Scenes from the Garden

I took lots of pictures today of the flower garden. Yesterday we finished about two thirds of the rock wall border around the butterfly garden, and we'll finish it later today. We're picking up large rocks around the property, carting them back to the garden, and cementing them in place. It's back-breaking work but the results are beautiful and really neaten up the garden's appearance.




We are still fussing with the paths in the flower garden.  We have the slate pathway stones, but they're of uneven thickness and we're struggling with what to use as a base that will keep back the weeds yet provide even footing.  Landscape fabric is a no-brainer, but what do we use for the base rocks? Sand washed into the shade garden and almost killed my plants. We bought two different size bags of stones at the garden center, but John doesn't like either. I'm not crazy about them either. I could live with them, but they don't feel right. We just can't find what we need.   Something natural, something in between the two sizes of rocks...I feel like Goldilocks from the old fairy tale; nothing is quite right!

The garden is mostly green but everything is ready to bloom. In about a week, if the flowers bloom as I think they will, I'll take more photos for you to compare the before and after!

Scented Geranium Adventure

I love geraniums. They're beautiful, easy to grow, withstand almost anything from drought to cool temperatures, and hummingbirds love them. And they're cheap. Lowe's had regular geraniums on sale for $1 a piece last weekend. What's not to love about that?

Some people dislike geraniums for the strong scent from their leaves. The scent is caused by geraniosol, a chemical exuded by the plant, and I think you either love it or hate it. My husband hates the smell. I love it because it reminds me of the window boxes on our dining room windows when I was a kid in Floral Park. It's strong, all right, and if you get the smell on your hands be prepared to keep smelling it for a while no matter how much you wash.

Scented geraniums are another story altogether. Their leaves smell like lemon, orange, apples, you name it and someone has hybridized it. I had my White Flower Farm gift certificate from my sister to spend. I bought my Bloomerang Lilac but had a few bucks left over, so I browsed the site to see what I could buy. Ah! Scented geraniums! I'd always wanted one. My choices were limited to two, so I added an apple scented one to the order.

Well it came. And into the flower garden it went. But I'm not going to be sniffing it any time soon. To my nose, the leaves smell like a horrid cross between Raid bug killer and Vicks Vapo Rub. Shudder. This scent is not conjuring up images of barrels of red cheeked apples, that's for sure. Maybe it's my nose. The flowers are small, pink and dainty and the leaves quite interesting too. But my husband keeps pointing to it and asking, "Is that a weed?" And I keep having to explain, "No, that's my scented geranium..." which necessitates a touch of the leaves and the accompanying exclamation of disgust. It's like I have a really unique conversation piece, only it's not the conversation you want to have in the garden....

What do you think of scented geraniums?

For Want of a Watering Can

Landscape, Landscaping and Gardening Advice For the Main Line

My latest article for MainLine Gardening, a garden center near Philadelphia, on the pleasures of owning a good quality watering can - and the necessity of owning good watering products for the garden.

Enjoy...

Saving Money on Gardening

I wasn't always frugal by nature. But during the eleven years we saved to build our house and launch our freelance careers (and yes, it took ELEVEN years) I learned how to save every nickel and dime. And that goes for gardening. Especially gardening.

It would be really easy for me to go hog wild in the garden and buy every plant I crave. I'd love, for example, to collect iris; I'm smitten with them. Hey, your taste may be different from mine, but we've all got our favorites, and we all need to rein in our vices!


To keep my hobby spending in check, here's what I do to save money in the garden. Why not share your tips in the comments section?

• Wait for Sales: Everyone loves a sale. This weekend, Lowe's will have an 89 cent sale on six packs of annuals. Last week they had a sale of $1 on pink geraniums. Okay, so they were all pink, but I have three new window boxes to fill and the pink will look great with some cascading blue lobelia. Wait for sales!

• Discount Rack: Another thing I have noticed is that when shrubs, annuals and perennials stop blooming or look even the slightest bit trampled on, Lowe's and some of the other retailers around here put them on the clearance rack. And you can pick up some great bargains. I planted two new miniature rose bushes (each $2, marked down from $9.99), several perennials for $1.50 each (marked down from $6.99) and John's dad scored an azalea for just $2 this week! The flowers were gone and it looks a bit wilted, but it will be fine for the flower garden. I snag seeds at Wal Mart and the local dollar store for 20 cents a package and big packs of bulbs for $1 and $5. Love my discount racks!

