TAKE JOY

Rosemary Verey wrote of removing foliage off winter blooming Lenten Rose. I copied, below. In Sir Walter Scott's garden I saw a 'well placed chair'. I copied, below.

Pamela Harper wrote of every garden needing a tall cone shape taking the eyes to the sky. I copied, below.

Joy is always present. Always.

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Take.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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"Take joy" was a favorite of Tasha Tudor, from the book, Tasha Tudor's Garden, pics by Richard W. Brown & text by Tovah Martin. Don't have this book yet? Take joy, buy it.

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Stephen Holden recently reviewed, "Gershwin...Here to Stay", performing at the Oak Room at the Algonquin Hotel, for the NYTimes. In it he wrote, "When Gershwin's friend Kay Swift observed him playing "dark, doom-laden chords" and asked him what he was composing, he said: "Oh, nothing. I was just working off some of the dreary music that lies near the top of a composer's mind. Then I"ll dig down to the happiness stuff, with any luck."

CLIENT CAT & MOUSE

MR. TENNIS adores to ace me. Lovely family, home, garden. I design a fabulous garden, within budget, he ace's back, "Let's put in a stone wall & level the frontyard." Fine. Ha, I was supposed to do that in the 1st budget?

MR. TENNIS, a disciplined man, below, but not rigid. Competitive & athletic.

MR. TENNIS aced me again, he thinks, in his backyard. Yes, "Let's add a stone wall & level the backyard." Ha, that was in this budget?

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(Private note: MR. TENNIS I won the district singles 4a championship 2 years in a row. Would have been 3 if I hadn't skipped my senior year of high school. My backhand down the line is wickedly untouchable. If it can't be done I'll aim for your stomach as you approach the net. And I know you will. Tennis is a contact sport for me. I made plenty of girls cry. Ask my sister. It's still amusing visualizing hitting her in the stomach, knocking the air out of her. She rarely played with me afterward.)

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MR. TENNIS I notice how you make changes to your landscape plans. Thinking, as I drove to meet MRS. TENNIS yesterday afternoon, he's playing cat & mouse with me. Again.

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I first heard of your stone wall last week from my contractor. Of course I asked him if low columns were included. Ha, MRS. TENNIS calls hours later for an appointment. We had a good laugh at your methods.

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You will get your stone wall & level backyard. Your ace. It will be gorgeous & affordable. My ace.

(Private note: MR. TENNIS, I remember well the hot, humid afternoon I met you. You acquired me when you married MRS. NEWS. You pulled into your gorgeous drive in that gorgeous car, gorgeous clothes cool from your office, and you did not once take off your gorgeous sunglasses. Ace. Then you married MRS. TENNIS. You kept me in your divorce. My ace.)

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Hindsight is hilarious MR. TENNIS. You want a fabulous landscape. I want to create fabulous landscapes. Fate matched us well.

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Oh, almost forgot, MRS. TENNIS told me you did some gardening at one of your rental properties. AND YOU LIKED IT. Too bad you didn't see the response. You aced me without knowing it.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

BOOKS by BEVERLEY NICHOLS

Beverley Nichols, Englishman, lover of gardening, junk, antiques, cats, history, books, domestic help, his friends, the stage, music, entertaining, reading, & an author. Do you know of him?

Mary Kistner, a mentor, gave me 1 of his books circa 1999. Bought 2 more at that time.

Have reread each several times. This year is a SIGNIFICANT birthday.

Bought myself, so far, stone cat for the Bay Terrace, 3 antique blue/white jardinier's while lecturing in Richmond, VA, and this morning, 12 books by Beverley Nichols. Dahlings, ya'll are expensive, had to buy them, getting the cheapest used versions, before telling you about them.

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Of his friend, Marius, "In the dusky glass of a rococo mirror he could see the shadow of ancient battles; he could trace the beginning of a nation's decadence in the scroll of a picture frame, and find the outlines of a philosophy in the border of an aubusson carpet." And on the next page he writes of George Washington & General Lafayette wallpapering together at Mount Vernon.

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Which, of course, reminded me about John Adams & Thomas Jefferson touring gardens in England for a fortnight, with only their manservants.

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Didn't know these important TRUE details about America's founding fathers?

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Oops, apologies, off topic. Buy any, or all, books by Beverley Nichols. Ha, remember, I snagged the cheapest copies off Amazon moments ago.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Pics from Amazon.

USE WHAT YOU HAVE

View, below, of Elizabeth Clarkson's living room from her foyer. Seating, below, rims the walls of her foyer.

Unseen, below, unless standing at an awkward angle.

Did Elizabeth find these chimney flue liners? Probably.

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In garden & home Elizabeth came from a generation knowing, "It's what you do with what you have."

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Elizabeth Clarkson left her home & garden as a public resource, Wing Haven, in Charlotte, NC. Elizabeth Lawrence's home & garden, a few houses down, is now owned by Wing Haven. Go.

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Took the pics last month.

