A Garden View: Economic

5 weeks without rain, happy to be working in mud, below, after Wednesday's showers. 

 Could not get pine straw wholesale yesterday.  No laborers to bale, they're picking onions.  The pinestraw available is filthy, and expensive.  Known for a year we've lost a segment of our population.  Do you know what it means, filthy/expensive pinestraw?  The native labor force is incompetent. 

 Blue stone is half the price of gray crab orchard stone.  Asphalt driveways are more expensive than concrete driveways.   Our materials costs are what we installed entire jobs for, less than a year ago.  Lewis Carroll facts.  All reality today.

Sourcing plants is changing my Landscape Designs.  Many common plants are unavailable.   Canopy hardwood trees across metro Atlanta are dying.  Densely shaded neighborhoods I've designed in for decades have expanses larger than several football fields of open blue sky.  Gone with their shade is pollinator habitat & watershed management. 
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Business is thriving.
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Due entirely to the human spirit.
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Clients the past 3-4 years have been engaged, seeking joy, beauty, and I think, grace.  Investing money intuitively knowing their home/garden renovation is a safe/enriching place for it, and more importantly their time. 
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Carl Jung said, "Our lives are about getting our outside to match our inside."
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Garden & Be Well,     XO Tara
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Pics taken Wednesday at a jobsite.  Steep mud, 1 of the guys had to help me from slipping, falling, sinking.  I did all 3.