All creatures great and small

There is, on occasion, a day when I find myself awestruck by the glories of this Creation, Earth.  How blessed I am to be surrounded by this vibrant, living garden!  Yes, today, I was inundated by gobs of natural beauty and lots of life flitting about.  At times, this garden and all my unrequited plans frustrate me and leave me with feelings of despair.  Oh, not so today!  I am in love with this garden today!  A turn of the doorknob, a few steps, and it seems I have been transported into a natural paradise.  Yes, I feel so blessed.

Face Value

Quadratics.  Parabolas.  Imaginary Roots.  Tesla coil.  λ.  Frequency.  Hz.  Ionosphere.  300 µm.  Ugh.  Does it all make you want to scream?  I have glanced down at the myriad notes spread all over my desk, and these are a few words that pop off of them.  My desk and my mind seem always to be in a state of clutter.  I try to clean and straighten the workspace, stand back and gaze in awe, and I swear, in two or three days, the books and notes have piled up again, and it's all back in a state of nightmare!  

My Great Big Box of Crayons

Color is my day-long obsession, joy, and torment.

~Claude Monet

My Garden, My Teacher

You are teaching me so much about life, Dear Garden.

Learning Curves and Growing Pains

I know many of my blog readers are experienced gardeners of the master sort.  I can tell from viewing your garden photos, which are always from the long view, by the way.  You know who you are.  Back a long, long time ago, in my early gardening days, I read in a magazine article that it takes about five years for a garden to reach anything near maturity.  Period.  It just takes that long for one to figure out sun rotations, soil idiosyncrasies, weather patterns, and that mysterious thing known as "microclimates."  And of course, it takes time for perennials to clump, for trees to stretch upward, and shrubs to attain some girth.  So every time I've moved into a new home and planted that new garden, I've worked and worked and waited and waited patiently for that elusive five-year anniversary to come.  (Leave it to me to take things so literally.)

Enjoying My Eden

***

Who can explain the secret pathos of Nature's loveliness?
It is a touch of melancholy inherited from our Mother Eve.
It is an unconscious memory of the lost Paradise.
It is the sense that even if we should find another Eden,
 we would not be fit to enjoy it perfectly nor stay in it forever. 

~Henry van Dyke

***

Of Order, Diversity, and Madness

Anyone who reads this blog knows that I am no garden planner and that I cannot seem to bring myself to plant in large groupings.  I write on the sidebar over there that my garden style is "cram-as-many-plants-as-possible-into-a-half-acre-lot."  Well, that is about as true a statement as I can make.  I don't believe in putting on airs that aren't there.  This garden is what it is: a reflection of a botanically obsessed, compulsive plant collector.  It is not a garden that will appeal to everyone.  It is a far cry from the self-control of landscape design with its perfectly trimmed shrubs, ideally spaced trees, and huge groupings of colorful annuals.

September *Sighs*

September brings its sighs.  Sighs of relief, that is.  I took a walk through my garden yesterday and can honestly say I'm sighing that big sigh of relief that I still actually have a garden.  The devastation of winter's arctic blast is history.  Tropicals are flourishing once again, and while I do know another winter is on the horizon, and we cannot predict its fury, right now, I'm trying to just enjoy the bounty day by day.   This year, my garden has taught me valuable lessons in patience, perseverence, humility, and hope.  So come, walk with me, and see what my garden is today.

One is the loneliest number....

...or is it? 

Seriously, what's wrong with the number 1?  I've read many a garden book over the years, and if there's 1 thing I've learned it's that we should always avoid planting just 1 of a kind.   It supposedly gives the garden a hodgepodge effect, and nothing really works together.  The eye has difficulty focusing in such a place.   Specimen usage should be reserved for very special plants or trees and used sparingly.  Never more than 1 specimen to a bed!!!

There Goes the Neighborhood!

I don't know what your garden set-up is, but this house has no backyard to speak of.  I think it's pretty standard for Florida, especially when a pool is involved.  But, seriously, what's a gardener to do?  Here on this plot, I have about 10 feet of backyard behind the pool.  Oh, how I long to pick up this monstrosity of a house and move it forward 20 feet!