Hello Everyone,
*Updated with the finished pics at the bottom.....
I'm back with a post about Gardening, Gardens and my back yard, and to say simply, this blog is a Readers Blog, a Story Tellers blog, I prefer to go back to my original intentions for this blog and to write from my own heart and soul, chronicles of anything I fancy..... :D and pictures are a plus, not a priority.
Actually there is alot I want to say, but I tend to fuse 3 {or more} different topics/subjects into one long post so I will refrain this time and keep it about the title, which is my back yard/garden and current project.
I love plants which stay alive, don't you? And those I don't have to keep replacing and continue to bloom. I finally realized only last year, that gardening here means replacing plants and entire beds and areas with living fresh ones at least 4 times a year, basically seasonally which we in So. Florida, don't have, we have legitimately only one and a half seasons, a hot and humid one and the other is barely merely less humid, thats it. I didn't know I had to keep replacing plants.....did you? of course you did.
I thought I was sorta finished with my yard, as far as plantings, but somehow {!?} things grew over the years lol and in south Florida things grow fast and before I knew it the entire rear end of our yard was filled with alot of nothing but weeds and tree stumps covered with pothos vine. A quick glance at the yard would tell anyone it was beautiful, for sure everything is growing beautifully but that is what weeds do when left alone. When I did a tally of what flowers and edibles and fruits were actually growing I realized after a long wet summer, it was only about 5%....and that is truly pathetic.
I'd been buying books on amazon for a penny and have found an eternal source of inspiration. Even when I think I've lost my ability to be inspired due to the difficulty and horrors of life with friends and so many people being sick and suffering and dying, it is beyond depressing to think life is actually ''like this'', and so I felt I could never feel right again, knowing all I know......but night after night, as I prepare my body and mind to rest and for our nightly journey's into other fantastical fourth dimensional realities known as dreamland, I continue to feed my imagination, a far superior ability and virtue than mere intelligence for sure, and eventually, even while doubting my life force will ever find its sparkle again, I will suddenly find my eyes and soul laying upon an image which speaks not just a thousand words but is a virtual star gate in which I am suddenly back to the beauty that lives in my soul. And my intuitive body, {the second brain in the abdomen} finds intense movements of bliss and life again. My breath is swept away and I am in awe.....in the recognition of a reflection, of a Spirit which recognized itself somehow and re-ignited a Soul who is totally driven to Life by Nature and Gardens, who is not content at all unless She is creating from a magical world of immense beauty, even while in the throes of this sick and dying one.
I must Garden.....create Gardens, live in Gardens, eat from Gardens, Play in Gardens, Nurture Gardens, Learn from Gardens....... and leave Gardens as Legacies of my life, for those to come, for posterity, for the Mother, for Children to enjoy.
I simply must.
And so I come to life again with a force of Nature, of life that is so powerfully all consuming I cannot contain myself suddenly in this small body with such monumental soul movement inside wanting to do a hundred things at once, with no limits, and immediately! Like Now! Eventually after all this volcanic movement and fire has consumed me and left ashes of mental commitments to come, the next morning I find myself moving to action,.....ok what's first? And then......I realize some things......I don't have the tools, I don't have the materials, I don't have the removal team, nor the plants, nor the man power. All the gardens I see in picture books which have inspired a legitimate eruption within me, are those which require small armies and small fortune, to create. I feel very very small, but in no way does the fire die, in no way do I feel a sense of futility.....oh no......there is a way, there is always a way, and even if it means I do every bit of this in times own slow pace instead of my own, then I have something every single morning to do and a way to spend my life and days living the honorable life of a Gardener, for Gardeners the world over are those who hold the keys to the Kingdom, and I have a Kingdom to create! Lets get to work!
And in the world of Gardening, there is nothing that can quench such a delicious soul fire as the adamant, ferocious, uncompromising, relentless, ubiquitous weed.
