Rays

I just love this photo, so I'm placing it here.
Apparently somewhere off the Yucatan Peninsula.

Rainbow Mums

Stumpy's about to get some company!!

This week I stopped in at this wonderful perennial garden farm in Carlisle, MA - Rainbow Mums and I know that I'll be going back there soon!

The owners, Kathy and Mark showed me all around and took all kinds of time with me to share ideas about what kinds of perennials might work well together and in what conditions....and just shared with me their deep love and tremendous beauty of their place!

Their main premise is to provide people with their own home-grown specialty perennials -especially concentrating on fall blooms. The "selling point" that got me was the large size of their plants and the most reasonable prices they sell them at! I don't have to wait 3 years for these perennials to fill in...they're ready to POP!, fill in garden space, and just beautifully catch your eye! They have acres and acres of gardens and plants to show you and love to share all kinds of good info and tid-bits about each individual plant.

The plants that I bought from them are just gorgeous and hearty/hardy (is there a difference between these two words?!), and are ready to up-grade my garden look and fullness in a minute (well, maybe a few hours...after all this heavy rain, I still have to put them in the ground!!)

Check out their website...better yet, take a field trip there and enjoy the beautiful grounds that they've created. They've got beautiful Hostas (yes, I've finally started to admit that Hostas are beautiful!); gorgeous Ornamental Grasses; Black-eyed Susans; Echinacea; Asters, Ferns, Mums, ground covers and so much more!


http://rainbowmums.com/index.html

I'll add some pictures from our place once they're all planted!

Stumpy

When we first moved here over 5 years ago there was a broken down chain link fence that surrounded the house. Along with taking care of almost everything else that we did on the inside of the house to make it more habitable (the toilet that didn't work; the shower that was only dribble-force for over a year; the paneling and endless layers of wallpaper that covered the bare plywood walls; and the list could go on and on...!), one raw March day Ace attacked the outside fence. With wire snips and a Saws-All, he got the unsightly chain link fence into smaller sizes, rolled those pieces up and stacked them on the side of the garage. He then took the Saws-All and went at the fence poles and their cement footings that held them into the ground. It was quite a chore.

When spring and summer finally rolled around I eyeballed the yard and thought about what to do with it. After years of putting in pretty nice sized gardens in the couple of places that we'd rented, I just shook my head and realized that any thoughts of gardening were going to have to be delayed until some major cleaning up took place.

And, that's just what I did the first three summers...I didn't put a plant in the ground. All I did was hack away at the side yard beside the garage where I had friend, Rob chainsaw dead tree after dead tree down, and even a few live ones. It was thick with brush and weeds and most of all trash...bottles, plastic bags, broken toys....just piles and piles of trash!

Whenever anyone asked me how my gardening was going, I'd always shake my head and say, "I haven't gotten to "creative mode" yet, I feel like I'm still in clean-up crew/destructo mode!" Even though I was cleaning up alot of the stuff, I still wasn't feeling the urge to plant anything or create anything new. Once enough of the rubble was removed I could slowly feel the vision for what was next.

The first step was to get some mulch dropped off....I mean a major truck load! I called Jack and Debbie and Jack had it piled up in that side yard the next day. It was a big pile! Everyone who drove by asked if I intended to cover our whole yard with mulch! Oh no, I had another idea...and soon, actually after another truck load and two summers of working it, I spread it all out in the area next to the garage. Once that was done and a few yard brush fires later to clean up the remaining brush, I could finally start to look to the front yard. Three years! (It was pointed out to me that in my zealous efforts to clear things out that I actually cut down my neighbor's dead trees and cleared brush in about ten-by-sixty feet of his yard! Ah well, he got some free property improvements!)

When I finally put my attention to the front yard I saw the real "Stumpy" for first time. That was the nickname that I chose to call this 4-foot tall and 2-foot wide stump that was left in our front yard. For some reason, whoever chose to cut it down left a sizable amount of it still standing. It looked awkward and out of place and I just couldn't focus on what my next step would be to spruce up our front yard until I dealt with Stumpy.

