The Promise of Spring

A figlet. One of hundreds setting on our fig trees all over our yard. This is a brown turkey figlet and it has been soaking up all the rain and sunshine so it can deliver exquisite summer goodness when ripe-and eaten!

making lemonade, part three

we are still cleaning up from the storm, as are others we know. 

my mom has one of the prettiest pussy willows you will ever see. she decided to prune it back pretty severely after the storm, because so many branches snapped.

luckily, the willow family roots super easily! in fact, people use willow to make "willow water"- if they are trying to get a cutting to take, they pour a little water steeped with willow to encourage root formation. in our case, the pussy willow branches grew roots almost instantaneously- the day after i put them in this vase.

to make the roots stronger, i could have cut the branches way down to force the energy to the roots, but they are too pretty to do that. we are enjoying them inside while they root, then will transplant them soon in the ground. then, i will cut them back to 8 or 10 inches so the effort can go to the ground for building up their root system.

Bark Attack

Avian or insect I know not but something's been poking at this pyracantha. I see this pattern fairly often on trees and usually close to the ground. Have yet to see the perpetrator though.

?

Why butterfly?

charles jones, photographer

one book i seem to pull off the stack each year around this time is plant kingdoms: the photographs of charles jones. 

the b&w images of vegetables, fruits and flowers are sparse, but rich in detail, attained by the appreciation for growing the subjects, and by the use of a view camera. 

charles jones (1866-1959) was a gardener for much of his life. his image-making went unknown to those close to him. it was only when a photography scholar stumbled upon his negatives at an antiques market in 1981 that his work became known. to work so hard and humbly, is admirable.

not much is known about him- why he made the work, etc. but the work stands for itself.

try to search out a book to look for yourself. 

Family Day Trip

Rainy weather washed out the plans for today-a trip to Andalusia to look at peacocks-so we shifted gears and packed up little Claren in the pick up (it was questionable if the old war horse was up for the trip but she came through) and headed for Nearly Native Nursery in Fayetteville, GA. Fantastic place with a descriptive name. A fine collection of native species and a room full of snakes in the building and talking parrots outside to greet guests. We purchased a Franklinia alatamaha and a few Magnolia macrophylla for our yard to place in areas damaged by the snow earlier this month. We then sliced through Atlanta traffic to Decatur to eat at Watershed for a fine dose of locally grown goodness and then finally to the Dekalb Farmer's Market for supplies and victuals. A Fine Day indeed.

out the window, in the morning

it is foggy today.

two cardinals, a male and female, munched on the elm tassels outside our window this morning.

me & hen

someone needed a photo of me and one of our hens today...hee hee...

lee obliged and went into the rain with me to produce.

Spring Tuesday

 A few photos from around the yard. The clean up is almost done and the seeds have been ordered and the tiller is ready. Our last frost date is around a month away. The best therapy: a day in the garden.

A few flats of greens in the courtyard. Started by our friend Rico, tended by us while he jetted off to London.

Emergent solomon's seal. 

A pretty little flower which I called star of bethlehem for years-which it is not! Still do not know its name.

A first fiddle head on the cobblestone path. Cyrtomium fortunei.

And good for the Obamas putting in a vegetable garden. It is about time. Solar panels next? Jimmy Carter had them and then that freak reagan took them down.

dogwoods in bloom

still cleaning up from the storm...and still trying to make the best of it...

lee trimmed back the dogwood this weekend (top photo) and we had tons of branching dogwood blossoms. some still sit in buckets awaiting a home, but a few made it into the house, for beauty.

here, i placed some in a frog. they were balanced just right. i then placed them on an old pewter platter and filled it with a tad of water. i could have placed some sticky putty on the bottom of the frog to hold it in place, but i was having fun trying to make it balance.

violets

a visit with friends reminded me to go pick some violets for our salad last night...

Vernal

The bench this first day of spring. Right before congregating over libations to discuss the news of the day. Every Friday. Sort of like a religion.

happy...spring

today is the first day of spring...!

to celebrate, we went in search of mint in the garden...to make a refreshing drink- that most southern of libations, a mint julep. tiny tendrils were beginning to poke their heads out of the ground over by the studio, so we plucked a few and made a tasty sip. we enjoyed them with friends outside on the bench and talked to our neighbors as they strolled home.

make your own and enjoy them throughout the season...and into summer...

here is what you do: take a few sprigs of mint, crush if you want to release the flavor more. add some crushed ice, a jigger of bourbon and simple syrup to taste- make it as strong or as sweet as you like...

daily groceries

walked up to our neighborhood co-op, or rather, the only co-op in town yesterday. it is a beautiful space, but i especially love this homemade sign. it has been there ever since they opened, i believe, fifteen or more years ago.

planting bulbs late...it works!

we have been busy around here, to say the least...between the snow storm, then spring's quick arrival & other general projects, we are running a little behind. one task that i neglected was getting our spring bulbs in the ground in november. alas, it was late januray before they were finally planted, some into the ground, some into a planter someone (my mom) had given me as a gift. i thought we would not see blooms this year, that they would green out, but not actually flower. i was proven wrong! we have a nice crop of 'tete-a-tete' and 'ice follies' narcissus right now, to our delight and surprise. i would say abut 80% of them are in flower.

