At The Beginning Of Summer

"I need to go for a walk in the garden. I haven't been up there in a week it seems."

"You're not missing anything."

Granted there is a noticeable lull between the spring crescendo of the rhododendrons and iris and the start of the summer flower season. Still, not a day goes by in the wild cultivated garden without a bloom of some sort once things get going in bulb season.

The roses are here.



There are not to many roses up here. Certainly not many of the fancy grafted hybrid kind. The ones here are mostly rambling shrub roses of one sort or another. The Knock Outs were only recently planted and they actually languish to a certain degree. Could be they prefer defined and tidily mulched beds to do their best. There's not much of that up here either.



So we make due with wild rambling roses that fit right in with the wild cultivated garden.



I bought pillows today. This chair needed a little something extra and it makes the chair that much comfier.



I bought a mattress too. But it was pouring down rain and spitting hail in town so I will have to pick it up tomorrow when the weathers are more conducive. No I did not buy the "system", ie the box springs. I will put a piece of plywood on the slats and put the mattress on that for nice even and firm support. Seems there are people in this world who have issues when you don't buy the system.

Check out the nice rolling drawer under the bed. One day my drawers will be organized. Now they just help hide stuff.



A room gets ready for guests. When I mention moving myself, I get this quiet pensive response. Sigh. Will I end up with a beautiful cozier by the day cabin that nobody lives in? It is a wrenching feeling.

The Spots will have to move to and that could be another wrenching process. That will have to wait until after the guests have gone.



It's not just the roses that are blooming. The spirea are here.



And campanula.



A moss covered hearth is interesting.



A flush of bloom in the sunny utility meadow with Fleabane



And Coreopsis.



A late blooming azalea hides in the wild. The large native Rhododendron maximum don't bloom until late June.



The first astilbes have arrived. Hundreds more will follow as summer takes hold.



I might have missed some of this if I didn't go for a walk.

My Roadside Weeds

Are just beginning to bloom



And it pleases me.

It Starts With One

I sent a little prayer out to the universe this spring. The cozy cabin is nearly finished. It is time for me to start work working more. I need new clients. I also opened my mouth to the clients I had and verbalized my prayer to the universe. The cabin is done. I have to start working for a living.

I was still busy building of course. No days were left unfilled, but the final inspection was in sight. I did good just to tend to the clients I had in between weathers while preparing for the last visit of the inspector man.



Client #1 arrived out of nowhere unbidden, the result of a chance meeting the first fall I was here. Those that followed also emanated from a client of Client #1's. Then a few clients began to call from the readers of this blog. I was working enough to pay my few bills and keep a supply of baked goods and food on hand, though no where near fully self supporting.



The clients I did have were asking me to work more hours and more often. With the cabin nearly done I was able to provide that. It wouldn't be enough for the mortgage I would soon be looking at so I sent a little prayer out to the universe this spring. It is time for me to start working now.



And the universe has provided me exactly what I needed at exactly the right time. Three new clients joined what is now an official client list after our return from Florida. A meeting with another potential client is set for the morning. I raised my rates and I am work working five full days a week now.

I sent a little prayer out to the universe this spring and a miracle happened. For that I am filled with gratitude and an enduring sense of awe.



I won't be getting rich. I will be getting enough to live a fine life of gardening in the low spot of a North Carolina mountain top. I will have enough and I will be grateful for that.

There is one note of sadness. My father did not live to see this miracle completely unfold. He worried for me and he worried he might have to subsidize me much longer than anticipated. He had already subsidized me longer than he anticipated I am sure. Good thing I'm useful and cheap to maintain.

I worried sometimes. I acknowledged it and pushed it away. I refused to wallow in worry. My experience told me the clients would come. They always had on Maui and I never once advertised. My faith in the universe was strong. Life has always treated me fairly. In my prayer I expressed a willingness to do some PR if idle days began to appear in numbers. That has not happened. I'm not sure that is even possible with me.



The universe has provided me with what I needed when I was ready for it. How could I not feel grateful.

Provocative

The outside of Hale Mana is simple enough. It has nice lines, but keeps a demure profile without calling attention to itself. Most people could not even guess what will greet them inside. On the garden warming tour one person's jaw literally dropped when they walked inside and she stood there stunned and speechless for a good long moment.



Part of that might have been having some sort subconscious prejudgement about what kind of home I might have. I added to the shock value today with a new chair called 'Provocative'. The sisters are coming to visit at the end of the month and I have to have a bedroom ready. The bed frame was ordered and has been shipped. An under bed storage drawer on wheels was also ordered and has been shipped. Once all that is assembled and in place I can go fetch a mattress.



I have rearranged stuffs and eliminated stuffs that have been stored up in the loft. I have half of a bedroom now. I will no doubt rearrange and eliminate more stuffs before guests move into my house, but they may only end up with three quarters of a bedroom.



