22 February: sopping

Monday, 22 February 2021

At home after 2+ inches of rain

Out the front door to Allan’s garden…

Striped crocus buds and hebe

Walking toward the back yard…

East Rozanne Loop, looking south

Only the heaviest of rain makes the little ponds overflow.

Aconitum and shotweed

Let’s go south to the Bogsy Wood to check out the new path!

You can just glimpse the edge of the fire circle to the left..

Pulmonarias about to bloom by the fire circle

The new path is not yet a stream all the way through.

The water and wind washed twigs from the new path into one area.

It would be fun to rake them out, but not when the deep water would be over my boots.

Below: The east Bogsy Wood mounds…and that darn hose that I haven’t waded in to move. (It is slippery along there.)

Looking west on the swale path…

Back around to the west end of the new path, where I happen to have left a shovel.

I dug the end out, not for better drainage but just for the fun of seeing it look like a stream.

Walking to the front of the hydrangea bed, where I need to put more soil because I expanded it.

Cornus ‘Midwinter Fire’

Above: A glance to the right, where I forgot to fill in new soil along the new edge.

Willows Path West, looking north

To my left, a white hellebore, and I took a reminder photo to move this golden barberry from where it is languishing in shade created by over planting.

Swinging east to the fire circle. It does not look at all like a bright clearing today.

Walking up the Willows Path East. Maybe I’ll call it Willows Way, that sounds better. I still have lots of clipping to do, which is a concern because I also must go to work soon. Narcissi are hinting and then shouting about springtime.

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I fear that the red of the fish totes look too bright from the south garden. But then I remember that tall plants (blueberries, sanguisorbas, asters) will mostly hide the south side of them in summer.

Now I’ll go out the west double gate…

….past the garage veg enclosure battered again by wind….

…and around the front of the house via the new gravel path.

Soggy Tommy crocuses

Hamamelis too wet to smell like apricots

Now for some reading. Last night I perused Landscaping Ideas that Work, just because it is by Julie Moir Messervy. It features houses that are way too rich and huge to be appealing to me, with a lot of hard surfaces in the gardens, along with some photos that are beautiful. The information is pretty basic and I must admit I skimmed most of the text, which was not evocative like her more personal books. Today I am reading another of her design books, Outside the Not So Big House. While it wisely suggests “creating a house about one-third smaller than you thought you needed”, the author’s idea of not so big is a house that was “expanded from a tiny 950 sq. ft. to a still modest 1,048 sq. ft..” It is ridiculous to call 950 square feet tiny. However, the houses are much better to look at than the monsters that dominated the other book, and it does have some wonderful ones to dream over like a San Francisco house on a shrubby and floriferous hill, reached only by a public footpath, that reminds me of the setting of Tales of the City. (Later: I ended up only liking four of them and feeling exasperated by the rich, as usual. I would like to see a book about owner-created gardens that don’t rely on money and expensive hardscaping.)

Skooter feels quite strongly that these coffee table picture books are much too big to allow proper lap sharing.

The biggest cat laugh of the day is when a Grey got its head stuck through a paper shopping bag handle and walked through the house like a turtle with its house on its back.

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