Category Archives: Gardens
Episode 8: Tales from the Monarch Nursery
Episode 7: A Week in the Life
Episode 6: In Which the Garden Gets the Better of Me
Or, to use the modern day vernacular, EPIC. GARDEN. FAIL.
Around the Garden: June
Take II on this one. I explain within the movie. As a little hint, at one point Steve popped his head out to see what was going on and Seraphina told him, “Sshhhhh Daddy! Mommy is making a movie and only I’m allowed to interrupt it!”
A Rainy Morning Walk and Talk Through My Kitchen Garden
Or, “Why My Shoes Look Like This”, because apparently I don’t have enough sense to go put on rain boots.
Also known as, “Why I Ended Up Serving My Kids Pickles in the Car for Breakfast on the way to Church”
It’s like Wild Kingdom around here. I failed to mention that later in the same day of the believed mountain lion sighting, the bear that plagued us all through last summer made an appearance, much larger than before, but just as comfortable as ever in our front yard.
Also, Mairi’s friend is the sister of a band member, not the brother. It’s just that I hit my head a lot and say silly things sometimes.
Matchy-matchy for Father’s Day dinner. Hey look, I actually put on rain boots! I made us these linen dresses sometime back in November. The discolored dots are raindrops!
On My Needles
My second set of videos are now live! Yes, I said set, because it’s in two parts again. It seems that my camera only likes to record for just over 20 minutes, but based on my first two attempts, I seem to like to talk for approximately 24 minutes. So I’m either going to have to learn to talk faster or to say less!
A long-time blog reader told me that watching these videos is like imagining a character in a book and then meeting that character and being totally surprised. The really funny thing is that it’s the same for me! How I look, how I sound, my style of speech… all totally strange and interesting to me. Really? That’s me?? If didn’t have the experience of recording it, I don’t know that I would believe it!
Show notes down below….
My poor trashed garden….
Patterns:
The Mini Wrap by Fox & Folk
Isis Tailcoat (because I misspoke twice for goodness sake) by Kari-Helene Rane
The No Frills Cardigan by PetiteKnits
Thrysos Yoked Blouse by Teresa Gregorio
Around the Garden: May 2019
Let’s just pretend that it hasn’t been nearly a year since I last posted, shall we? I’ll try to explain some day. Here is a little video that I made the other day.
a birthday date
Steve’s birthday just past and we made a long weekend of it. Saturday an outing for just the two of us, Sunday a bit of a family celebration and Monday, by his request- trying and somewhat succeeding to do as near to nothing as possible.
I got entirely dolled up for our brunch outing (possibly more on that later). It was a gift of sorts. As we were sitting and eating I caught the eye of a beleaguer looking mother, trying to herd her young ones out the door. The somewhat desperate look on her face! It was like I could read her thoughts. Because they have been my thoughts so many times. It was a fleeting moment of mixed emotion that basically amounted to, “It must be nice to have the time, space, and energy for appearances. I’d rather like that sort of luxury myself, but clearly that is not my lot. I bet you take it for granted.” Just a split second, a glimpse of a thought, before landing squarely back in the world of, “No, no don’t run towards the street!”, “Please get that out of your mouth,”, “People don’t really like it when you bring sticks into a restaurant dear.” In a way that probably makes me somewhat awful, it was rather flattering to be on the opposite side of this exchange. Oh, but I empathized with her. I really and truly did. In my own jealousy (I guess that’s the best word. Maybe envy is better?) it’s less about what the other person actually looks like and more about how they obviously took the time to care for themselves. Which implies that they had the time. That is what I find desirable and often unobtainable. And I think I read more into it then I should about priorities and the ease of the other person’s life. I wanted to go and hug her frazzled self and tell her that she should see me most days, carry a toddler and a bag for her and help with the door.
After brunch we visited a vintage clothing shop. Which primarily consisted of us identifying articles that easily could have come out of the past wardrobes of our various relatives. My trying on outrageous glasses and hats to make him laugh. And my being made fun of for pseudo-secretly harboring an embarrassing desire to wear all of the pink chiffon garments that everyone else finds hilariously hideous.