• Share: I swap plants with my friend Patty. She's got some of my butterfly bush seedlings, and she gave me a nandina shrub and some beautiful purple ajuga reptans that's really doing a great job crowding out the weeds under the wisteria in the flower garden. I send seeds to my sister (and I save and use seeds such as marigolds, morning glories, zinnias, and gaillardia.) Another neighbor gave me old windows from a gymnasium his construction company was changing to an auditorium. They're parked behind the garden shed, awaiting next fall when I can build a little greenhouse or cold frame. And he also volunteered his tobacco sticks for me to use as tomato supports. Our little area of Virginia was once a major growing center for tobacco, and when he bought his farm down the road, the barns were full of tall pointed sticks that were once used to harvest and hang tobacco. He can't use them all so he offered them to me for plant supports. In exchange, I've sent him home with bottles of agave syrup after I found I was allergic to it and cookbooks for his wife to peruse. It's all about sharing!

• Make Your Own: I made a support for my Blaze rose out of pine branches that came down in the winter snow. I used rocks the size of baseballs or bricks found around the property to edge my garden. I make plant markers out of old Venetian blind slats and cut up frosting cans. I rip apart rags to make ties for my tomatoes. I make mini hot houses out of clean milk containers cut in half. What clever ways do you make your own gardening supplies?

Because of all these little cost cutting measures, I can invest in things that will last - like the metal trellis at the entrance to my garden, the flagstones, and the fence around the vegetable garden.

What clever cost cutting measures do you use in the garden to get more garden for you buck?

Random Wednesday: I Found My Metaphor

Wednesdays are rather random here in the offices of Seven Oaks, my writing and consulting business. Starting in the spring, I try to work half days on Wednesday, leaving the afternoon open for gardening. In the morning I tidy up a client's website, write a few pieces, check my email and generally sign off if I can in the afternoon and head out for an extra hour or two of planting, weeding and digging. But by gosh it is COLD out today, a dismal 50-something, gray, dank and drizzly. I've got eggplants to plant, petunias to add, and tomatoes to water. Unless the sun peeks out sometime today, gardening is going to wait. Instead of gardening, I decide to read a little. I picked up a new book I bought by one of my favorite authors, Emmet Fox. And there, starting me in the second or third little article in this compilation of his writings is the metaphor I have been searching for whenever I poke a bit of fun at the "Law of Attraction" coaches that haunt the perimeter of my business. Bingo, Mr. Fox; your cafeteria metaphor, comparing life to a big buffet table where we must take action to receive the bounty, is exactly what I have been searching for.

So it's not gardening, it's not really religion, but it is something of great meaning to me - and I share with you my latest article.

Law of Attraction Tips: Cafeteria Approach

Flower Garden Ideas for Containers and Windowboxes

John is busy making me flower boxes to hang off the porch railing out front, and in fact he just came back from a trip to Lowe's with the perfect trailing annuals - lobelia - to go with the pink geraniums I picked up last weekend. My dad always had flower boxes on our home in Floral Park. The first time I saw a hummingbird, I was sitting at the dining room table eating dinner. My chair faces the window with the flower boxes planted with red geraniums. I saw the flash of green and the telltale hum. I'll never forget it! I now put out hummingbird feeders, but I always plant geraniums, either in pots or window boxes, near the front of my home.

To me, geraniums symbolize welcome. And no, this isn't a picture of my home, although I sure wish it was a little cottage I owned somewhere.

Here are some more flower garden ideas in my latest article -

Flower Garden Ideas or Containers and Windowboxes

Pretty in Pink

Busy day today (my two favorite destinations - the library and garden center, followed by marathon weeding and planting. Followed by the next Sue Grafton mystery. I am just discovering her mystery series. Ah, the pleasures of a good book!) but thought I'd share these photos from the garden today. The song "Pretty In Pink" popped into my head when I wandered out this morning with the camera. Everything blooming now is pink, from the azaleas just starting to blossom to the huge mounds of phlox everywhere. Even the wildflowers that seeded the flower garden paths are pink! (and excuse the weeds along the path in the picture, they are growing faster than I can pull them, and I have so many volunteers self seeded everywhere I'm just waiting to see what's what before I pull stuff up.) And to accent everything - purple. Purple violets, purple pansies, purple silver leaf lamium and purple ajuga growing under - what else? - my purple wisteria.



Happy Saturday, Happy Gardening!


Good luck to Janet Oberholtzer today. She is a friend of a friend, a fellow writer and blogger, and running a marathon today - see her blog post "Hope Wins" here and you'll know why I am rooting for her.

