Watering Cans: Leverage Time/Effort

Took me several years to acquire an interesting watering can collection.
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Interesting, and affordable.
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Once hunted/gathered/sited I learned they were more important as 'helpers', they leverage time/effort.
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2-4 months each summer are hot/drought.  I don't want, or like, a landscape that must be meticulously maintained, or watered.  However, there always seems to be plantings that are young/not established yet against extreme hot/dry.  Those plantings are never begrudged early nurturing.
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Having the watering can collections in prime dry positions, it's an easy pour & go.  Seeing something dry never happens when time is luxurious, dry plantings await my exodus meeting a tight timeline, then announce their thirst.  Every time, it seems.
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No worries.  The watering cans are full.
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Mosquitoes not an issue, the water never stays in long enough for breeding.  At leisure they are filled, in a rush poured.
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Along with Tess, my car, the watering cans are my top employees.



Pic, above, here.
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Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara

Bunny Mellon: Garden & Gun

Topiaries & terra cotta.  All sizes.  25 a good start.

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Enough to set about, and, trade out.  Trade weekly, prevent spider mites.  The off-exhibit, outside.

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Bunny Mellon, Garden & Gun, below.

Enough topiary & terra cotta to pass forward with Lunch Ministry.

In Vanity Fair, below, ca. August, 2010. Bunny Mellon hit my radar.  Rare, the person intentionally gardening just-like-me.  Oh my, yes.  This, below, stopped me.  A kindred spirit.  Who exactly is Bunny Mellon?  In the fullness of time, may she keep returning to your radar, as she does mine.

“Nothing should stand out. It all should give the feeling of calm. When you go away, you should remember only the peace.”  Bunny Mellon, of her beloved, Oak Spring  Farm.



Delightful YouTube about Bunny Mellon, here.
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Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara

How to Create Wall Art Using Old Tools

Their collection, below, better than most museums.

Do not know the names of 95% + of these tools.

 Do not know how to properly use most of them.

Decades of scouring for old tools, never found most of these.

 If this homeowner is in Garden Club they're a perfect venue for a monthly meeting.

There must be someone who knows all these tools and could speak about their proper use, name, era, what the earlier/later versions were, what types of wood they are made from, how the metal was forged, which parts are handmade vs. machine made, how many decades of use they encountered, which crops each tool could help with, which parts of the country they were most widely used, what is their derivation from the European counterpart, & etc.

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Each tool, silent witness to greatness.

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Pulling Earth's bounty to our benefit.

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The action feeding mind, body, spirit.

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Perhaps this is the great metaphor from Providence, personally pulling Earth's bounty.  We don't work the tools they work into us every good thing.

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Garden & Be Well,     XO Tara

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Heading off to any trip Beloved has learned he must say, "We are not going into any museums."  Luff me a local museum.  Guess who always says, "I'm glad we came in this museum."

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Asked to lecture at a huge symposium for Atlanta Botanical Garden, they gave the title, Tools.  Honored to be asked, via phone this was pre-internet, I hung up in sinking fear.  What did I just do?  How can I speak for an hour about tools?

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Straight to my 8" thick Webster's dictionary for the Latin & Greek derivations of 'tool'.

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First definition is, 'weapon'.  Interesting.  Second definition is, 'penis'.  Yes, talk was in the bag.

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You know what happened.  Have been asked to give this talk many times since !

Took pics at an open garden this spring in Buckhead, aka Atlanta, GA.

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 For a beautiful garden & home filling you with joy, become my client, local/on-line.

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Award winning speaker, hire me for your group, local/out-of-state.

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Books by Tara Dillard, Amazon

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Tara Dillard & Associates Design: farm to city pied-a-terre.

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Construction by Award Winning

Shaefer Heard Construction, licensed home-builder, renovation - new construction.  Heard's Landscaping a unit of SHC.  3 decades of service.

Gardeners: Tools to Keep in Your Car

Most days of my adult life are spent in beautiful gardens across the globe, designing gardens for future beauty, or in my own sweet garden.

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My friend Susanne Hudson's garden, below.  Girlfriend is all about her green-brown-white.

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So.  I am too.

