Community Activists Off Radar

Three weeks ago, I got a phone call from a neighbor, about 7 historic buildings away, inviting me to the board meeting of their garden club.  "It's not federated.", one of the first things she described about it, "We just like to have fun."  Amazingly, I've never belonged to a garden club, merely spoken to them across USA for decades.
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Past president of American Hydrangea Society, or on the board of Georgia Perennial Plant Association, do not count, in the least, as garden clubs.
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Moving rural, I knew I would finally join a garden club.  Garden clubs weave the tapestry of subdivisions.  More than social, they are community activists.  Common grounds are arranged to be maintained, money is raised, donations given, college scholarships awarded.  Relationship with local police is proactive, zoning issues kept current, neighborhood illnesses/deaths/births/crime are spoken of, and at least one yearly entire neighborhood social given, keeping their community property values as high as possible, along with several speakers thru the year on pertinent topics, followed with lunch.
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Why join, at this late date?  Have paid it forward, and will continue to do so, in a different realm, it's time, finally, for the Garden Club realm.  A client invited me to her federated Garden Club several weeks ago, quite a group of activists, heavily into all of the, above, and fighting the state department of transportation.  I'll join their federated group.
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Yesterday, at a job site, finally checking messages, the best text ever.  "Straining
watermelons for martinis tomorrow.  See you then."  What's not to like about this non-federated Garden Club ?
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Pic, above, here.
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Didn't know all this about garden clubs?  Amazing, how low they have stayed under the radar of notice for at least a century.  Fine with them.  Few belong to garden clubs anymore, yet those who do, are happy to shoulder the weight of  'community', as their pro-bono, no worries the rest of their neighbors don't-get-it nor shoulder any of the macro community burdens,  All normal facts making up community.
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Garden & Be Well,  XO T
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Please don't confuse Garden Clubs with Home Owner's Associations.  Garden Clubs are stewardship from the heart, not a law book.

Following & Breaking Rules

Green-brown-white is the top historic exterior color trinity for gardens.  Who, ever, likes/wants rules?
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Late to the game, me, once I learned the trick to garden design rules.  I hadn't known or trusted garden rules deeply enough to wisely break them.  That's all there is too it.  Trust the rules, follow the rules, break the rules wisely.  Why the bother?
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Knowing the rules, breaking the rules, creates a garden & exterior more deeply 'you'.  Rules don't make every garden the same.  Rules make every garden potently different.
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Adored, seeing this garden, below.  In the pink.  I want to know this person.  Just from this pic, a tiny portion of their exterior.  More, I want to see the owner's interior.



Pic, above, here.
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Hope you realize that's what you're patio/deck must do, too.  Others must see it, and want to come inside.  Others must see it and 'know' who you are.  Those are garden design rules !
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Garden & Be Well,    XO T

How Color Choice Affects the Size of Your Home

Calm, rustique, classic, nestled, below.  What plays the major role in this Exterior Design?  Color.
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Imagine home, below, with white trim.  Pop.  The house just moved forward, got smaller, the roof lowered, the garden shrunk.  Merely, painting the trim white.  Ironically, this home previously had a teal blue trim.  Same effect, to lesser degree, than white.
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Pic, above, Martha Stewart.

In an area that is small, or with disparate components, here's the color trick, below.  Did you already intuit the trick?  Everything should be the same color, or color family.

 

Pic, above, Martha Stewart.
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Exterior color, if you haven't given it much thought, does potent work to every exterior.  Make sure your exterior colors are doing the right potent work.  Potent for good vs. potent for bad.  It's your choice.  Make every layer of narrative with color choices exterior/interior and you've just raised property value, and made every day in your home happier.
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Garden & Be Well,   XO T

Need Somewhere to Think?

Gardening is truly like putting this room together, below, by Miles Redd.  Intentions for this room, and a garden are the same.  Beauty, calm, introspection, learning, amusement, stewardship of our interior thoughts, connection to larger realms, focus, and oh my the anticipation of being at this table and knowing that whether 15 minutes or 2 hours, each will pass as the same, it would be easy to forget lunch hasn't been eaten, yes, a room like this is a proscenium, just as a garden is.
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"Every garden needs a desk.", said Susanne Hudson.
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Quick assignment.  Say Susanne's 5 words, above, aloud.  Next, do the Johnny Cash thing, 'Meditate on it. Then you'll understand.'



