Hail

Just as we finished with the final touches on the gardens along Wonderland Trail last week, a hail storm arrived and massacred everything in sight. In less than fifteen minutes, this entire garden was in shreds.

I have never seen Hosta looking so pitiful

So, we groomed, replanted and fertilized everything.

The gardens looked much better by the end of the week. But the tedious stooping over every single hosta carefully removing damaged leaves to expose new young ones took it's toll on my body. My back took in a lot of sun radiation in a Rose garden in Wilksboro as well, while pruning, removing diseased foliage and fertilizing on a scorching hot day. Not to mention the never ending dehydration.

All the gardeners I know have just about reached total burn out.

I can hear it in my daughters voices when we talk on the phone. Even though there is good news to share, like my eldest, Airynee calling to tell me she just had a photo shoot with Southern Living Magazine, for the gardens she is creating at Goodstone Inn in Middleburg, Virginia, we are acknowledging the need for personal restoration and balance.

It seems I will be needed on Goodstone as well. Airynee wants me to do some design work on CAD for the long term garden planning they need to do. I will head up there in July to begin.

It is hard to believe I was just up there a couple of weeks ago for a visit. June has been such a busy and productive month. I spend the weekend in quiet, resting, eating and painting my garden.

Ahhhhhh gentle rainstorms all weekend....I am in heaven.

Even Finn is spending the weekend sleeping in the sandbox.....

Way Hot

My White Siberian Iris is blooming, so I sketched it. It was way too hot this weekend to do anything, but go zen and sketch. I also contemplated The Way of Bee's.

I was so dehydrated from the work week, and hungry, no time to eat last week. We were in the ER resuscitating plants everywhere we planted.

I was gathering anger at the weather, stressing out about 'my gardens' and I was spiraling into energy whack. Bee's were aggressively scouting me in my garden. I usually have no issues with the buzzy stinging ones, but I was making them nervous, so they made me nervous. One sat on my head and in no uncertain terms made me aware of it. Something was up, and they were trying to tell me to chill.

I was going into 'me' and 'mine' energy.....whoops! Where had I stung or been stung recently?

I puttered, painted, drank lots of water, swam in Wilson's creek with my dog. I immersed my self in the cool water and soaked in the sun on a rock, like an old seal.

It was wonderful to feel chilled after I emerged from the cold water. I looked upwards at the skyline of the mountains above me, and absorbed the beauty of my environment. Fortunately, Finn had a few children to play with which gave me the time to get into this space. He had a blast. I surely think that dog would swim until he had a heart attack, if I didn't pull him out occasionally to rest up.

I reveled in my microcosmic place in the world, while allowing the macrocosm take care of its self.

We did magnetize a rainstorm to Ski Mountain right as we finished work this afternoon.

Apparently it didn't rain anywhere south of us. But we saw the potential clouds and invited them to the garden. It worked! A special Thank You to the nature spirits for that.

Froggy Went a Courting Uh huh

I do love garden whimsy. Especially when the garden art is truly art and not the predictable garden junk. Some gardens such as this invoke the faerie feeling in me.

I photographed this frog sculpture while enjoying a quiet lunch during work last week. I have seen these figures before, in Baltimore, a series of three as part of the 'Froggie Goes a Courting' tale.
(Click the windows media player link to hear Bob Dylan's version)


I was so delighted to meet this frog here in Blowing Rock and he does so fit this setting, his shapely legs surrounded by cinnamon fern. It was a sunny moist day, a good rain the night before, the garden was glowing in the dewy sunlight. Sitting in the Oak grove of a garden with the blooming rhododendron, spring flora with a Fiddling Frog for entertainment is what I live for.

I love my job~Note to readers The contact info on this website is out of date, I know, I need to do a new website...but not this spring! The linked article explains a lot about my job and how it came to be. I will update the website soon.

We have done a lot of work to this garden since last fall. It needed soil restoration badly. This garden needed a lush understory of woodland plants, but for years, previous gardeners had just mulched on top of mulch to the point that there was no soil to hold and sustain root growth. When I met the garden during last years drought it was truly in a sad state.

In November, we scraped off the 6 inch layer of powdery mulch and added amended topsoil to the main garden beds. ( Yes, one wheelbarrow load at a time, with challenging access to the garden as well.) We transplanted and added plantings and then let the garden rest.

Last month the owners built a new porch. So when we arrived this spring we had construction disaster to look forward to fixing. Fortunately the crew of carpenters, painters, electricians and plumbers stayed off our beds pretty well, but let's say that construction workers generally have no plant consciousness what so ever! Two weeks ago it looked like this,

Now it looks a little better. Mike has been busy re building torn down retaining walls.
Making miracles happen with leftover stone. We are still planting and mulching, but when we left on Friday, the place was looking so much more homey and comfortable.












The stone planters on the front porch are a work of art as well. The finials are a strong architectural feature as well as the pergola to the kitchen door.

I love having clients who recognize the value of well placed well done features. It truly makes the garden quaint and unique.



