the garden as...

It's not that you just grow flowers, take a few pictures of them and move on to your next project. Gardens -- creating them, maintaining them, sharing them, changing them -- there is a force behind them that I find hard to explain. 

It's not an obsession, even though many have wondered if perhaps snipping lily heads for two hours each summer morning is a form of insanity. And there isn't an end goal exactly, even though you may have images in your head or on paper of how it will all look as the growing season explodes. 

Gardens are unique creations that bring people closer to earth's elements. They ask of you that you learn something new and altogether different than what you would do for yourself to move ahead in life. You grow flowers, or at least I grow flowers not because I love it, but because it feels right to learn and plant and toil and experience frustration as the unexpected happens. It feels that my time is well spent on this, outdoors, even if it means swatting bugs and pulling weeds that grow monstrously big overnight. 

Private as my flower fields are, they also do draw people to the farmette lands. Today, we got a call from an old friend -- the wife of Ed's former business partner. She and and a visitor from China -- also known to us for many years for the same company work reasons -- wondered if they could stop by for a visit. Seemingly to say hello, but really to explore the farmette flower fields.

I was glad, therefore, that I had done an adequate job of snipping lilies this morning. 707 today! This has to be the peak! And I do see that some big time bloom producers are slowing down. (Dare I say it -- thank goodness! Snipping sticky wilted flowers is tough, especially if you do it as I do it -- in the wee hours of the morning when the bug activity is on the higher end of normal.)

Here's my morning walk-through:

(good morning!)

(sunlight...)

(I have to be careful: sometimes the little green frogs sit in opening blooms, sometimes they hide inside spent flowers...)

(a pair of doubles)

Because I have a somewhat crazy day tomorrow and I wont have time for much in the morning, I decided to drive out to Madison Sourdough today to pick up croissants for the week. And cinnamon rolls for today's breakfast.

(Stopping to take a look at Steffi's House: it's finally finished on the outside!)

(breakfast)

And now comes the truly nutty moment: I decided just yesterday that most of the flower bed that abuts the driveway has to be redone. It hasn't been good for years now. I keep hoping that tweaks will correct it, but it hasn't happened. I need to dig it out and plant afresh. Typically that is a spring project. But here's the rub: if I stick to lilies as the backbone of this bed (and I will, because it has to be in harmony with what grows immediately behind it, along the secret path), putting them in next spring means that I wont see much in the way of flowers until the year after. 

But if I put them in still this year....

So the crazy idea is to dig out the bed now, right in the middle of the blooming period, and put in replacement plants now, this month, before it's too late!

I contacted my best lily growers. They were on board. I picked out some plants. And I sat back and wondered how exactly am I going to fit this in next weekend. If they come by next weekend. And if not? Gulp. I'm leaving the week after. 

Gardens are created with care by some. I'm planning on visiting just such a garden later on, in August. But mine have never grown that way. They've been whimsical and off the cuff ideas, implemented in great spurts of caring and love, building on what's there, making do, given my time constraints and of course resource constraints. Flowers can be expensive if you aren't careful.

And just as I finish dealing with the lily people, our friends arrive. To walk, look, take it in.

And to sit down over a cup of tea, on the porch.

Would we have seen them now were it not for the garden? Maybe, maybe not. I'll stay with the idea that flower power is real and it does bring people together.

They leave, I go to pick up the kids for solid hours of farmhouse time.

And toward evening, as I drop them off at home, I linger there to chat with my daughter, on her porch, enjoying the fading warmth of a beautiful summer day.

A supper of soup. With corn -- in the soup, on the side -- sweet, delicious corn. I'm thinking about all that must be done now to get the garden ready for its next incarnation. The garden as a social magnet,  the garden as a place to lose yourself in, the garden as a source of stories, the garden as a great motivator to do the impossible.  

with love...