I thought about cutting it down, but that seemed an unnecessary expense at that time. As I continued to dwell on Stumpy's fate, it dawned on me that perhaps the best, most fertile soil anywhere in my yard was inside of Stumpy. One day I went out with my little gardening tools and just kept hacking away at the inside of this stump and, indeed, the soil was very peaty and once chopped up, somewhat light and workable.

As if in a trance, I added some potting mix to this peaty mixture and planted some seeds in it, just to see what would happen. Soon, my snow peas were coming up and as I excitedly tended them I decided to splurge on a couple more plants. Stumpy soon had a light green fluffy top of Artemesia (Wormwood), to which I added another more spikey blue-green ornamental grass...with all of the shelf fungus and other "things" that were starting to grow at the base of the stump as well as on the bark itself, Stumpy's "personality" was starting to take shape!! A sort of whimsical, quirky and goofy look, but much more presentable than being just a drab stump with nothing to do!

One day I found his face and decided to place it on him. All year round now, Stumpy has a different look to "his" personality. In the spring I eagerly await the new growth from last year to pop up out of the top of Stumpy. And, every summer now I place in some new and different plants to add to his seasonal look. In the fall he gets more of a harvest/autumnal look often with Chrysanthemums crowning him. And, in the winter, Stumpy bears through the elements, often covered with mounds of snow, but still managing to peek through and give passer-bys a smile! My eight year old neighbor, Virginia, loves to come by and check out what latest things are growing in or on Stumpy. She's even taken to calling him, Stumpy, too!

Slowly, but surely, the front yard will develop its own look, and Stumpy, if still able to stand (his bark is rapidly peeling off this summer?!), will be a part of that look. Whimsical, quirky, and goofy...but, certainly not your ordinary, drab-looking stump with nothing to do!

Fun in the Sun

We had a great week last week at a tiny little cottage in Humarock. Ace had just finished a big, long-term paint job and needed a break, and this last minute opening came up for a tiny beachside cottage. So we jumped at it.

We stayed right on the beach in a sweet little old-style cottage, falling asleep and waking up to the crashing of the waves just outside our sliding screen door.

The days were sunny, but the water was a tad brisk...like -immediately numbing to the ankles! However, on our last day the wind shifted from off shore and miraculously the temperature of the water was actually okay, so we dove in. (Okay, I didn't dive in...I never do, even when it's bathwater!) My friend Pam, however, who lives down there and is a "Professional Beach Queen", does, indeed just 1, 2, 3 dive right in!... I guess if you're used to diving in on New Year's Day as she and her son regularly do, it's nothing to just hop in in July, no matter what the temps...especially when you can come right back out and immediately warm up in the hot sun again!

Ace had his own "Cairns Festival." As you can see with the photos, he spent some time (or, meditation, as he chose to call it), perfecting his rock stacking techniques. By the end, I was calling him "The Ace of Cairns." One couple stopped by the cottage and asked about them as they examined his examples that spread across the deck. They admitted to sneaking up a day earlier and checking them out, then headed back to their cottage to share with their family this "fun activity!" But, they somehow weren't as successful as Ace in their methods, so they came back to take a second look and learn some tips from the Master! I don't think they quite saw it as the meditative experience that the "Ace of Cairns" did, they seemed to be approaching it more from an Olympic event...who could build the tallest one!

Our final night there we experienced one crash-bang-up thunder and lightning storm. For about a half hour we saw the storm moving toward us from the distance. Soon enough, lightning cracked all around us and thunder booms shook the tiny cottage. In the face of a storm like this, in a tiny little cottage, we felt pretty tiny too. At least we had the shelter of the little cottage to watch the show from and even as the power flickered on and off, we were in awe of it all.