Wednesday we worked in a pouring rain. Our client Simmy had given Finn this raincoat recently so I tried it out. Finn didn't seem to mind it much, but Mike took it off because he thought it made my dog look a little bit too feminine.

I thought the raincoat added some garden whimsy for a garden dog. Finn has had to be very patient with us this week. At first he thought he had it made when 'Cooper', our Leola Street Community Garden leader came to work with us. Finn was thinking he'd landed in heaven....two boys on the job to throw the stick and ball for him.

Not so, we are so busy we pretty much ignore Finn. He sulks under the rhododendrons and watches our every move for when we may be in the mood to play. Besides that, both men are expecting new babies, so they are huddled together talking sonograms and stuff, so boring for a lab.

I made up for it yesterday at his private upper pond at Bass Lake where Finn can swim and fetch and run to his hearts content.

He is such a good garden dog.

I got a Howdy Hoo from a garden friend in Virginia this week

FYI
A few years ago I came into your Gardens of Delight, and you gave me a package of native poppies you had collected and packaged. Last year I had gone through all my seeds and decided to empty all my older seeds into one big bag and have at it. It is funny, you and I were never close friends but now you are thought of every day when I walk through my yard. The poppies are beautiful! And you have become another cherished friendship represented in my garden. How cool is that?
Morgan is impressive at the nursery, defiantly got it going on. Good job Mom

The poppies are Papaver somniferum. A low toxicity form of the Opium poppy. They are sold in catalogues as bread seed poppies. Years ago when working at Oatlands Plantation a few of the typically bright orange poppies were lavender, over the next few years I pulled out all the orange ones from the garden and eventually got a pure lavender batch of seed. These have been distributed freely for the last twenty years.

Sadly, I haven't gotten the poppies to flourish here in my wooded haven. They tend to self seed like crazy, but they don't like the shredded mulch in Blowing Rock gardens.

I will keep trying though. The poppies are always in bloom on Mother's Day.

What a nice example of how plants connect us through the heart and the memories. I am touched that folks still remember me, through their garden plants.

Morgan does have it going on at the nursery. I went up there last weekend to visit and bring home plants for the clients in Blowing Rock. The new retail sales shed is wonderful, after years of just a tiny space for the register and gift items, they now have a display area and upstairs Morgan has an office.

My little granddaughter greets everyone with a 'Hey' just like her Mom does.

Mike and I put so many plants in the ground this week it is staggering! By Friday it seemed as though the week would never end. Perfect weather for it though, cool and rainy.

My community garden plot is planted and mulched with straw.

All is well.

Choose Love

I Choose Love

Tornado Warnings

My mulch pile is gone! Last weekend was all about getting everything in my own garden edged weeded and mulched.

I finished Sunday afternoon and to celebrate Finn & I went to Wilson's Creek for a hike and a swim. It was a perfect day to be there. Finn loved it and the waterfalls made his cinnamon colored fur feel so soft and clean. He is an amazing animal, jumping rocks and ducking into the falls. I love watching him being a dog. Nothing makes him happier than playing in water. We have such a good life. It is hard to imagine that in other parts of the world war and cyclones even exist.

But last night we had a weather event as well.

The storm arrived just as I finished cleaning the interior of my Honda Element of pine straw bits, potting soil, tools and dog gunk. I went inside and turned on the news to find out that funnel clouds had been reported nearby. It was a huge local television event, but other than a nice strong rain, and a few claps of thunder all was well. I did go out to the carport to tidy up a bit and watched a snake in my gutter taking a shower in the water that overflowed. We stared at each other a while. Note to self...clean gutters carefully!

It was peak week for the Spring green Tulips in Blowing Rock. These are some tough plants.

They have been frosted and frozen many times this season, and still look perfect.

I snapped a photo of the Dogwood meadow from my front porch. I have loved that view all spring. The trees are leafing out all around me and my view from all my windows is a tapestry of pure forest greens. Very lush and private.

I am in awe daily of my environment. It is so incredibly beautiful.

At work we are working on two properties that have just built on new porches. Both places are a total wreck.

We have much to do to restore the gardens to lushness. We are tired~ We have also realized our new helper is not so much help. We feel like it its more work for us to keep an eye on him, and to redo work he attempted to do. It is difficult to find people who can just jump in and make a garden happen quickly and efficiently. Michael and I have been in the business for so many years, we know how to not do the work twice. It is difficult for others to keep up and meet our standards. Especially when we are so pressed to get so many things done well.

Thank goodness for weekends~

I am heading to Virginia for a few days to visit my daughters and our nursery. I plan on packing the Honda full of beautiful plants to bring to Blowing Rock. Hopefully all frosts are behind us and the planters and annuals can go in the ground.

There has been no time for painting, but things will settle down soon. The season of enjoying the fruits of our labors is coming soon.

Enjoy!

World Fairy Festival May 3-4th

At last, the world is recognizing the fairy kingdom, or beginning to at least.....

http://worldfairyfestival.com/

A little late heads up for this weekend and no events in North Carolina except in my own garden.

Were having a great time!

Fairy Sketch_December 07