Attacked by a Lovesick Bee

I love my office. It's in the tower of our Victorian-style home. My desk is tucked under the windows and as I write, I can glance outside and view the flower gardens, the orchard, the woods. It's a lovely work space, light and bright. After 20 years of writing on such fine desks as a rickety card table (complete with my mom's old manual Royal typewriter that dropped the e's) and a desk wedged into the dormer in the living room of our apartment, I am grateful beyond words for my pretty, spacious office. With windows. Lots of windows. My last desk at  when I was a marketing manager was a gray cubicle in a cubicle "farm" - picture hundreds of cubicles lined up in rows on one city block - at 2 Penn Plaza, right above Penn Station in Manhattan, with a view of a brick wall, Macy's Herald Square and 7th Avenue. Except that I was far from the windows so I didn't have much of a view except the back of the head of the girl who sat next to me. I hate cubicles. Whoever invented them should be consigned to eternity sitting in one and trying to work.

But I digress....

With temperatures soaring to 90 this week, my office became unbearably hot. As a freelancer I have the flexibility to set my own schedule or work elsewhere. So I'd work in my office from 7 a.m until around 2pm. Then I had the bright idea to take my laptop out onto the deck and write outside. How pleasant, I thought dreamily as I set up shop on the picnic table on our deck. I plugged in the garden fountain. The scent of hyacinths perfumed the air. My laptop booted up. And then...

WHIZZZ......dive bombed from above.

With a scream and I shout, I jumped up. I'd been attacked by a large bee!

We'd seen him hovering outside the sliding doors that lead onto the deck. Now I realized he was still hovering there. Only now he was angry. Good and angry.

WHIZZZ....it was like being in the old World War I movies with an airplane dive bombing you.
"Shadow!" I screamed. "help! Protect!" My German Shepherd dog looked up from her place near the railing, yawned, and went back to sleep. This is a dog who chases and snaps at wasps. But she didn't care much for my bee.

WHIZZ....it was in my hair!

With a scream and a shout, I packed up my laptop, grabbed the dog, and hurried inside, slamming the screen door in time to lock the warring bee outside.

This was no ordinary bee. I set my laptop up on the kitchen table and did a quick search. I had a hunch, by the way he'd been hovering outside the door for a few days that he had other plans. He was also quiet, not buzzing - except when he was dive bombing my head.

Sure enough, my search gave me the answer. He was a carpenter bee. His hovering and air dances were to attract a mate. My lovesick Romeo bee was protecting "his" deck and "his" territory. And the fact that getting tangled in my hair hadn't resulted in a sting became apparent when I identified his species; the male carpenter bee has no stinger. The female has a large stinger and will sting to protect her nest. Carpenter bees are generally harmless. They eat pollen like bumble bees, but tunnel into wood to lay their eggs. Each female is solitary and they do not create a hive, but rather mate sort of like birds, with the female creating a tunnel in wood to lay her eggs.

No sign of a female yet. Maybe they don't like his dancing? Poor Romeo. This morning I checked and yes..he's still hovering and making his intricate dance steps in the air. I wish him luck, but hope he moves back into the woods soon. I'd really like to sit out on the deck and write one of these days!

Daffodils in the Orchard

The 400+ bulbs we planted in the fruit orchard are blooming. They are blooming in successive waves, rather than one gigantic "hurrah!" First came the yellow crocus around the fruit trees, then the purple and purple striped. Next the clusters of daffodils began to bloom, starting at the top of the hill - the western end of the orchard - with more blossoms unfurling daily, marching steadily eastward. Over the years, we hope the daffodils naturalize and spread, creating a golden carpet under showers of pink and white apple, peach, pear and plum blossoms.


Enjoy the photos, taken yesterday before last night's amazing and scary thunderstorms. The fruit trees are still small and caged in chicken wire to keep deer from nibbling.

Fountains of Phlox

Fountains of phlox flow everywhere at this time of year. As you drive the back roads in Virginia, neighbors have planted phlox along embankments, by mailboxes, and along slopes too steep to cut with the riding mower or tractor. You'll be driving along, turn the corner, and like a trumpet blast, there's a river of bright pink or magenta careening over the rocks on an embankment. Set against blooming white dogwoods, a native tree here that flowers at the same time, and spires of tall white flowering pears, it's like an artist took a brush and just slashed the landscape with color.


We planted phlox along the front walk, grouped in front of the azaleas, and a few in the flower garden. Now that we know they love it here and the garden ones spread out, we bought another 10 this weekend. I added them to the steep slope in the flower garden that grows dandelions and nothing else. Hopefully by next year, we'll see the start of our own rivers and fountains of phlox!