We walked the sidewalk sale of a funky, artisan town and briefly visited an arboretum…sadly too late to tour the conservatories. But that was lovely and I wish we had longer there. Highlights for me included the immense Japanese umbrella pine that Steve is standing under in the picture above. A big, beautiful 100+ year old ginkgo, and Cinnamon Vine (both pictured above) which I had never heard of before. I found it by it’s scent which I trailed across the garden. It’s this sort of intoxicating floral/cinnamon that had me vowing to add it to our own garden. Then I came home and started to read up on it, learning that it’s considered invasive and you have to plant it every year and do special things to propagate it and so forth, at which point it all started to sound like too much trouble and I figured I’d just be better off occasionally sniffing a spice bottle instead.
February
Frozen
Enchanting
Beautiful
Remarkable
Unusual
Arctic like
Rosey
Yummy
Calendar stitching and poem by: Galen
We had a mild beginning to winter. There was snow, but just in a general solid coating sort of way, not a burrow through and where on earth to put it all? Sort of way. The kind of snow that people south of us get excited about and we don’t even really notice. Or bother to shovel. And then suddenly heaps and heaps all at once. Now, what? I don’t exactly know what to make of it, but it’s warm and melty. A late winter and perhaps now an early spring? I’ll not let myself get too attached to that idea. I wake up every morning exhausted. The urge to hibernate is strong. But as the light strengthens I can feel a boost in my own resilience and I crave more from life.
Every evening that I’m able I bundle Seraphine into a sled and go out for a walk. I watch the colors wash across the evening sky, no two walks quite the same and often wish for my camera when it’s been left at home, but there is no capturing it. By the time we get back it’s gone.
Steve had emergency surgery and has been home recovering for all but 3 days this month so far. He will be fine, but getting back to regular life is slow. It was a fairly minor procedure, but with a long and painful recovery.
Meanwhile our young one who has been fairing poorly this past year miraculously and inexplicably started to grow well again two days before Christmas. And for a month there was nothing but increasing strength and joy. And I set to work trying to reclaim some sense of normalcy in our family rhythms, in our school day, even in how we relate to one another. Re-entry is a challenge, a very welcome one, but tricky all the same. The last few weeks things have slipped a bit, with concerning symptoms starting to arise again. I know not where life will go from here.
I finished my birthday book and enjoyed it thoroughly. The first part is a memoir including some raw glimpses of depression and a life-style gone ire, but also of hope, deep love, and devotion as well. The second part would really only be of interest to someone who knows many plants by name and cares about the yearly cycle of a garden and wants to picture different flowers juxtaposed in their mind’s eye, all of which suited me just fine!
February is poetry month here. One of those little markers of the year that defines the feeling of a month and has for so many years that I don’t even have to plan it any longer, it just is. Most of the books for the children this year came from the Poetry for Young People collection.
And here is one by Mairi, just because I thought it was rather clever for a second grader…
Mairi
Aren’t
I
Right?
I am!
This is also the season for desperately drooling over gardening books. I read The Sensuous Garden probably a decade ago now, long before I had ever heard of Montagu, a.k.a. Monty Don, and it made such a strong impression on me. It’s not about the technical aspects of gardening, nor is it really about design, it’s about how a garden feels, smells, sounds. It’s about the experience of being a gardener in a garden. It’s beautiful. I just checked it out again and it remains one of my favorite gardening books. I also checked out this one. My goodness. Total horticultural eye candy. It left me seriously wondering if His Royal Highness The Prince of Wales would let me just camp out in his garden. I mean it can’t hurt to ask right?
On a different note, I really think I have to find some cold weather climate gardening gurus because sometimes amazing voyeuristic floral profusion is a necessity for mental health in the middle of a string of blizzards and other times, when you are listening to someone complain about winter wearing on and on before turning around to show off their daffodils blooming at the end of February… while you’re still looking at several feet of snow outside…and well… you kind of want to slap that person. But maybe that’s just me. I’m not very nice sometimes. Also our early-early daffodils generally start blooming in the fourth week of April. So yeah. There is that.