What is next encompasses the prosaic laments of most gardeners all over the globe but most notably those in vigorous growing sub and tropical climates, which is that of weeds. Of course I had always heard the complaints of gardeners before my own gardening life, but those people were just complainers, thought I, not true gardeners......they were just not committed to working in a garden and dealing with all there is there. No problem for me, thought I. Its 20 years later. I understand now.
There is nothing that grows so voraciously, so lush, so prolifically, so unyielding and so ubiquitously as the weed.....Now mind you many of those so called weeds are plants with names and many are medicinal even pretty and I loved them. However, a total takeover by them is not what I have chosen in my own little individual unique world of preferences for Garden Beauty and what I'd like to see, and some of them I have left precisely because they looked so lush and healthy and covered bare spots so nicely. But then they decided to be greedy. I thought these are plants on steroids somehow but I will deal. But when they became murderous is when I got to realize what I was truly dealing with. As when I thought I had done all my spring planting and now I can just spend the summer watching them grow and bloom, is when I realized what they were. They have literally over grown everything I have planted, from the pots themselves up to the plants and smothered what I had purchased with such glee and hope for the future.....to death.
This past summer was a very wet one, rains every day, lots of it and one learns after the first years of shock believing with 'obvious' logic that one will certainly drown in so much rains, or that the land will certainly dissolve with so much water, but it doesn't somehow. And after some years the shock of how much rains lands can hold wears off, and you realize you will not float away, and the plants do remain where planted, and that the entire season must be given up to the rains and to finding enjoyment of them, otherwise you spend too much time pondering the wet rather than appreciating the nature of rains and storms, to not suffer the mind but to enrich the imagination into waxing lyrical. You simply must.
I have done this.
But when it became safe to come out I had seen all my herbs, the most stalwart of all plants and the most consistent in my Garden to be the most long lasting and permanent residents, have all but 4, been displaced by one particular weed which I had thought was so very cute and pretty and drapy when hanging. And since I have discovered my precious herbaceous friends all dead and gone, smothered by this weed, I realized a war had been declared upon me and my Garden in my ignorance some time ago when I was innocent of mind and too tolerant. And my refusal to truly grok the nature of weeds and commandeer the forces at work, much like life actually with dark forces like patriarchy, my ignorance was an accomplice to my entire Garden being destroyed, by my own unwillingness to recognize there was danger indeed afoot in what I thought was ''cute'' and had given room to have their own space since ''they were already there somehow''. Gardening is literally a metaphor for real life!
What I didn't know about this was how this one plant was murderous of all others and upon this rude awakening, I began to pick, and pull and yank with a vengeance, and found large pots buried.......and when I am done there will be no such weed growing visibly, and though for sure it will grow as it does in the soil and compost which I so lovingly create, I will be forced to recognize this nefarious interloper on site and have absolutely no mercy for it, innocent as it presents itself!
Yet this weed was not alone, it had an accomplice which I was also unaware of due again to my own propensity for innocence, and to disbelieve the complaints of lightweight or weekend gardeners who I always found a bit too sensitive to things which wereaggressive fast growers, and to my mind wished more people simply loved the Lush Greenery of Florida. A heavyweight gardener like myself will love those poor rejected trees. But woa to those who do not heed the many warnings. The ficus was just such another plant/tree/monster of humongous proportions it boggles the mind, and those resistant to complaints from ''fair weather gardeners'', will learn the hard way eventually. I did. And all those ficus I took in from another disgruntled gardener who wanted every single one out, I had gladly stupidly replanted in my own bare yard, and it has taken over the back and while nice for a while. But they do not stop growing and their roots will take over all the soil, and soon you will find yourself in total shade walking on roots protruding out from everywhere removing stone, and grass and house itself! Not to mention it's insatiable need for water and how its roots will travel far and wide even to the next county to find a source and there it will become thick and fat, an underground water monster. I think their roots throughout Florida is what keeps Florida on land!