Phlox is amazing. It's hardy. It spreads out, and where it grows, weeds dare not follow. Occasionally the deer will chomp the flowers off, but they leave the plants, and the plants send forth new flowers in defiance. Add some rocks or plant them among rocky outcrops in your garden and you've got an automatic flower garden. I never water them, fertilize them or do anything other than admire them. How much better does a plant get than this?

Today's photos are all stock files from Morguefile, but they looked so much like our garden that I thought it okay to cheat a little!

Orchard Blooms

This has been the most glorious week of spring weather I can remember, either here in Virginia or in New York. Perfect. It's as if Mother Nature is saying gently, "I'm so sorry for all that snow and ice. Here; spring." Like a gift. Each day, brilliant gem-like blue skies with wispy white clouds. A waning full moon still visible at dawn, while the sun spreads crimson and gold across the horizon. Temperatures at night in the thirties, but soaring to the seventies and eighties by day. The peach trees in our orchard are blooming with abandon. The mature tree we purchased from Lowe's is blooming gloriously as pictured, but the smaller siblings are putting their effort into only a handful of blossoms. The crab apple trees are about to bloom. The apple trees in the orchard have leaves, but no blooms. The plums, on the other hand, look like they're trying to outdo the peaches and will soon shower fragrant white blossoms on us. All of our trees in the fruit orchard, with the exception of one cherry tree, survived the harsh winter. We're heading out tomorrow to get a replacement cherry tree. Hopefully another mature tree, like the peach we replaced, will struggle less and produce faster. And yes, the entire orchard is managed through organic gardening methods. While we do spray, we use only organic sprays, compost and mulch.

It's Good Friday. I have no reflection to offer. Last night's Holy Thursday celebration overwhelmed me with its grace, beauty, and spiritual meaning. I have been to many Holy Thursday Masses, and last night's Mass at our simple little church was one of the most moving I have participated in. Thank you God for our little church family and our spiritual leaders.

We are heading out today to scope out materials to finish off the perennial garden. John is bound and determined to get the cement work done this April. I think he's being optimistic, but who am I to argue? Whatever we can get finished before the hot weather begins, the better.

Today's pictures...yes, that's Seven Oaks and yes, that's our best peach tree. My mouth is watering in the hope and anticipation of peaches, but who knows what the season brings...

Holy Thursday Reflection

Holy Thursday marks the start of the holiest days in the year for Christians everywhere. Tonight at St. Theresa's, the little Catholic church I attend in the middle of nowhere, I'll sit in the choir section, singing and and participating in a ritual that's happening all over the world. It's one of the great joys and beauties of being Catholic - the comfort of a truly worldwide family, participating in the Lord's Last Supper with you, everywhere. It's the comfort of holy ritual. The Mass begins as it always does, but midway through, it changes. We are suddenly confronted with the symbolism of Christ at the last supper in the form of the priest, kneeling and washing the feet of people, like the slaves in Jesus' time did. And when you think about - the Master who was honored with hosannas as he entered Jerusalem washing the dirty, smelly, nasty feet of the disciples (in the days of walking around in sandals through dirt and animal dung) but a few days later, you get a much better glimpse into the deeper truth into his actions. What we are supposed to do for one another, not just pay lip service to. It's ritual with meaning.

We had another Holy Thursday night ritual growing up; the ritual of finding the un-holey sock. My dad was an usher at our church for many, many years. He was also one of the "apostles" getting his feet washed on Holy Thursday night. I was the only kid in the family who attended that Mass. I'd stand with my dad in the bedroom, and we'd look together through his socks to find one without the big toe poked out. Hey, if you have to take your shoes and socks off in front of your entire church, might as well find a nice pair!

The last time we did that ritual together, my dad kind of ruined it for me. He's bought a new pair of Gold Toe socks at J.C. Penney. It wasn't the same - unwrapping them - but it certainly saved time.

In all seriousness, the symbolism of the priest taking off his fancy robes, tying a towel or an apron around himself, kneeling and washing the feet of people who volunteer their time and talents during the year at church is always very moving for me. Deacon Greg had a wonderful homily on Beliefnet today which I will link to for the real, deep meaning of this symbolism. It's service, pure and simple. I often joke that I'm the world's worst Catholic, which means don't look to me to be an expert. I'm still learning. I can, however, link you over to Deacon Greg's homily - let the deacon explain it. He does a great job. The Anchoress today also had a wonderful thought-provoking piece about the contemplation of the crucifix that is well worth the time to read it. I write stories about the people I knew in between tales from the garden; I don't think I could pull together essays the way they do. So learn from them, and return here for a humble, butt-in-the pew Catholic trying to muddle through Christianity as best she can and not make too much of a mess of it.


With love on this blessed start to our holy days,
- Jeanne