Wordless Wednesday - Floral

(Guest Post by the Engineer)

Wordless Wednesday - Herbalist

A short garden tangent

It's important (to me, at least) to have someplace to enjoy the gardens and still get some writing done. This weekend I built this little courtyard in the front garden to have someplace to sit and sip coffee and enjoy a morning's writing. The brick is recycled from an old barbecue I tore down for a lady in return for the bricks. The pavers are just concrete pavers from the local home improvement store laid in a harlequin pattern. The whole thing is designed to be water-permeable to avoid runoff. (The angle looks odd because I'm standing up on a deck shooting down.) Naturally, the bare dirt will be flowers and herbs eventually. At the risk of going floral on you, the foliage to the left is a huge stand of beach roses (rosa rugusa) that are the centerpoint of the gardens. A hardy, lovely flower that requires minimal watering to survive and as an added bonus, the deer hate 'em! Can't wait to sit under that umbrella and begin work on the revisions to Mummer's Dance!

One last post on the lawn tangent...

Hello, my name is Scott Perkins and I basically hate lawns. I know that sounds irrational, but it's true. I hate them. Green swaths of stuff that makes me sneeze but I have to mow it anyway. Water it, feed it, de-mossify it... and all the while I'm riding the Benedryl dragon. Today I am proud to say that I have approximately 25% less lawn to annoy me than I did on Monday. A minor victory but only one battle in the larger war on the American lawn. Getting rid of your lawn isn't easy, but as it happens, I have a twelve-step plan to help you get through it...

1. Convince yourself that you don't need a lawn.
2. Convince your spouse that you don't really need a lawn.
3. Realize that you need to decide what to do with all this bare ground you'll create (trip to garden store and local bookstore ensues).
4. Draw up an elaborate plan involving winding stone paths, raised beds and the sort of mature plantings that take decades to evolve on their own. Present these to your spouse.
5. Revise plans when your spouse wisely points out that you're not a Rockefeller and don't have any experience as a stonemason.
6. Remove part of the lawn and realize how pernicious grass really is.
7. Finish about1/4 of the project and find other pressing things to do.
8. Wait until you forget how pernicious grass really is (this may take some time, it took me two years).
9. Buy tool to make pernicious grass removal easier and boldly set forth to remove your pesky lawn.
10. Realize that new tool sucks and go buy a decent shovel and a large bottle of Advil.
11. Get really mad at the pernicious, evil, weedy little parasites that we laughingly call "grass" and vow to go outside and come back in your wheelbarrow or not at all.
12. Plant things that aren't grass and step back to take your Advil and ponder the next phase in your campaign, for there are lawns yet to be conquered...

Rain Delay

Someone once told me that God invented rainy days so that gardeners will get housework done. (And here I thought it was so that gardeners could also be writers.) Anyway, I'm reasonably certain that this was why umbrellas and rain slickers were invented... Things are blooming, weeds are in need of pulling, soil in a desperate plight, and only these two poor souls to tend the lot. I must away or no writing at all with get done today!