Sooooo........I decided to, with the help of inspiration from Gardeners the world over via one- penny amazon books, to make my Garden, finally, a true Garden, a functioning one, and therefore something to show I, a Nature person thus Noble Soul, has lived an honorable life working for the Mother of Nature. { bows and curtsies}. For to me, there is no more noble ''work'' to do upon this Earth, than to Garden, to grow plants, foods, beauty for the soul, trees for shade, fruits for the body, flowers for perfume, and herbs for flavor and spice and teas, for medicines, everything for Life is grown in a Garden. If I am to exert my body it will be for that which is sustaining and life giving, and not for any individual, as in a job. This is me, it works for me, I am not a slave....... To work for ''the man'' is to be a slave, the road to psychopathy, I know, I did it, I grew up in New York City and worked for ''the man'', for the money, etc, it is sickness, not for me.
But Nature Nurtures, and one can live a good life as a Gardener, growing Beauty and sharing Beauty.
So the dismantling begins. And the dismantling will take a couple of weeks until bulk pickup. Since I cannot commandeer the reciprocating saw, even as this morning I believed I need wait for no man, I'm just sooo tired of having to wait for someone to help with their tools and such, I really wish I didn't have to, but alas...... those brawny types with tools and savvy, unfortunately come with a hefty and inane price of some kind just for cutting a tree which a chain saw actually did. But I got dressed this morning and put on goggles and long sleeves etc, all protected etc, and plugged in the recip saw and things were ok for like 10 seconds when I began to feel like I myself was in a blender, the tool was vibrating so violently, and I thought, yes, better to leave this to some man to jangle his puny brains this way, I need mine to work! That experience explained alot about their brains, how machinery etc can disenfranchise ones brain from ones skull!
Theres alot of nothing from the bench to fence, and theres alot of space which can be more wisely and beautifully used! In this pic a huge bush and lots of weeds were already removed.......
In the meantime, a lovely little rabbit has taken residence in our yard, a rabbit from a pet store as we have no natural rabbits here. But I figured when I saw this little guy he was an escapee from the neighbors kids again, as they are a bit rough with their animals, much to my dismay. I had watched them through their window, the two kids, playing with their rabbit, throwing it up a mattress that was leaned up against a wall, and catching it again as it rolled down helpless and I though that poor rabbit must be miserable and scared. They panic easily and have heart attacks. The kids told me it escaped. Thank you God!.....but this one is a new one and I figured it came from there, and I thought it escaped too and lucky for it. It can stay.....and it understood apparently as it got quite comfy for pictures! Sooooo cute! Those kids did come looking for their rabbit but we keep telling them it ran off again.
Except...... that as I was planting some seeds, it sat in its new home watching me, a small piece of turf behind one of my planters..... and I had to tell it whatever I plant is not for him he can have everything else, but my lettuces and herbs and such, everything in the beds are not to be touched! I just planted some successful seedlings of Black Japanese tomatoe
in their new bed The Tomato Patch,
and the next day......of the thirteen, only 3 survived this voracious rabbit and now I am not happy with it.....nobody can catch it! It will eat out of your hand but try to touch it and it bolts!
I will have to put up the ugly chicken wire, oh well, better I am happy!
But soon my garden will be beautiful and have a nice selection of urns and planters. I have found that flowers do not really grow here for whatever reason, some say chemtrails have ruined the soil and for sure testings have proven far too much aluminum, barium and other heavy metals and unnatural biological materials.......but I will now choose plants that do well, and lasts long and doesn't grow out of control in short time. I no longer have the energy to redo completely an entire garden especially since gardening in our summer means pruning not planting!
So the urns and planters will be the long lasting Garden Focal Point ''Flowers'' surrounded by lush greenery......its the best and most sensible way for these parts.
But .....
there is always a ''but'' right?
I still prefer to grow as much edibles as I can eat and have cutting flowers.