Recycling

Planted 5 trifoliate oranges, 2 rose of sharon, 7 mahonias, 25 ferns, and 3 5 gallon buckets of smilax corms at a few of our rental houses. All volunteers that were harvested from our yard and put to use elsewhere. Recycling.

Bloom Census, or the View from my Window

Rainy day today. But what a wonderful view. Weeping cherry, sprays of red bud, carolina jessamine, star magnolia, forsythia, hellebores, and dogwood just starting to open up. And that means the crappie should be biting.

The Ides of March

A rainy weekend prevented much of the work needed to finish the snow storm cleanup. However, the tree service arrived Thursday and roped and saddled and sawed their way through the "widow makers" in a centrally located large elm and  I was able to finish the debris clean up in the main portion of the yard. But not before we experience what we believe was ball lightning popping and spraying sparks and flashes through the yard Friday night-then the rain set in and gave the yard a good drink. I had a moment to pop out and take a few photos. Here is our raging little stream curling around the rock. A great deal of this stream is buried in pipes under downtown Athens and storm sewers dump into it. At our property line it emerges from a culvert and flows freely for most of the residential length of Pulaski before joining the Oconee which joins the Ocmulgee to become the Altamaha which then flows into the Atlantic. 

As the weather begins to warm many plants are beginning to leaf out and bloom. This oak leaf hydrangea just began to set leafs a day or two before. This one and the others with it were grown from cuttings we took from other oak leafs in the yard. We planted them in what once was a firewood pile and for several years we had volunteer morels growing beneath them in the rotting bark and wood chips.

One more. This is a new view in our yard. We added this short little connector path a few months ago. Previously the walls of the garden separated these paths. But over the years the various animals and who knows what else had created a little path through the hedge so we eventually acceded to the desire line and install the cut through path with salvaged and scavenged materials.

march in the garden

right now there are some nice things happening in the garden.

A Brief Respite

A clump of daffodils down by the stream. One the few plants not crushed in last weeks snow storm! And now blooming happily from the snow melt and the following days of 70 degree weather. These flowers are a short way down the path from a small native flower garden. It has examples of native wildflowers that carpet our forest floors in thePiedmont. Well, used to before privet, kudzu and development bore them almost all away. I will be showing photos of our blood wort, aka blood root, that is beginning to bloom now. I would have the photos now but I couldn't get the damn things in focus and Rinne, the family photographer, rattled my tender photographic self confidence moments before by offering unsolicited advice. Also known as an unwanted critique. When the going gets tough don't give me a camera. Anyway, the blood worts are blooming now through the leaf clutter before the canopy leafs out. They need to get all the sun they can while they can so as the big trees are laggards the flowers down low are busting out-which leads to a colorful late winter/early spring for us. But my days are not for flower gazing but rather for debris clearing! All the trees are down and cut, debris piles are disappearing and a lot of new sun is streaming into our backyard. Soon we will begin deciding what trees to go back with to replace our decimated hemlocks. What we have noticed is that the cryptomeria and bald cypress in our yard suffered little damage. It would be nice to see a few more baldies towering over the yard and their copper, feathery needles raining down in the fall. We shall see.

still life

wasp nests

i love the forms of wasps nests. they bring to mind this wonderful sculptor/sculpture:

ikebana

ikebana is pretty amazing. 

there are many books on the subject, both new and vintage. there are two kinds- ones that are written in japanese, which you can either have translated, or you can just look at the photographs and gather inspiration visually. 

and then there are the ones that were written in english that flooded the market in the late 40's and 50's when attention to the "domestic arts" was plentiful. they were written for the american woman who wanted to bring a taste of the east into their home. the streamlined style of ikebana dovetailed nicely with modernism as well. 

but the beauty of ikebana is that it is so much more than sticking a flower in a vase. it is a meditation, an art form that is guided by the flowers & plants themselves- their natural shape and line determined the outcome. so often in flower arranging these days the flowers are forced into a shape, rather than the innate form itself guiding the final presentation. while i sometimes like modern arrangements, i often prefer ones that let the material do its own thing.

i have many, many books on ikebana. i look for them all over. i like this one for its simple photographs- the printing process gives them an almost silvery sheen that i love. and the arrangements are not too dated and they are all titled wonderfully: 'simplicity', 'early morning', etcetera- i love that. plus the cover's graphic feel is really nice. the writer gives demos on techniques in the back which is so handy- you can use sticks for bracing and supports, rather than buying expensive flower frogs and other implements. there are many schools of ikebana, all focusing on different aspects, that one can study. rebecca and i keep saying we are going to go to japan and go to school. to be around flowers all day- sounds pretty great.

but really, i love ikebana because there is nothing more beautiful (in flower arranging) to me than walking in with a cutting from the garden and placing it in a vessel, plain and simple. and then observing it day after day to see how it changes. this is the spirit of ikebana.