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Susanne & I are scheduling a field trip to 3 gardens.  Negotiations are tricky.  Busy lives.

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Each garden abides in all Providence & intellect & will & a clinical passion creates.

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If you understand a 'clinical passion' for gardening (antiques, art, pets, a potager, music, books, you are my friend. )

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My newest best garden tool, below.  Stetson.  Shades without blocking peripheral vision.  

Parked in a magnolia tree at Stone Mountain Park, above/below.

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Raspberry red vintage table cloth is for emergency picnics or eating dinner out unexpectedly & needing something for the chill.  I'm a step ahead of E.M.Forster in A Room With a View.

  " I never venture forth without my mackintosh squares."  "With many a smile she produced two of those mackintosh squares that protect the frame of the tourist from damp grass or cold marble steps."  "Miss Bartlett had lost a mackintosh square. Phaethon had lost the game. That last fact was undeniable. He climbed on to the box shivering, with his collar up, ..."  

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For your clinical passion, I offer, mackintosh squares & a Stetson.

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Garden & Be Well,     XO Tara

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For a beautiful garden & home filling you with joy, become my client, local/on-line.

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Award winning speaker, hire me for your group, local/out-of-state.

                                                                                 .

Books by Tara Dillard, Amazon

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Tara Dillard & Associates Design: farm to city pied-a-terre.

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Construction by Award Winning

Shaefer Heard Construction, licensed home-builder, renovation - new construction.  Heard's Landscaping a unit of SHC.  3 decades of service.

Old Tool Bouquet a la Toile

Start collecting now.

You've seen dozens of old tool bouquets on toiles across the span of your life.

Old tools in my garage are ladies-in-waiting.

Think this bit of garden is serendipitous?  Unplanned?  Needs weeding?  A trinity of wrong.  This garden room is rustic balance with its formal companions nearby.
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Garden Design is all about contrasts.  And finding a way to hang lovely old tools.
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Garden & Be Well,   XO Tara
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Pics shot in Susanne Hudson's garden last month.  Seems old tools, old terra cotta & old tin are a new trinity.

Tools At Your Door

Keep a pair of Felco pruners at your front door & back door.  Leverage yourself in the garden.
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In addition I have baskets & hats.
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This is the Stetson my dad wore working in his garden.  Now, the Stetson I wear working in my garden.
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Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara    

Creating, & Living, In Still Life

Decades old, below, the Camellia japonica doesn't require care.  Though it does take your energy.

 The energy of appreciating beauty, picking flowers, knowing whether it's native/non-native honey bees at the stamens, giving blossoms away, floating blossoms in water & etc.

People, and plants, are energy in or energy out.
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I choose people to keep in my life who are energy in.  Plants too.
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Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara
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Last week with a client, above.  She chose her trug well knowing it would create a Still Life and be functional.    Notice the leaf litter mulch and a few weeds?  Jane Austen wrote of this type garden, it has RUSTICITIES.  Ironic to write of Landscape Design as Still Life.  They change by the split second.

Still Life: Is This You?

As she came in, below, she set her hat & pruners on the window sill.It's a peculiar fetish of mine.

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Life creating still life without effort. The detritus of your life telling a story, beautifully.

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She? I snapped the pic in Ireland. Yes, Helen Dillon.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

Don't Use This Type

Don't use a single wheeled wheelbarrow.
Double wheeled demand less physically + don't compact the soil as much.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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This girl has been ridden ROUGH. She's not old but already retired. Found at a jobsite I was working on in Charleston, SC last week. Adore the lines of a good wheelbarrow. Evocative.

SUBSIDIARY FOCAL POINT

Tucked into a boxwood, below, hidden from most views. Meow. Bamboo rake bought for aesthetics.

A neighbor, retired NAVY, taught me how to do the rake/gravel thing.

A new pleasure, dragging a bamboo rake thru gravel. Aaaah, the sound, the feel of rake thru gravel, new body movements, making swirls, curves, lines, intersections, mindlessness; but not.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

PRICING

Once, this house had the grandest view of Stone Mountain. Owning most of the land in the view too. Recently sold, its estate sale is on now. Multi-colored marble, below.