The flower I will not give up on is the hydrangea, I will somehow do all I can to grow these beauties.....I love them, in all their shades especially the blues, and pinks and purples.....pretty much all of them! and somewhere, somehow in my Garden there is a place and way to grow these. And I will have this beautiful arrangement of faux hydrangeas in an old French Urn, growing and in living colors in my own Garden, of this I am determined. I will find a way.
Here are the finished pics....
from this>>>>>>>>
to this>>>>>>>>>>>>
to this ................
the Old Oak Tree corner......from this........
to this...........
Sharing this post with A Return to Loveliness
*Updated with the finished pics at the bottom.....
I'm back with a post about Gardening, Gardens and my back yard, and to say simply, this blog is a Readers Blog, a Story Tellers blog, I prefer to go back to my original intentions for this blog and to write from my own heart and soul, chronicles of anything I fancy..... :D and pictures are a plus, not a priority.
Actually there is alot I want to say, but I tend to fuse 3 {or more} different topics/subjects into one long post so I will refrain this time and keep it about the title, which is my back yard/garden and current project.
I love plants which stay alive, don't you? And those I don't have to keep replacing and continue to bloom. I finally realized only last year, that gardening here means replacing plants and entire beds and areas with living fresh ones at least 4 times a year, basically seasonally which we in So. Florida, don't have, we have legitimately only one and a half seasons, a hot and humid one and the other is barely merely less humid, thats it. I didn't know I had to keep replacing plants.....did you? of course you did.
I thought I was sorta finished with my yard, as far as plantings, but somehow {!?} things grew over the years lol and in south Florida things grow fast and before I knew it the entire rear end of our yard was filled with alot of nothing but weeds and tree stumps covered with pothos vine. A quick glance at the yard would tell anyone it was beautiful, for sure everything is growing beautifully but that is what weeds do when left alone. When I did a tally of what flowers and edibles and fruits were actually growing I realized after a long wet summer, it was only about 5%....and that is truly pathetic.
I'd been buying books on amazon for a penny and have found an eternal source of inspiration. Even when I think I've lost my ability to be inspired due to the difficulty and horrors of life with friends and so many people being sick and suffering and dying, it is beyond depressing to think life is actually ''like this'', and so I felt I could never feel right again, knowing all I know......but night after night, as I prepare my body and mind to rest and for our nightly journey's into other fantastical fourth dimensional realities known as dreamland, I continue to feed my imagination, a far superior ability and virtue than mere intelligence for sure, and eventually, even while doubting my life force will ever find its sparkle again, I will suddenly find my eyes and soul laying upon an image which speaks not just a thousand words but is a virtual star gate in which I am suddenly back to the beauty that lives in my soul. And my intuitive body, {the second brain in the abdomen} finds intense movements of bliss and life again. My breath is swept away and I am in awe.....in the recognition of a reflection, of a Spirit which recognized itself somehow and re-ignited a Soul who is totally driven to Life by Nature and Gardens, who is not content at all unless She is creating from a magical world of immense beauty, even while in the throes of this sick and dying one.
I must Garden.....create Gardens, live in Gardens, eat from Gardens, Play in Gardens, Nurture Gardens, Learn from Gardens....... and leave Gardens as Legacies of my life, for those to come, for posterity, for the Mother, for Children to enjoy.
I simply must.
And so I come to life again with a force of Nature, of life that is so powerfully all consuming I cannot contain myself suddenly in this small body with such monumental soul movement inside wanting to do a hundred things at once, with no limits, and immediately! Like Now! Eventually after all this volcanic movement and fire has consumed me and left ashes of mental commitments to come, the next morning I find myself moving to action,.....ok what's first? And then......I realize some things......I don't have the tools, I don't have the materials, I don't have the removal team, nor the plants, nor the man power. All the gardens I see in picture books which have inspired a legitimate eruption within me, are those which require small armies and small fortune, to create. I feel very very small, but in no way does the fire die, in no way do I feel a sense of futility.....oh no......there is a way, there is always a way, and even if it means I do every bit of this in times own slow pace instead of my own, then I have something every single morning to do and a way to spend my life and days living the honorable life of a Gardener, for Gardeners the world over are those who hold the keys to the Kingdom, and I have a Kingdom to create! Lets get to work!