MUSIC ROOM

Garden rooms must be named. I've known this for decades. Since January I've been working with Susanne Hudson, interior decorator. She created new rooms & named them. Music Room, above.
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How did the know-it-all inventor of Vanishing Threshold not know to name the rooms inside her home?
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Dulcimers, piano, autoharp, turn-table, antiquated stereo system, comfy seating, art, lamps, window with fabulous view.... Years of junking. Nothing had to be bought.
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Hardly used for 23 years, SS (since Susanne), this is my morning spot. Reading the paper & watching the sun rise behind contorted filbert, witchhazel, Southern Indica azaleas, pieris...
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Notice vase on the piano? A bouquet of antique tools.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Music Room wasn't finished when I took the pic so you're seeing only a sliver. Found the chair, broken, in the basement of our family house on Lake Rabun, a delight & worth your time, promise. It's an American windsor dated 1897 on the bottom. Red Beck, in Tucker, GA, now closed, fixed the chair & finished it with historically correct wax.

ENTRIES

Landscapes cannot have too many entries.Not always gates or doors. Use pair of: trees, bushes, urns, stones, wattles, columns & etc.
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Entries in gardens are PROOF of garden magic. No matter the direction, they are always entries. Something I try to remember about life. It may feel like an exit but it's always an entry.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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pic via It's About Time. From door, bricks, edging, vine, vista, colors, lichens, meadow, season, I can feel the coolness of the bricks on the palm of my hand, the push & sound of the door trying to open it further & smell the air.

SHOPPING & A PICNIC

A portion of GARDEN COURT's family room, below. GARDEN COURT made a picnic to eat enroute. Pimento cheese on bakery bread, chips & cookies.

View, below, looking out GARDEN COURT's frontdoor.

Our destination, below, strewn with empties. Boutique ale, ha, not beer.

Who cares when the shopping, below, is this good?

Ionic column cap, above, perhaps 1/2 ton? Can't you see it as the perfect coffee table on your terrace?

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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GARDEN COURT sent the snow pic. I took the rest of the pics last month shopping at The Garage in Birmingham, AL.

HISTORIC DAFFODIL

Centuries in Europe before centuries in USA.

Want a tough daffodil?

Narcissus pseudonarcissus. Small yellow blooms, grayish slender foliage. Sometimes called, Lent Lily, for its season of bloom.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Sandra Jonas, landscape designer, has rescued thousands of these daffodils. They're naturalizing a woodland acre of her front garden. Their yellow heads were pelted down by rain drops. 4 hours of hard rainy driving to see her display. No pics except of the one I brought home, above.

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Couldn't get you good pics but the rains had no effect enjoying lunch in Sandra's antebellum home. She made stuffed shells using Tomato Earl's tomatoes from her summer garden, a spinach salad, rolls, tea. Desert was vanilla ice cream dressed with figs preserved from her summer garden too. It's ridiculous having no pics of lunch: food, dishes, table, room, daffodil bouquets. Susanne Hudson, Sandra & I had planned this day for YEARS. You know it was good gossip to make me forget pictures. But that's another type of blog entirely!

SIMPLICITY

This is my weakness: leaf litter mulch. No edging. Moss & lichens. Evergreen flowering shrubs. Petals on the ground. Patches of bare earth. Bench & bush. Low meadow leading to wildwood. Fragrance. Sound of wind thru leaves. Birds. Beauty.
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Do you know yours?
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Pic from Castle Renswoude Utrecht, Netherlands via It's About Time.

PLATES ON THE WALL

Thru ice, snow, wind my Spode, for over a decade, has survived nicely. Ha. I adore discovering others who like plates on the wall.

Gourmet magazine, almost 2 decades ago, profiled a French chef in her tiny hotel. Plates filled the wall behind her. Finally, last month, below, plates, almost 2 centuries old & stapled with lead found a wall in my house.

Plates on my walls outside, and inside. Vanishing Threshold.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Valorie Hart is Visual Vamp. Adored her blog before I saw her pic with the plates! She's been on my blog roll, at right, since my blog began.

DO IT YOURSELF & WOMEN

Often I will look deeply into my client's eyes, and say, "YOU do this, don't let the crew do it."

Picking up acorns, pulling branches together after a storm to use in a wattle, planting a pot or a few perennials & etc.

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One client's husband refuses to let her garden in the frontyard. He thinks it looks, "low class."
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How could society create such a man? Gardening is luxury. For women wanting to garden.

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Manly help is hired, above, for things I cannot do.

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Why is gardening potent to gardeners? Oxytocin & endorphins.

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Yesterday I stained a pair of cedar adirondack chairs bought at the Smith/Hawken going-out-of-business sale last fall. Several hours on a sunny, warm winter's day.

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Ha, got my oxytocin & endorphins along with a pair of newly stained adirondacks.

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This is exactly why I tell my women clients, new to gardening, DO IT YOURSELF. Not an admonishment, A GIFT.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Top pic, taken in January while hammering, with a spot of tea, the tile around my old tub. Theories about what was behind the tile wall & under the tub were discarded once I began hammering. Yes, called a man. Bottom pic, taken in December when my frontyard became a gravel terrace.

FORMAL + PSO

Deep winter dormant, I still know what this garden looks like. And why it works.

Formal hardscape: hedges & lines contrasted with chaos of plantings + informal tree trunks.

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Italians have cone shaped shrubs, with scruffy PSO's, behind evergreen hedges. (My favorite!)

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French gardens are quite rigid with evergreen hedging enclosing, oh let's say, tulips.

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Ah, the English. Evergreen hedges exploding with herbaceous borders & flowering shrubs.

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Take this style, evergreen hedge +lines + backfill plantings. Make it your own.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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PSO? Plant Shape Only!! Yes, more pics I took recently at Wing Haven.

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My garden began as mostly English. Now, it's Italian + English.