The Blogger's Garden

CS and I took a trip to Delray Beach to see his mother. We visited The Morikami Japanese Gardens while we were there so I uploaded some photos on Flickr and did some fancy-pants photo-editting to the new header. It seems my camera is on the fritz so anytime I took a picture while holding the camera vertically, the digital screen went black and the frame in the viewfinder isn’t really what you end up with. Blindly pointing and shooting adds a little mystery, no?

The highlights by far were the breathtaking Japanese gardens that most of the sites contain. They are all beautifully laid out, and easy to walk through. We learned about the main elements that make a Japanese gardern--water, garden plants, stones, waterfalls, trees, and bridges.

We had 10 peat pots left, so we decided to plant some sunflower seeds that we had hanging around, either for the birds or the hamster. We also planted one rose bush, two pots of pansies, and two pots of vinca into some container gardens on my deck. And we repotted three apple tree seedlings that GB insisted we plant from his apple a few weeks ago. When we were done my deck looked so pretty and peaceful that we decided to hang for a while and appreciate our hard work.

For some additional information on the White House gardens and their history check out my post from the Fall tour.

Next we rolled into Stratford and decided to spend a few days chilling out and taking in the sights. We got ourselves a small studio room ($46/night) at the Stratford Top 10 Holiday Park, about two blocks off the main drag in town. It was cute, quiet, and run by an affable sixty-something year old british woman who had a keen eye for gardening as we were surrounded by an amazing palette of colorful flowers.

Can hydroponic gardening qualify as organic hydroponic gardening? Some organic gardeners believe it cannot, since it uses no soil. Good soil is required, they believe, for truly organic gardening.

I take great pleasure in informing you that the WC is situated nine miles from the house in the centre of a beautiful grove of pine trees surrounded by lovely grounds. It is capable of holding 250 people and it is open on Thursdays and Sundays only. As there are a great number of people expected during the summer months, it is an unfortunate situation, especially if you are used to going regularly.

We live on a fairly large (a bit over an acre), partially wooded lot. Out front there used to be a stand of pine trees that the former owners removed. In its place, they left a large pine straw bed with a nice water oak (Quercus nigra), and then they planted a ton of shrubs as well as a handful of cherry trees. Unfortunately, they had somewhat odd tastes when it comes to shrubs, and they also didn’t really seem think things through with regard to placement. Thus, we were left with a number of unhealthy, or just unsightly plants in our landscape.

Massive gardening day yesterday, constructed my potato barrel, doused beds with nematode juice, mowed shaggy grass, planted out refugee hyacinths, sowed rocket, basil, calendula, spinach beet, sprouting broccoli (hang on, it says April. Is it April yet? Yeah, fraid so, looks like April, feels like April. . .

Has anyone seen it? It conjures up so many ideas about gardens, buildings and cities all with multiple uses and forms intertwined with each other.