Tend your garden
Weed the rows
Deadhead the roses
Scare off the crows
Rake the leaves
And employ the hoe
Mistress Mary
Your garden grows.
A trellis tall,
Vines wound ’round
Holds court o’er all
These fertile grounds
Beans and corn
Iris and mums
My pleasure found
In nature’s crumbs.
I spent Tuesday afternoon wandering about the garden section of our nearest Home Depot. I don’t garden, but Studly Doright has promised we’ll fix up our courtyard area this week. And not a moment too soon–I feared hurricane cleanup crews were going to mistake our residence for a disaster area and begin removing debris from the premises.
Studly and I have a great many ideas for improving the courtyard-style entryway. A few of them are even approximately the same.
I know that on the right side I want a garden of low maintenance potted plants and a small potting bench, with a scattering of stepping stones similar to these:
I picture the area as welcoming, and not at all formal. Studly and I can’t quite agree on the material to cover the ground. Do we want mulch or river rocks?
If we go with river rocks, I think dark ones will look spiffy with the red brick of our home.
And the plants? I just have no idea. The area receives full sunlight for most of the day, so something that will grow well receiving the sun’s ardent attention is a must.
We are edging into fall here in Florida, so I’ll need to take that into consideration. Thank goodness for Google and YouTube and every other modern resource at my fingertips. But if any real gardeners have suggestions I’d love to hear from you.
Peace, people!
Smell the rot
beneath the roses,
steeped in mud
around the bower.
festoon the arbor
all you’d like
the stench remains
through eyes’ delight.
arranged bouquets
stripped bare of thorns
from loamy mulch,
are petals born.
We have a small area just outside of our front door that as far as I can tell holds no purpose other than to propagate weeds. The folks who built the home had a gardener to care for the ground cover plants that grew there, but when given a choice between employing a part time housekeeper or a gardener, there was no contest. Housekeeper won by a mile.
Logically I should have known that the pretty plants would need tending eventually and that I probably would end up with that job, but denial runs strong in my family.
Last summer I stumbled about trying to maintain some semblance of respectable home ownership, but this year the courtyard has just gone to pot. Not literally–pot isn’t yet legal in Florida, so don’t send the sheriff’s department out our way, but figuratively.
Things that made for pretty ground cover a year ago are sprouting tufts that look like an old man’s whiskers, and the uglier stuff is back with a vengeance. We plan to do something creative with the area, but it just hasn’t happened yet. Why? Golf. I blame golf.
Periodically I go out and talk to these plants/weeds as I bend, sweat, and pull, bend, sweat, and pull. It’s all very tender talk: “Go away you ugly sons of bitches, you’re making our home look bad to the UPS and FedEx guys.”
Today I was bending, sweating, and pulling while cursing these plants, and I stumbled into a banana spider’s web.
I didn’t realize at first that it was a banana spider’s web. I was too busy slapping at my head and shoulders to remove any arachnids that might have transferred from the web to my body. When I stepped out of the web I looked up and there she sat. Huge.
Banana spiders in Florida are not poisonous, but they will bite and I understand the bites are quite painful. I continued to pull weeds, but now I had one eye on the spider. Cursing, bending, sweating, and pulling.
Peace, people!
Studly Doright and I are doing some home improvement projects this spring. His man-cave is approaching completion and we’ve found someone to help turn the area leading up to our front door into a mini courtyard. After that we’ll tackle our back porch which is lovely but almost unusable during the rainy season due to drainage issues.
In preparation for the courtyard project I’ve been browsing Pinterest and wandering around two of the local nurseries looking at paving stones, outdoor seating groups, and large pots and planters. My goal is to make the area pretty and low maintenance.
Even though I’m no gardener I enjoy trips to the nurseries. There’s such an abundance of colors, textures, and scents. And ornamental junk. Lots of ornamental junk.
Now, I have nothing against ornamental junk. I can see me owning a metal rooster or an ornate concrete birdbath. The problem is that I’m not sure if I’d know when to stop.
Could I draw the line at one rooster or would I need a dozen metal hens and a few chicks to add to the display? If I buy the concrete birdbath do I then follow up with a concrete bench, a concrete fairy, a pair of concrete children reading a concrete book, and an array of concrete stepping stones?
We’ve all seen those yards that have so many little animals or whirlybirds or garden gnomes that one cannot even see the lawn or the front door. Who is to say that one lone rooster won’t lead to an entire flock?
Studly assures me he won’t let it come to that. Oh, look! A metal dolphin!
Peace, people!
Praying for Eyebrowz 