peek through the dirt in the middle of January I feel some identification.  What are you doing?  Don't you know that is is January and you are going to freeze your stupid asses off before spring ever arrives?  They answer back, "What are you doing?  Don't you know it is November and you are spinning your wheels?  You don't know the first thing about landscaping or gardening and yet you continually bang your head against a wall.  "

So here we are, me and my garden.  Butting heads. Trying to make something beautiful where it probably it should have been left alone.  Me and the daffy-down -dillies, giving it our best shot.

Rant #1 from Barb

Hi. This is Barb Clutter.

This is my second attempt to post the first discussion.

As per Melanie's suggestion I saved my first entry and believe it or not I do know how to cut and paste but only if I can find the original manuscript.

Consequently I am starting over.  Technology is NOT my friend.

Starting over is nothing new to me as I seem to be perennially starting over.

I am a retired school teacher. I was fortunate enough to be able to retire early due to unfortunate circumstances.  Every cloud has a proverbial silver lining.

When I retired at 55 I attempted lots of crazy full and or part time jobs just to see what was out there.  Some of it was crap and funny fodder for the first writing class I took here at Chatham. Some of it was great.

One of the great jobs I had was working for Riverquest, a nonprofit organization that held one day field trip experiences for schools in the Pittsburgh area on a boat on (of course) the three rivers.  Having married a country boy, this city girl learned grudgingly the ways of nature in a log home on 35 acres and slowly but surely began to love the simplicity and complexity of living in the country and appreciating nature. But working at Riverquest broadened my scope of knowledge and as I guided kids through experiments of water sampling, I learned about plankton, water chemistry, and macro-invertibrates that live in the waters around our town and enjoyed it immensely.  It was a wonderful experience but as non profits are wont to do it had some finanacial difficulties and I left.  The kids who remained needed the job whereas I was not dependent on the meager salary in order to survive.

I come from DC area originally but have lived up here near PGH for 30 years or better.

I taught 7th and 8th grade children the joys of literature for all of that time.  It was not always an easy task, as young men of that age usually have other things on their mind. I always believed as a Reading teacher that students deserved to hear the well written word well read, consequently I read to the little darlings every day.   We did Shane, To Kill a Mockingbird, so many others but one book became a standard for me because it caught the "boys."  Hie to the Hunters by Jesse Stuart is a a beauty of a piece of regional fiction, set in the hills of Kentucky.  There is lots of action:  fightin', huntin', trappin', and spitting. As the school I taught in was in a rural community, I could not have found anything more appropriate for these kids.  But along with this coming of age story of 2 young boys was this amazing description of the hills of Kentucky throughout the seasons.  It is a little known jewel that is out of print but you can still get copies through the Jesse Stuart Foundation, if you are interested.

I am a widow.  I have one daughter, Kate, who graduated from Allegheny College with a degree in English and minor in Classical Studies.   I am sure some of you may know what a highly marketable degree that is, (;-().   But after working in a hospitilization advisory group, and being paid to mostly lie to people and get them through the system, she dumped that job, and moved to Boston with a friend. During the winter of the worst snows in the history of that city, she worked temp jobs at starvation  wages, plugged away and finally got a job that turned into a permanent position.  She is a manager for JLL , a commercial property management company, and she and 2 others run a 42 story office building in the heart of Boston. Who knew ?  This from a girl who wanted to make a career out of Faulkner!  Needless to say I am proud of her and we are best buds.

I have a dog and 2 cats.  They are all monsters but I love them.  I have a house that is now too big for me and I contemplate selling it every time it snows. The yard is going to be my place to write about as I have become a gardener, of sorts, in my dotage.

I am sure you are all bored to tears with my ramblings but that is who I am.  Abstract and Random and proud of it.

Thanks for reading and please God let this go through to you.

Entry #1 1/9/17

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