Each day has elements of beauty in it. Then there are days like this one: it's overflowing with loveliness! Honestly, for me, May has the hold on the most glorious weather, giving light and life to the best colors outside. It's all fresh and beautiful.
Normally, I would have Sparrow on a Monday morning, but we're shuffling the schedule a tad, now that the academic year is over. Different work agendas dominate and so we're moving things around a bit. Consequently, I have the morning to myself.
And of course, I give it all away to the flower fields. Well, after breakfast.
The Big Bed is pretty much in order now. Time to fix up stuff elsewhere. That includes facing the loooooong front-of-the-road bed. It's damaged by winter salt. It's rooted by the giant maples that grow too close, and give too many hours of shade. The soil is awful clay and I have to throw organic matter into it each year, or else nothing will drain. And it's in a spot that is readily accessible to herds of deer. Lilium? Yum! Phlox? Penstemon? Delphinium? Malva? These plants rarely see the summer through. Nibble nibble nibble.
I'm going to try a different approach this year: I'm adding many more annuals to the mix. The days when I proudly wore my t-shirt with the statement "no more annuals," (or some such orthodoxy) are long gone. In fact, I had seen this in Giverny, the place of the famous Monet's garden: by midsummer, cleome and cosmos, dahlias and nasturtium (annuals, all of them) would fill empty spaces. At the farmette, I've used annuals in tubs and I've sown cosmos and nasturtium seeds in the courtyard. But this year, I want other, less known annuals to do some of the work for me in the front bed. It's the only flower field anybody ever sees (unless you're an intimate friend or family member or the UPS delivery guy)! It has to look decent!
I stop by a couple of greenhouses and again return with a box full of flowers to plant. Ed shakes his head with wonder. But, it is my final planting push. And oh, do I have the weather for it!
(looking across the big bed and the lily field toward the farmhouse...)
While at one of the greenhouses, I noticed a shelf of pots (for sale) that made me smile. As you know, Ed and I don't spend money on flower pots. Old crates, some plastic containers and the occasional cracked and ancient clay pot -- this is what we bring out each year. We try not to "decorate" the farmette (with the exception of placing the bronze statues Ed's mom made). Still, a bunch of years back (Ocean tells me it was 11 years!), my younger girl and I went to Morocco. And we both fell in love with the colors of the country and, too, of the garden we visited there. The use of carefully painted pots was magnificent and I told myself that someday, I would introduce such colors into the yard.
I never did. It's just not where I put my money.
Still, today, I gave in to a wee little longing for that garden in Marrakech. Just two small pots, but I love them for all that they trigger for me -- memories of all the fantastic visited gardens of this beautiful planet.
In the afternoon, I pick up Snowdrop.
I'm excited to take her deep into the garden. I have a surprise for her -- some of our old asparagus plants have sent up beautiful spears this year. She is thrilled to see them and eats our whole batch right there on the spot.
We play in the young orchard. Once again I try to weave her a crown of dandelions, but it's a miserable execution of this noble bit of meadow play.
I try it on. It falls apart. She laughs. Gaga, it's awful!
I should take a selfie...
No, let me take a picture!
She does.
And then we go inside.
... where we play restaurant.
More babies needed for our game!
Snowdrop leaves in the evening, at a time when it's still faintly sunny outside. I return to the flower fields and plant a couple of dozen marigolds along the pathway by the sheep shed. Ed prompts me each year to do this. He's a guy who loves this kind of continuity ("we had marigolds outside our summer cottage when I was growing up!").
I walk the farmette lands, taking note of what needs work still. (Some things are so very perfect without much intervention. Take the meadow grasses filled with violets by the old orchard...)
In a week or two I'll be switching over to maintenance work. But not just yet. I'm still in the creative stage, where anything is possible and the grandest schemes seem doable.
As the sun sets, Ed rests for a long long while by the picnic table. I tell him that I am reminded of my childhood summers in my grandparents' village house in Poland. My grandmother used to love to sit at dusk at the wooden table just outside her country home.
