Last night I said to Tom, "If I only had one more Limelight Hydrangea, it would totally complete the garden."He said, "Yeah, right."
It's possible that I don't have the highest credibility on this subject. For instance, every August I heave a frustrated sigh and say, "This is absolutely all the garden I can deal with. No more new flowerbeds!" Then every spring, I dig a new flower bed.
At most recent count, I have six flowerbeds in the front yard, two shade borders and a hillside of wildflowers in the side yard, five blueberry bushes, a pea and cucumber patch, a raspberry patch, and a small flower bed in the back yard. Also, I helped the girls each put in a flower bed outside their bedroom windows.
Tom likes to tell the girls that when they come home to visit in twenty years, they'll find him in the front yard with a shovel, digging up the last square foot of yard for me to plant something. I pretend to take offense, but I really am thinking of how utterly freaking amazing the yard would look if I could plant the entire two acres in gardens.
You can sum up my garden philosophy like this: More is more.
I spend a lot of time weeding.
This is all a roundabout way of explaining why I've been persona non blogger this month. May is the key gardening month in Maine. I've been tilling, amending soil, sowing seeds, dividing perennials, and planting annuals. I thought I'd give you a peek. In this photo, you can see four of the six front yard beds, including the bizarrely-shaped new flowerbed. Every day I cock my head at it, decide it's not quite right, and dig a little more here, a little more there. Eventually, it will blend. My style of garden planning is what you might call kamikaze. Plans are for the wusses. Just start digging. I have a similar method when it comes to cutting hair, which is why I never, ever do.
Yeah, there's an above-ground pool in my front yard. Quelle white trash, yes? It happens to be the ONLY completely flat piece of yard we own, so the neighbors have to suck it for the three measly months of swimming weather. I try to distract them with pretty flowers, but it's tricky to pull focus from an 18-foot cylinder of eye-bleeding turquoise. Someday, when the kids are past the swimming-in-the-front-yard age, I plan to make that spot into a flower bed. Surprised?
Irises:
8 comments:
Your flowers look great. I wish I could grow lupines, but they don't like Virginia summers.
I love lupines!
BEAUTIFUL!
Wish I could have a garden as beautiful as your's up here in the high mountains of the Southwest, but I am afraid my water bill would put me in the poor house. Plus with the water restrictions imposed on us, I'm afraid I would get a visit from the "water police" at my front door.
However, I do love your idea of a lot of flowerbeds. That is something I will give a great deal of thought. Hum!
Love the look, but I would hate to have to do the work. My sister is like you & she has beautiful, always changing gardens. I have pots and a veggie patch. If I had more room I woud do the work for raspberries, though!
I can't imagine the neighbors are all that upset by a pool for 3 months of the year with a garden like that!
I love your yard!! I would love to do that at my house, but I'll be honest, I would spend about an hour out there and call it a day. I'm kind of a wuss when it comes to manual labor. Even the kind that yeilds such beautiful results.
Good on you!!
Beautiful!!! SO jealous.
As for haircutting, remember the VERY drunk hairdresser who cut your hair at that SuperCuts and she took like an hour? It still makes me giggle about how amazingly polite you were.
I just love lupines. It is all gorgeous!
The lupines absolutely glow, and I love the anemones in the left sidebar, too. The pool is fine, though it would look better with hunter green on the outside. There's a property near mine, where the entire front yard (about 3/4 the size of yours) is an English garden. Gorgeous! And wouldn't your hubs like to not have grass to cut?
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