Pic, above, here.

Reading an education article almost 2 years ago, one of the experts said reading/learning from a source backlit by light from a computer screen/cell phone goes to a different brain region than reading/learning from a paper page lit by natural light.  Fascinating.

 

Pic, above, here.
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Epiphanies.  Moments of intuitive enlightenment.  Are the hunt in my garden, and they arrive, unbidden.  Do you partake?  Have you already been this intuitive about your garden?  Perhaps it's better to ask, "Have you been this intuitive about a garden?"
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Oh dear the nattering palaver about a garden's sun/shade, how to dig a hole, mowing properly, and worse, chemicals & etc.
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Nope, a garden is not about any of those things in the previous sentence.  None.
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Focus.  Mental focus.  From playful realms to partaking its energy, & love, to assuaging even the deepest loss.  Need to make a major life choice?  Major.  How will you go about it?  I know to go into my garden, phrase the question mentally, set it aside, in faith to G*d, trust the freedom of letting go-letting G*d for at least an hour, then poof voila, seemingly without thinking, an answer.  Heads-up on the life choices that have fear as a component, I've learned to beat fear by asking, "What would I do tomorrow if I were not afraid?"
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A friend, we were in a circle of like minds in a group Lois put together, casually said, "I do my best thinking while sweating."  Wow, a floodgate opened, 'Me too, me too, so harness it girlfriend', I said to myself.
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Gardens aren't what garden centers sell.  Look at the top pic again, and know it is exactly what gardens are.  Yet more.
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Redemptive beauty.  Abiding.  Places of joy, grace, not a place to work digging holes, shearing lawn, though if those things are done they are the gift of washing-the-servants-feet.  Stewardship.  Focus, mindset, choices.  A garden is long threads of time.  Opposite to tv, internet, cell phone, cacophonies.
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Focus, comes to you in a garden, you don't have to go to it.  More, you get the trinity of focus,
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"Focus matters enormously for success in life and yet we seem to give it little attention.

Daniel Goleman‘s book, Focus: The Hidden Driver of Excellence, explores the power of attention. “Attention works much like a muscle,” he writes, “use it poorly and it can wither; work it well and it grows.”

To get the results we want in life, Goleman argues we need three kinds of focus: inner, other, and outer.

Inner focus attunes us to our intuitions, guiding values, and better decisions. Other focus smooths our connections to the people in our lives. And outer focus lets us navigate in the larger world. A (person) tuned out of his internal world will be rudderless; one blind to the world of others will be clueless; those indifferent to the larger systems within which they operate will be blindsided.

How we deploy attention shapes what we see. Or as Yoda says, “Your focus is your reality.” , from Farnum Street, here.
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I'm fortunate my gardening began before cell phone/internet.  I know what a garden harnesses.  I know how diminished my garden is with my cell phone/internet.  About 2 years ago, I had a more fabulous than normal afternoon, beyond 4 hrs, they felt like a vacation, in my garden.  Coming inside, discovery why.  Cell phone on the kitchen counter.  Whoa, or woe, that epiphany.  Disclosure, I do carry cell phone into garden.  Self-employed is a great excuse, perhaps Beloved needs me, or my ankle goes, or nefarious mr. timber rattler or, or, or.
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" Way back in the 1950s the philosopher Martin Heidegger warned against a looming “tide of technological revolution” that might “so captivate, bewitch, dazzle, and beguile man that calculative thinking may someday come to be … the only way of thinking.” That would come at the loss of “meditative thinking,” a mode of reflection he saw as the essence of our humanity.
I hear Heidegger’s warning in terms of the erosion of an ability at the core of reflection, the capacity to sustain attention to an ongoing narrative. Deep thinking demands sustaining a focused mind. The more distracted we are, the more shallow our reflections; likewise, the shorter our reflections, the more trivial they are likely to be. Heidegger, were he alive today, would be horrified if asked to tweet. ", wrote Goleman.