Did she like to talk to you then? -- he asks.
No, we'd sit quietly and watch the light fade. Like you now.
Normally, I would have Sparrow on a Monday morning, but we're shuffling the schedule a tad, now that the academic year is over. Different work agendas dominate and so we're moving things around a bit. Consequently, I have the morning to myself.
And of course, I give it all away to the flower fields. Well, after breakfast.
The Big Bed is pretty much in order now. Time to fix up stuff elsewhere. That includes facing the loooooong front-of-the-road bed. It's damaged by winter salt. It's rooted by the giant maples that grow too close, and give too many hours of shade. The soil is awful clay and I have to throw organic matter into it each year, or else nothing will drain. And it's in a spot that is readily accessible to herds of deer. Lilium? Yum! Phlox? Penstemon? Delphinium? Malva? These plants rarely see the summer through. Nibble nibble nibble.
I'm going to try a different approach this year: I'm adding many more annuals to the mix. The days when I proudly wore my t-shirt with the statement "no more annuals," (or some such orthodoxy) are long gone. In fact, I had seen this in Giverny, the place of the famous Monet's garden: by midsummer, cleome and cosmos, dahlias and nasturtium (annuals, all of them) would fill empty spaces. At the farmette, I've used annuals in tubs and I've sown cosmos and nasturtium seeds in the courtyard. But this year, I want other, less known annuals to do some of the work for me in the front bed. It's the only flower field anybody ever sees (unless you're an intimate friend or family member or the UPS delivery guy)! It has to look decent!
I stop by a couple of greenhouses and again return with a box full of flowers to plant. Ed shakes his head with wonder. But, it is my final planting push. And oh, do I have the weather for it!
(looking across the big bed and the lily field toward the farmhouse...)
While at one of the greenhouses, I noticed a shelf of pots (for sale) that made me smile. As you know, Ed and I don't spend money on flower pots. Old crates, some plastic containers and the occasional cracked and ancient clay pot -- this is what we bring out each year. We try not to "decorate" the farmette (with the exception of placing the bronze statues Ed's mom made). Still, a bunch of years back (Ocean tells me it was 11 years!), my younger girl and I went to Morocco. And we both fell in love with the colors of the country and, too, of the garden we visited there. The use of carefully painted pots was magnificent and I told myself that someday, I would introduce such colors into the yard.
I never did. It's just not where I put my money.
Still, today, I gave in to a wee little longing for that garden in Marrakech. Just two small pots, but I love them for all that they trigger for me -- memories of all the fantastic visited gardens of this beautiful planet.
In the afternoon, I pick up Snowdrop.
I'm excited to take her deep into the garden. I have a surprise for her -- some of our old asparagus plants have sent up beautiful spears this year. She is thrilled to see them and eats our whole batch right there on the spot.
We play in the young orchard. Once again I try to weave her a crown of dandelions, but it's a miserable execution of this noble bit of meadow play.
I try it on. It falls apart. She laughs. Gaga, it's awful!
I should take a selfie...
No, let me take a picture!
She does.
And then we go inside.
... where we play restaurant.
More babies needed for our game!
Snowdrop leaves in the evening, at a time when it's still faintly sunny outside. I return to the flower fields and plant a couple of dozen marigolds along the pathway by the sheep shed. Ed prompts me each year to do this. He's a guy who loves this kind of continuity ("we had marigolds outside our summer cottage when I was growing up!").
I walk the farmette lands, taking note of what needs work still. (Some things are so very perfect without much intervention. Take the meadow grasses filled with violets by the old orchard...)
In a week or two I'll be switching over to maintenance work. But not just yet. I'm still in the creative stage, where anything is possible and the grandest schemes seem doable.
As the sun sets, Ed rests for a long long while by the picnic table. I tell him that I am reminded of my childhood summers in my grandparents' village house in Poland. My grandmother used to love to sit at dusk at the wooden table just outside her country home.
Did she like to talk to you then? -- he asks.
No, we'd sit quietly and watch the light fade. Like you now.