And in the world of Gardening, there is nothing that can quench such a delicious soul fire as the adamant, ferocious, uncompromising, relentless, ubiquitous weed.
What is next encompasses the prosaic laments of most gardeners all over the globe but most notably those in vigorous growing sub and tropical climates, which is that of weeds. Of course I had always heard the complaints of gardeners before my own gardening life, but those people were just complainers, thought I, not true gardeners......they were just not committed to working in a garden and dealing with all there is there. No problem for me, thought I. Its 20 years later. I understand now.
There is nothing that grows so voraciously, so lush, so prolifically, so unyielding and so ubiquitously as the weed.....Now mind you many of those so called weeds are plants with names and many are medicinal even pretty and I loved them. However, a total takeover by them is not what I have chosen in my own little individual unique world of preferences for Garden Beauty and what I'd like to see, and some of them I have left precisely because they looked so lush and healthy and covered bare spots so nicely. But then they decided to be greedy. I thought these are plants on steroids somehow but I will deal. But when they became murderous is when I got to realize what I was truly dealing with. As when I thought I had done all my spring planting and now I can just spend the summer watching them grow and bloom, is when I realized what they were. They have literally over grown everything I have planted, from the pots themselves up to the plants and smothered what I had purchased with such glee and hope for the future.....to death.
This past summer was a very wet one, rains every day, lots of it and one learns after the first years of shock believing with 'obvious' logic that one will certainly drown in so much rains, or that the land will certainly dissolve with so much water, but it doesn't somehow. And after some years the shock of how much rains lands can hold wears off, and you realize you will not float away, and the plants do remain where planted, and that the entire season must be given up to the rains and to finding enjoyment of them, otherwise you spend too much time pondering the wet rather than appreciating the nature of rains and storms, to not suffer the mind but to enrich the imagination into waxing lyrical. You simply must.
I have done this.
But when it became safe to come out I had seen all my herbs, the most stalwart of all plants and the most consistent in my Garden to be the most long lasting and permanent residents, have all but 4, been displaced by one particular weed which I had thought was so very cute and pretty and drapy when hanging. And since I have discovered my precious herbaceous friends all dead and gone, smothered by this weed, I realized a war had been declared upon me and my Garden in my ignorance some time ago when I was innocent of mind and too tolerant. And my refusal to truly grok the nature of weeds and commandeer the forces at work, much like life actually with dark forces like patriarchy, my ignorance was an accomplice to my entire Garden being destroyed, by my own unwillingness to recognize there was danger indeed afoot in what I thought was ''cute'' and had given room to have their own space since ''they were already there somehow''. Gardening is literally a metaphor for real life!
What I didn't know about this was how this one plant was murderous of all others and upon this rude awakening, I began to pick, and pull and yank with a vengeance, and found large pots buried.......and when I am done there will be no such weed growing visibly, and though for sure it will grow as it does in the soil and compost which I so lovingly create, I will be forced to recognize this nefarious interloper on site and have absolutely no mercy for it, innocent as it presents itself!
Yet this weed was not alone, it had an accomplice which I was also unaware of due again to my own propensity for innocence, and to disbelieve the complaints of lightweight or weekend gardeners who I always found a bit too sensitive to things which were
Sooooo........I decided to, with the help of inspiration from Gardeners the world over via one- penny amazon books, to make my Garden, finally, a true Garden, a functioning one, and therefore something to show I, a Nature person thus Noble Soul, has lived an honorable life working for the Mother of Nature. { bows and curtsies}. For to me, there is no more noble ''work'' to do upon this Earth, than to Garden, to grow plants, foods, beauty for the soul, trees for shade, fruits for the body, flowers for perfume, and herbs for flavor and spice and teas, for medicines, everything for Life is grown in a Garden. If I am to exert my body it will be for that which is sustaining and life giving, and not for any individual, as in a job. This is me, it works for me, I am not a slave....... To work for ''the man'' is to be a slave, the road to psychopathy, I know, I did it, I grew up in New York City and worked for ''the man'', for the money, etc, it is sickness, not for me.