 

Pic, above, here.
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Farnum Street selections, above, from, The Impoverishment of Attention, here.
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I'm impatient to take notes, put upon paper with hand/pen, on the new desk in my garden, from yesterday's Sunday edition of Farnum Street.  Ironically, my new garden desk is currently in Susanne Hudson's garden.  Bought for a harvest table, custom made by a craftsman in Susanne's town, too long for my small van, Susanne will bring it next time she has a client near me.  I know she's smiling each time she sees 'my' desk, knowing how excited I am to get it.
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Garden & Be Well,   XO T

Too Much Wind

A single client, in decades, with consistent much too amazing winds.
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We've been in our ca. 1900 American farmhouse a year.  Twenty miles from windy client, it's not far enough.  Lifetime first, living in a windy location.  A new realm to conquer.
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We've added a deck the full width of the house, at the back, overlooking meadow, lake, woods, Milky Way, fireflies, chickens, potager, Beloved's office shed, my garden shed.  Too many days, the deck is not usable, wind.
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Luckily the winds have a predominate direction.  We are impatient, an evergreen hedge may be planted too, but we are not depending upon it as a sole solution, too slow.
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My shed has a deep/long covered porch at front/back.  Have already had many lunches/dinners inside my shed, too windy outside.
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The shed has a simpler solution for wind, using a rolling barn door front/back against the prevailing winds.
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Still awaiting the perfect wind fix for the deck.  Shutters keep topping the discussions.  Framed, for strength, by adding an arbor too.



Pic, above, here.
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Weekly, I anthropomorphize the winds.  They laugh at me.  Literally, the wind is a boss.  About every 4-5 days, on the deck & front porch,  I have to wipe sills & tabletops, their thick coating of dirt/dust/grit bondoed with pollens.  Without the cleaning I'm sure pecan & pine tree seedlings would grow upon them within 6 weeks.
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Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara
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Off topic, great detail for color & painting, above.  Painted risers, very nice.  Lighting, ceiling fan, furniture, well done.

Walled Orchard

With an engineering degree backing my horticulture degree there is always an element of wishing I had been there at construction while studying historic gardens across Europe for decades.
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About 4 years ago a client said she wanted a walled orchard.
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Oddly, I knew where it should go, how it should look, how big it should be, how many gates it should have, and what each gate should look like.
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The Orchard is coming into its own this year, and will be ready for showtime pics next year.  I've taken pics starting with virgin pasture.
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Sideways learning.  Knowing, with confidence, how to design the orchard.  Century old bricks, each gate custom.  Yes, the expense matches its wonder.  Building a pool or walled orchard, without confidence, I would have to step away.  Too much money on the line, for mistakes.  More, it's building someone's dream, one they will have to live with.  No margin for error.
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Pic, above, here.
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       "He started to worry though that he would get stuck in a job doing something he didn't believe in, so he quit and moved to Spain with his wife and he started to write poetry."            .

I come across sentences, above, humbly pausing.  Deciding to pin the safety of life's earnings upon a garden design career, with huge blow back & fear mongering from family.  Even years of pitiful earnings, never swayed my choice.  After 2008's debacle to the economy, and my career trajectory stronger/better, all the previous years mount into decades, it's obvious, best choice ever.
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Joseph Campbell is right, Follow your bliss.  When you get into the pure groove, all types of unseen hands, the universe itself, partakes in your bliss, along the way you get private acknowledgements that you're indeed in your groove, someone asks you to design/build an old orchard, oddly you know exactly what to do, and already have the experienced talented team to execute.
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Garden & Be Well,   XOT
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There was a question about the orchard, one of the corners too close to the gravel lane.  One of my favorite aspects, the lane evolved around the orchard, not the reverse.    Corner & lane built as designed.

Discovering Garden Antiques

About once a year, in a client garden, discovery is made outside, of an important piece of statuary, furniture, urn, wall art, tool, whose time to be displayed inside has arrived.
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Time is running out for many incredible exterior garden pieces.  Alas, no one to notice, no one looking 'seeing', no one aware a precious bit of garden history about to be lost thru benevolent caretaking.  Some, perhaps not of great value, instead, of great uniqueness and age.
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This week, it happened again.  A terra cotta elephant, seemingly doodied-up for a minor diety's parade.  India?  He has survived enough years outside, many more, would see him destroyed.    Cleaned & brought inside a glass top set atop his 'seat' and he's a perfect table beside a chair, for a glass of wine.