Iron security gating INSIDE the mansion, below.

Grand rooms, multiple bars, this house was built for entertaining. Now, carpets pulled up, tables

loaded with trinkets, the good stuff was leaving in several trucks as I arrived.

In the garden, above, a mailbox post completely grown thru a tree.

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Hunting old garden tools finding few. Bought 2 old swing blades. $3 each, a common price for the average old tool. Was hoping to get a better deal. Will be creating tool bouquets for my interior & exterior.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Pics taken Thursday.

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A clam rake I found in Hogansville, GA last summer set me back $12. But it's hardly average!

NOT CRAFTY

A board, mirror, old tools. Each a rescue. What would you do? Susanne Hudson made this, above, mirror. Hung on an outside wall of her carriage house.
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I'm 'not crafty' in the least but a mirror I was given & old tools are in my garage (carriage house!)
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Continuing with the 'not crafty' fact, I see pine cones on the mirror frame too. Hmm, a glue gun needed. AND, in season I see fresh hydrangea blossoms tucked into the tools & pine cones around the mirror. And, in season camellias................roses...............tea olive................gardenia.................hosta/fern foliage................hellebores.............daffodils.
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Wouldn't that be interesting, collecting a year's pics of the garden mirror?
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

THE WELL-PLACED RAKE

With wood tines this rake was bought for ornamentation. To create vignettes. Then realizing this is the rake to use on a bluestone terrace. No scratching of your stones with metal tines.

In the foreground, above, is a Pee Gee hydrangea. With dried blossoms, by the rake, is an oakleaf hydrangea. After this picture was taken I added 'Anna Belle' hydrangea.

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Oakleaf/'Anna Belle'/Pee Gee, tolerate full-sun in my zone 8 garden. Oakleaf's bloom early summer, 'Anna Belle' most of summer, Pee Gee late summer.

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The burgundy foliage? A Weeping Cut-Leaf Red Japanese Maple. Bought for 90% off at Lowe's. A hand-written sale sign for all shade trees several fall's ago. Ha, the cashier said this tree wasn't included. Hunger, lust, desire, dahlings, I had to have this tree. Yes, a $200 tree for 90% off. Had to ask the cashier for the manager, to get the sale price. Wholesale, trees this size are more than $200. Sold, $20 !!!

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What you can't realize about this vignette in my garden? It's at the front of my tiny property and neighbor's houses are EVERYWHERE. But, la-ti-da, I have my little Cotswoldian idyll and don't see them.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

LIVING AS STILL LIFE

Setting your tools down, do they look this good? I saw the gardener, as he was working, set these down as I was meandering Great Dixter in England.
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EPIPHANY.
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My gardening, without effort, should look like a still life. Just like Great Dixter.
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Now, mostly, it does.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

RETOOLING FLORAL ARRANGEMENT

Shrubs, urns, tools are the new floral design. Design techniques are the same.

But the scale is larger than life. Look close, above, old tools drape the arbor.

Fresh, silly, classic, stately, sustainable, low-maintenance, above. So old it seems new. French toile patterns date back centuries using the old tool bouquet motif.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Yes, I took these pics in Susanne Hudson's garden.

GARDEN STYLISTA

Sure, it's pretty now but what will it look like in winter? In winter hang an old iron light fixture painted an incredible color.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Pic from HOME a fabulous blog I discovered yesterday.

MONTY DON'S WHEELBARROW

Monty Don's manly wheelbarrow doesn't work for me. Why? Why waste gardening energy with a full wheelbarrow on one wheel?
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If you're serious about low maintenance gardening choose a 2-wheeled wheelbarrow.
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A 2-wheeled wheelbarrow works for you, balancing weight vs. you balancing weight with hands-arms-chest muscles.
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WHO IS MONTY DON? Ha, he's the best. Discovered him thru his book, The Prickotty Bush. I read it each January. If you like gardening in the least, get this book.
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I'm quite serious about the wheelbarrow. Remember, 2 wheels. Of course if the 1-wheeler came with Monty Don, hmmmmmmmmm !!
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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pic via 1st link which includes tidbits from his recent book, delicious.