But Nature Nurtures, and one can live a good life as a Gardener, growing Beauty and sharing Beauty.
So the dismantling begins. And the dismantling will take a couple of weeks until bulk pickup. Since I cannot commandeer the reciprocating saw, even as this morning I believed I need wait for no man, I'm just sooo tired of having to wait for someone to help with their tools and such, I really wish I didn't have to, but alas...... those brawny types with tools and savvy, unfortunately come with a hefty and inane price of some kind just for cutting a tree which a chain saw actually did. But I got dressed this morning and put on goggles and long sleeves etc, all protected etc, and plugged in the recip saw and things were ok for like 10 seconds when I began to feel like I myself was in a blender, the tool was vibrating so violently, and I thought, yes, better to leave this to some man to jangle his puny brains this way, I need mine to work! That experience explained alot about their brains, how machinery etc can disenfranchise ones brain from ones skull!
Theres alot of nothing from the bench to fence, and theres alot of space which can be more wisely and beautifully used! In this pic a huge bush and lots of weeds were already removed.......
In the meantime, a lovely little rabbit has taken residence in our yard, a rabbit from a pet store as we have no natural rabbits here. But I figured when I saw this little guy he was an escapee from the neighbors kids again, as they are a bit rough with their animals, much to my dismay. I had watched them through their window, the two kids, playing with their rabbit, throwing it up a mattress that was leaned up against a wall, and catching it again as it rolled down helpless and I though that poor rabbit must be miserable and scared. They panic easily and have heart attacks. The kids told me it escaped. Thank you God!.....but this one is a new one and I figured it came from there, and I thought it escaped too and lucky for it. It can stay.....and it understood apparently as it got quite comfy for pictures! Sooooo cute! Those kids did come looking for their rabbit but we keep telling them it ran off again.
Except...... that as I was planting some seeds, it sat in its new home watching me, a small piece of turf behind one of my planters..... and I had to tell it whatever I plant is not for him he can have everything else, but my lettuces and herbs and such, everything in the beds are not to be touched! I just planted some successful seedlings of Black Japanese tomatoe
in their new bed The Tomato Patch, and the next day......of the thirteen, only 3 survived this voracious rabbit and now I am not happy with it.....nobody can catch it! It will eat out of your hand but try to touch it and it bolts!
I will have to put up the ugly chicken wire, oh well, better I am happy!
But soon my garden will be beautiful and have a nice selection of urns and planters. I have found that flowers do not really grow here for whatever reason, some say chemtrails have ruined the soil and for sure testings have proven far too much aluminum, barium and other heavy metals and unnatural biological materials.......but I will now choose plants that do well, and lasts long and doesn't grow out of control in short time. I no longer have the energy to redo completely an entire garden especially since gardening in our summer means pruning not planting!
So the urns and planters will be the long lasting Garden Focal Point ''Flowers'' surrounded by lush greenery......its the best and most sensible way for these parts.
But .....
there is always a ''but'' right?
I still prefer to grow as much edibles as I can eat and have cutting flowers.
The flower I will not give up on is the hydrangea, I will somehow do all I can to grow these beauties.....I love them, in all their shades especially the blues, and pinks and purples.....pretty much all of them! and somewhere, somehow in my Garden there is a place and way to grow these. And I will have this beautiful arrangement of faux hydrangeas in an old French Urn, growing and in living colors in my own Garden, of this I am determined. I will find a way.
from this>>>>>>>>
to this>>>>>>>>>>>>
to this ................
the Old Oak Tree corner......from this........
to this...........
Sharing this post with A Return to Loveliness
Your garden is lovely! I will be featuring your post in this week's A Return to Loveliness,
ReplyDeleteKathy