Pic, above, here.
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Asked where Parade Elephant came from, "Former owners left him."
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Nice leftover.
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Look around your garden with new eyes, 'seeing' eyes.  Be bold 'seeing' in your friends gardens too.  See something, say something.
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At the front end of my career I saw fabulous rare things in client gardens about every 2nd - 3rd client.  Now, once a year or longer.  Another decade will be too late for many garden antiques.
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Garden & Be Well,   XOT
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No pic of Parade Elephant.  We were going thru her completed garden plan when I glanced and saw him.  Why was I so slow to notice him?  Let her know how special he was, but then it was back to her garden plan, she had arranged her lunch hour to meet with me, every moment on a tight leash.

Garden Design: Temporary Focal Points

Years ago, before the advent of cell phones, driving, I passed a huge white wisteria, in full dripping bloom, engulfing a mature loblolly pine.  I made a mental note to get my camera, and drive by again.  Somewhere in the bowels of my slide boxes, is that picture.
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Someone else thought the combo, white wisteria/loblolly pine, was threatening.  Within the week, both cut to the ground, gone, poof.  As if they had never been.  
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Finding this, below, on Pinterest, recently, I'm able to relive those moments, a-thing-of-beauty-is-a-joy-forever.
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More particularly, the few days/moments of bloom, are Temporary Focal Points.  In designed gardens, there is great humor, to me, in the Temporary Focal Point.  Without effort Nature reigns, like electricity, all we can do is harness the magic.



Pic, above, here.

Garden & Be Well,   XO T
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Within a week of photographing the white wisteria, and about a mile away, I discovered  dogwood tree in full creamy white blossom, dripping with long light purple blossoms of a wisteria.  Got pic of it too.  About 2 years later, dogwood/wisteria were cut to the ground.
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John Keats, 1795-1821, below, from here.

A Thing of Beauty is a Joy Forever

A thing of beauty is a joy for ever:
Its loveliness increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness; but still will keep
A bower quiet for us, and a sleep
Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.
Therefore, on every morrow, are we wreathing
A flowery band to bind us to the earth,
Spite of despondence, of the inhuman dearth
Of noble natures, of the gloomy days,
Of all the unhealthy and o'er-darkened ways
Made for our searching: yes, in spite of all,
Some shape of beauty moves away the pall
From our dark spirits. Such the sun, the moon,
Trees old, and young, sprouting a shady boon
For simple sheep; and such are daffodils
With the green world they live in; and clear rills
That for themselves a cooling covert make
'Gainst the hot season; the mid-forest brake,
Rich with a sprinkling of fair musk-rose blooms:
And such too is the grandeur of the dooms
We have imagined for the mighty dead;
All lovely tales that we have heard or read:
An endless fountain of immortal drink,
Pouring unto us from the heaven's brink.

Nor do we merely feel these essences
For one short hour; no, even as the trees
That whisper round a temple become soon
Dear as the temple's self, so does the moon,
The passion poesy, glories infinite,
Haunt us till they become a cheering light
Unto our souls, and bound to us so fast
That, whether there be shine or gloom o'ercast,
They always must be with us, or we die.

Therefore, 'tis with full happiness that I
Will trace the story of Endymion.
The very music of the name has gone
Into my being, and each pleasant scene
Is growing fresh before me as the green
Of our own valleys: so I will begin
Now while I cannot hear the city's din;
Now while the early budders are just new,
And run in mazes of the youngest hue
About old forests; while the willow trails
Its delicate amber; and the dairy pails
Bring home increase of milk. And, as the year
Grows lush in juicy stalks, I'll smoothly steer
My little boat, for many quiet hours,
With streams that deepen freshly into bowers.
Many and many a verse I hope to write,
Before the daisies, vermeil rimmed and white,
Hide in deep herbage; and ere yet the bees
Hum about globes of clover and sweet peas,
I must be near the middle of my story.
O may no wintry season, bare and hoary,
See it half finished: but let Autumn bold,
With universal tinge of sober gold,
Be all about me when I make an end!
And now at once, adventuresome, I send
My herald thought into a wilderness:
There let its trumpet blow, and quickly dress
My uncertain path with green, that I may speed
Easily onward, thorough flowers and weed.

