|
||||
|
The Elk Grove Garden Club had their plant sale Saturday. As always, a bunch of characters.
More sales this weekend: Saturday May 14, 10 AM – 2 PM Saturday May 14, 9 AM – 2 PM Mike is hardening off his dahlias and calla lilies for the plant sales that start this weekend. Each day we drag a few hundred plants outside then back in. It’s been too darn cold this spring to leave them out overnight. Soon, many of his babies will be ready for their new homes.
Saturday May 7, 10 AM – 3 PM Friday/Saturday May 6/7, 10 AM – 4 PM Saturday May 14, 10 AM – 2 PM Saturday May 14, 9 AM – 2 PM I’ve so excited! I won an honorable mention in Gardening Gone Wild’s April photo contest. That’s huge for someone who had never even entered a photo contest before. To see more of the entries, meander on over to Gardening Gone Wild. You can also see more of the pictures I considered entering by looking at the original posting.
The month of May, per Edith Holden’s “Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady” …
And from the collection of poetry Ms. Holden has been kind enough to share with us …
Author: Chauncer Whereforth cometh the inspiration to wax poetic? Garden Bloggers’ Muse Day, where Carolyn Choi invites bloggers to share our favorite poems, songs, verses and quotes about gardening on the first of the month.
We’ve run out of places to put plants, so Mike is considering the microwave and refrigerator.
Perhaps I’ve exaggerated a little. Just a little. Mike has potted up about 500 plants this spring. Some for us, and some for sales. There are about 350 dahlias, 60 calla lilies, 20 cannas, and some morning glories and coleus. They’ve all got to go somewhere until its warm enough for them to be outside. Many are still in the basement. Each day he brings more up, and yet our basement still looks like this.
The garage is full too. They need to all come up to the garage where we can open the door during the day. There are just too many to bring in and out, so they will have to settle for that. Getting the plants hardened off is a step by step process. An hour the first day, a few hours the next, until they are acclimated. Mike looks happy here, bringing up a load of calla lilies. But I’ll let in on a secret.
He is really concerned about his plants going to good homes. Don’t tell him I told you. Guys are supposed to be tough. I don’t think caring about his 500 babies counts as tough. It does make him loveable though! It is never too late for creativity, though it is too late to go to see it personally at the Chicago Botanic Garden Antiques & Garden Fair. The fair was last weekend, and I’m sooo glad I went. I’ve never been to the antique fair before, as I knew the prices would be out of my range. What I didn’t realize is that the great ideas are free (after you pay your $10-$15 admission). Free is well within my price range. My friend Addiz and I had a great time, and I came home with ideas to share with you.
A majority of the items were high-end antiques that were not garden related. Or were they? We looked at several tables that weathered the test of time. Could a non-conventional table weather the weather? I can’t say that I’d put a $7000 antique table like Al’s in my yard, but Mike & I have been known to make an inexpensive item into something it wasn’t meant to be. Maybe we can find something to use as a base at the Kane County Antique Fair, and something else entirely to be the tabletop. So much more fun than buying a table and chairs at a big box store.
Did these gloves survive? Check out December’s Christmas Gifts For The Gardener – Foxgloves to find out. I would say about 80% of the fair was antiques, another 20% crafts, both with gardening interspersed. It was also 100% enjoyable! Look at this live stream of baby eagles on USTREAM. I’m watching Mom and Dad eagle and the little babies right now. I even hear them peeping. Soooo cute! Decorah Eagles – As of 4/20/11 Total views: 48,400,160 The Raptor Resource Project brings you the Decorah Eagles from atop their tree at the fish hatchery in Decorah, Iowa. The live video feed is streamed online 24/7. At night an infrared light provides night vision. Infrared light is not visible to eagles, they do not see it or know it is there.
How perfect. I had often stared at my refrigerator (yes my refrigerator) over the last few weeks. In morning’s first light, a nearby plant cast an intriguing shadow. Thanks to GardeningGoneWild, I knew what to do about it … use it as inspiration for entering this month’s photo contest. The topic was ‘light’, and the vignette’s most important aspect was just that. Wish me luck as I enter my first ever photo contest!
It was so hard to choose! Here are some of favorites that Mike, Lynn, Kevin, and I selected from:
I couldn’t help but make this scilla picture into my screensaver. It’s ideal with the vivid colors, and yet has room at the top and bottom for all those icons.
Scilla is so lovely this time of year. Ours is planted with periwinkle, winter aconite, and grape hyacinths under a big maple tree. Grass refused to grow there so we chose ground cover instead. The winter aconite and scilla are both blooming now. Soon the periwinkle blooms will join the party, as well as the purple hyacinths. Stop back in a week or two to see them pop next to my red swing. And to learn how we got most of it for free.
Bits and pieces. Bits and pieces. I’ve toyed with you for months now talking about various parts of the garden, always giving you bits and pieces. Its time to see the garden as a whole, or at least as much of it as Kevin can get in his fisheye lens in this shot. He certainly made a worthy attempt, climbing on the roof with his camera equipment late last summer.
We started out 10 years ago with nothing but grass-filled weeds and the pines you see in the middle of the yard. Fast forward and you have major garden instead. Yes, the pines are in the middle even though it doesn’t look like it. That’s the magic of a fish-eye lens. More content, but the proportions are gone. We have a half acre, which is roughly 100′ x 200′. We did have to give up some of the garden because it had a house on the property, but the house is small. To give you some idea of how much garden that can be, let’s talk about the fence project Mike took on a few years ago. As he redid the fence, he moved it back 10 feet. That gained a new yard area that was 10 feet deep by 100 feet across. That is 1000 square feet – a new area larger than many entire yards. We tell ourselves we aren’t trying to get rid of the grass. We say we are not going to build any new garden areas. We say those things all the time. It’s not true. I’d have to say we are really heading towards more garden, less maintenance. For example, the berm area you can barely see to the right is mostly shrubs and groundcover. Further out of sight are 3 river birch that replaced annual beds. Minimal maintenance. Here is another picture without the fish-eye lens. It shows less garden, but is more to scale. You certainly aren’t seeing it all, especially since we have a corner lot so we not only garden here and in the front, we garden on the side as well.
More pictures will be coming soon as I take photos of each area. I’d better get out there and do some more spring cleanup before my camera and I give you the grand tour. |
  |
|||