Great walks every day, meditative cairn building, wonderful weather, relaxing beach time, glorious sunsets over the river, and the never-ending ocean right in front of us every day...ah, nothing like some time at the beach.

Algae Power!

http://www.valcent.net/s/Home.asp

I'm not sure that I fully understand what he's talking about or how they're doing it...but, I want to like what I'm hearing! A future energy source made from algae...and they can "control" the type of algae and exactly what level of power it can provide. (I think that's what I understood?!)

Valcent also has developed some vertical growth techniques for plants that could prove quite space efficient for growing vegetables.

They've even developed some skin care products from algae...

Ah, the lowly algae gets its day in the sun!!

I'm sure once you dig into their site you'll learn more than what I've shared here...I know I'm going to!! I understand they're from Vancouver, BC and El Paso, TX, no less!

You stock market dabblers can even check into their stock stats - http://www.valcent.net/s/StockInfo.asp

Out of the Mouths of Babes

Our beautiful friend, Brother Joe Kotula, just sent us this link...

powerful words...

apparently from 1992...

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where is she today?....a force to contend with in the future?!

http://nbnl.globalwhelming.com/2008/06/15/severn-cullis-suzuki-un-speech-at-12-year-old-review-on-time-at-22-year-old/

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http://www.skyfishproject.org/

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The Beauty of Perennials

I finally got a chance to get back out into the yard and work on some of my gardening efforts from last year. As I was weeding some crabgrass out of the area on the side of the road where I'd planted an edging of Catnip and Hostas, I had to keep one eye out over my shoulder as cars fly up to this corner certainly paying no attention to any roadside gardeners.

During one quiet period when I was absorbed in cleaning up the unwanted crabgrass, I heard someone say something. I looked up and saw a woman walking by on the other side of the road. She was commenting on how lovely the flowers looked and asked if they were Lavender plants. Indeed the splays of light purple flowers that have blossomed on the Catnip do look pretty nice as they stretch out along the roadside. I explained to the admirer that, no, this was Catnip, and that I'd planted it there because I knew it would spread, as well as thrive, even in this lousy, sandy, side-of-the-road soil. I also said to her that, more importantly, I just want to cover all parts of our lawn with anything that grows well on its own, and therefore makes it less for me to have to mow! And, that was before all the talk about the price of gas going up, up, up! Now I've come to realize - for more reasons than just my sprawling catnip that I've become a perennial lover!

As she walked on, I thought back to my efforts of last summer working on the side of the road trying to make this patch of our property a little bit nicer to look at and provide us with an area that we wouldn't need to mow. I had to laugh at the number of times after all my days and hours of effort, I'd look out the window and see a car pulled over, tires crushing onto my bank of plants; or, last fall when the Town workers took down the big dying Maple from across the road and seemed to need to use our yard as their staging area...feet of the wood chipper planted firmly onto my bed of plants! The steady winter snows brought snowplow after snowplow down this road constantly pushing these heavy piles around, making me certain that my efforts with these plants was for naught. Even this spring Town workers from another department came to patch up the road at the corner, and apparently again needed this exact area to place their heavy paver while they spread new tar onto the road. Geesh, as if I hadn't placed these plants in tough conditions anyway...now all this!

But, inspite of all that rough mistreatment, my hardy Catnip and Hostas have survived, and are indeed thriving! I have to smile at the size of them, remembering I'd purchased the almost dying, dried out 6" plants for half-price and as I dug them in, shook my head with uncertainty while looking at the sandy soil that they were going into as I wished them, "Good Luck!"

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Now, I'm happy to say that the heartiest of them has spread to over two-feet in diameter and the bees are delighted to swarm around their delicate little purple flowers. And, along with drawing some compliments from passerbys, I now don't have to mow that whole 40' x 4' swath! As I look out at the rest of the yard I realize that now I'm going to have to get out there and put in some more perennials to add to its beauty and reduce my yard and mow-time even more!