Backyard: Lawn vs. Gravel

From the 1st time studying historic gardens in Europe over 20 years ago, gravel changed every thought about a 'lawn'.
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Perhaps it was coming from a region of USA with ubiquitous patchy backyard 'turf' lawns.
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Gravel, below, set with a top rate template of plantings too.  No worries what the plantings are, below, use the best plants in your zone fitting the appropriate sun/shade, size, foliage evergreen/deciduous.
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Best plants?  Don't know best plants for your zone, USA?  Go to your county/state/extension office online.  Typical mission statement for the Extension Service,        

"Mission

Our mission is to extend lifelong learning to Georgia citizens through unbiased, research-based education in agriculture, the environment, communities, youth and families.

UGA Extension offers educational programs, assistance, and materials to all people without regard to race, color, national origin, age, sex, or handicap status. "

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Your county Extension Service will have a listing of the best trees/shrubs/groundcovers/vines.  Motivation is for the proper plantings, not to sell you something.
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Knowing the best plants for your specific location gives you liberty to copy good gardens world wide.
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Don't feel comfortable choosing the best plants for your garden plan?  Take a picture of what you want, perhaps below, and ask your Extension Service agent, or their volunteer Master Gardener to choose for you.  This service is paid for thru your tax dollar.



Pic, above, here.
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Choosing gravel, align with color that may already be used with your home's exterior, or interior.  If there is a predominate stone in your location, choose it.  Measure square footage you want to cover with gravel, 2.5" thick and place your order.  The stone source you order from will turn your square footage/depth into 'yards'.  Small gravel is best, more residential.  Large gravel is commercial for parking lots or building construction.
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If you're fighting a poor turf lawn in your backyard, consider gravel.
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Garden & Be Well,   XO
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My 1st phone call to Extension Service was ca. 1985.  Going to the mailbox I noticed a vile odor.  Exploring, discovered ooze at the base of a large oak.  Their diagnosis?  Slime flux.  Solution?  Poor a mix of clorox/water on it.  It worked, and I'm still friends with the Extension agent helping me.  Weirdly, he's retiring next year.  How is that possible?  He's also the 1st person ever asking me to speak.  He created a new layer in my career.  In return I've never said 'no' when he's called asking me to speak for Extension.  About 6-7 years ago he asked me to speak on pollinators.  A disaster I thought, but said 'yes'.  Pollinators?  Boring.  How was I to know it would become one of my most requested lecture titles?  He called earlier this month, one of our 'peeps' is moving back to Georgia.  A young woman we watched grow in her horticulture career and are both so proud of.  She took a lot of my seminars, always asked the best questions, a great can-do attitude.  She moved away for a huge huge huge job, but Georgia family/friends are pulling her home.  He asked if I would give her a reference.  As if !!      

Design: House Meets Patio

Commercial, mostly interiors shop, March, below, better at garden design than most garden centers.
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Not a lot here, excepting there is a lot.  Each layer, perfect.
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Color, flow, plants, staging, texture, contrast, plants, still life, heights, focal points, axis, seasonal, lighting, vanishing threshold, multi-functional, over-dose-theme, easy maintenance.
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At this phase, below, personally.  Have purchased a harvest table made from wood of a century old tobacco barn.  What's the phase?  Choosing chairs.  Looking at galvanized metal.  Time is a luxury, the table won't fit in my van, Beloved's trucks are at a jobsite for another few weeks.  Need 10 chairs.  Don't want all of them to match, perhaps they will.  That is the fun of the hunt.
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Pic, above, here.
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Color trinity, above, great for my zone, tail end of Piedmont swallowed by Coastal Plain, in depths of summer's miseries heat-humidity-bugs, gives the illusion of 'cool' viewed from interiors.
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Alone, this pic is a, Design: House Meets Patio, course.
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Ironically, my horticulture degree included zero about this zone.  Zero
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Notice the stone at the open door?  Very nice.

Garden & Be Well,   XO T
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Go into the typical box store garden center, and be greeted by zillions of colorful greenhouse annuals, chemicals to annihilate bees-butterflies-man, finish off with fertilizers to poison groundwater, and kill earthworms and mycorrhizal fungi in the soil.  With zero irony the same garden centers sell annual flowers to attract butterflies, planted in soil with systemic insecticides, all with banner marketing.  Aka, killing the same butterflies you're trying to attract.
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Made a mistake at the seed store early this month, bought a small bag of 'organic' fertilizer for our lone tomato plant.  Reading the label at home, after opening, it's N-P-K, ugh, kills earthworms/fungi.  At least the tomato is in a pot.    

Impromptu Garden Table

Christian Dior's chateau, Château de la Colle Noire , below.  My brain fizzing with questions about purpose originally, and use now.  Was this originally a plinth for a statue or urn?
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On the right day/s, what a spot for an impromptu picnic !
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Of course, it's a rabbit hole for the brain, merely seeing this picture, not the entire garden.
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Immediately thinking of Martha Washington and her impromptu tables at Mount Vernon.  Their home a hotel of sorts, never knowing how many would be arriving for the nite, and meals.  At times they would set up long planks atop saw-horses, covered with a tablecloth, usually white, in the garden, or perhaps the piazza at front. Truly, a provincial version, of Dior's, below.
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Which would be your favorite use, below, plinth or table?



Another plinth, below, at Dior's chateau.



Pics, above, here.

Front piazza at Mount Vernon, below, overlooking the river & catching a breeze.



Pic, above, here.

A recent meal, below, at Mount Vernon.  I would rather attend a private event at Mount Vernon, in the style of Martha.  Though, would happily attend, below !

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Pic, above, here.
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What about dining in your garden?  Does the spot make you happy?  It should.
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Garden & Be Well,   XO T

Copying a Simple Historic Garden

Great minds, or, so much for original thinking?
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First, below, I noticed the rusticity, my oeuvre.
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Then searched the enfilade, how far can the eye travel?  Are there cross axis, below?
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Oddly, I sense the loss of canopy, below.  Seeing what isn't there, but had been there for many years.
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Do you see the missing trees too?
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Finally, oh my gosh, design plan, almost exactly, for my new home, a ca. 1900 American farmhouse.
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Ironic, at the front end of my career I was far too 'good/smart/unique' for a design like this, below. Me be ubiquitous, by choice?
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3 decades later, humble enough, and excited, to copy what has worked since before Christ's era, BCE.
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My iteration, George Lindsey Tabor azaleas, deer don't seem to bother Southern Indica azaleas so very much, and fruit trees, along with yet-to-be-determined trees.  Of course I could go ahead and choose all the trees, but what fun, contemplating choices.
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Instead of the water feature focal point, below, a harvest table/chairs, under an arbor, gobsmacked with white roses, 4 huge pots exploding with hydrangea, and 4 sentinels, camellias, at the far corners, beyond the Tabors.  Coming home to my first trinity, created 3 decades ago, Tara's Trinity of the Southern Garden: Azaleas, Hydrangeas, Camellias.
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Paths will be #89 granite gravel, the quarry a mile from home.
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Why so simple?  Age.  Preparing to be elderly in this home, wanting this garden to see-me-out.  Deer proof, drought proof, bug/fungal proof, unskilled labor proof, enjoyment vs. labor percentage totally in my favor, most importantly, beautiful.  A garden to be viewed from the house, and to be enjoyed within.
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More amazing, date of the garden, below, is the era of our farmhouse.
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Boxwood not included in my garden, alas the killing fungus.



Pic, above, here.
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Do not be afraid to copy.  Fact, copying is unique at each site.  Another fact, if it's pretty in another garden, it will be pretty in yours.  Last fact, gardening is recorded in written form for over 11,000 years, you will not recreate the wheel, roll with it.  Cheaper, faster, prettier to roll with it.  I got the memo, go me.  Younger, that memo was stupid & not meant for fabulous me.  How do you think I became a Garden Expert?  Made all the mistakes bigger & more thoroughly than you could ever imagine.
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Garden & Be Well,   XO T