It is my goal however to be the first person to live in my house if even only for a short time before I have to move out again. I'll need that quality time with my new house so I can rearrange and find homes for all the stuffs in there now.

Discoveries In The Wild

I went for a stroll this morning to clear my head before sitting down to some long avoided chipherin. The transfer of land to me also involves transforming a construction loan into a mortgage in my name too. I have to know how much Hale Mana actually cost.

Can you put a price on the first lilies of the season blooming in the wild cultivated garden? I suppose the bulb catalogs can.



The cozy cabin cost more to build than I had estimated four long years ago. I won't be the first person that has happened to.

There are a lot of ways to look at numbers so I am looking for ways to make the numbers more palatable. When you take the $20,000 off for land clearing, road building, a well and a septic system, the actual cost of building the finely appointed cabin itself came in at $96 per square foot. Not bad. The labor was free of course.

And if I want a start of this Japanese Roof Iris it will be free too. All the landscaping costs should forever be considered free on this project even if a little cash money gets spent on impulse now and again.



Last week some time a Tricyrtis or Toad Lily, followed me home from a nursery. It was only $7.50 or so. Seemed like a good price so I bought it and planted it in the garden to be. Well some varmint in these parts has a propensity to dig up freshly planted plants. When I strolled by this morning the poor Toad Lily had been pulled out of the ground and tossed aside so the varmint could inspect the newly dug hole.

Sometimes plants are bit like the cozy cabin's plumbing. It takes a few tries to get things to work right. I added a few anti-varmint reinforcements to my replanting scheme.



A whole other set of processes is now in motion and for the first time in my life I will have a mortgage and be a land and home owner instead of a tenant gardener. Relatively speaking it will be a tiny mortgage compared to most and very appropriate for a tiny cabin.



A tiny cabin on a big piece of land surrounded by the ever growing wild lush. Some where in all that lush are the beginnings of a garden. In another fifteen years I will own it free and clear.

Chores For Me

When the lush gets going I can always turn to the roadside vegetable garden for solace. Its neat rows and severe editing are a sharp contrast to all that surrounds it. The secret ingredient is the wood chips.

It's not just the greenery that goes all lush over night. All of a sudden all the bugs arrive. Now I don't mind most of them and really pay them no mind for the most part. But it is aggravating to watch my tiny sprouting seeds die the death of a thousand nibbles in my vegetable garden of solace.

I was most happy to find a leftover bag of diatomaceous earth in the basement tool room this morning.



Take that you nibbling bugs. Suck some glass like shards into your spiracles.



It's not like there are not a million other sprouting seeds to choose from just outside the boundaries of the roadside vegetable garden. But no, the bugs have to have my beets, carrots, beans and squashes, at least until they get big enough and harden off. They just love those fresh sprouts. Damn bugs.



Inside the cozy cabin, a leveling and binding coat of mortar was spread on the new backer board.



While waiting for mortar to dry, steel wool was taped into the mouse entry points inside the plumbing box and the thermostat controlled electric heat tape was taped to the water lines. Heat rises and I am counting on this extra heat to rise up through the wall behind the shower and prevent future freezing incidents. Of course the cabin itself will be warmer this winter too.

You can see the plug dangling out beside the column. I'll have to make a new hole in the plumbing box for that and line it with steel wool too. Then I can just plug it in during severe cold spells.



Then I put the shower tiles back. After the mortar dries there is one more process. There is always one more process. Next comes the grout, but first I'll need to scrape away the excess mortar around the 1 x 1 glass tiles. Looks good as new don't you think?



There are areas in the garden to be of slightly controlled lush. There is only so much you can do to fight it and it seems more wise for the garden to be to blend in with what is. Self seeded Campanula 'Canterbury Bells' were left where they came up. Should they decide to become abundant then some editing may be called for.



The front roadside bed is beginning its show for the summer. The first chicory bloomed this morning and the ox-eye daisy are gathering in number. You can tell I took my design cues from what is.



Now if this kind of editing could be accomplished on close to three acres, well then everything would be just fine and I wouldn't have to find solace in the roadside vegetable garden.

A Point In The Lush

After months of a barren brown world periodically blanketed in white, the returning green is a welcome sight. It starts out short, fresh and new, sprinkled with bulbs and blossoms of many delights. And the green keeps growing.



It goes from short to medium and quickly heads for tall. It just keeps growing. Among all that green is a host of undesirables, either from location, crowding out a preferable plant or from overall poor manners and lack of an interesting bloom.

There comes a point in the growing lush when you just go, dear god this is a nightmare. My inner maintenance gardener is over whelmed and feels the need stay home just to tend to this garden.



I try to ignore it, looking for the pretty tangled in the lush. There are good days and bad days. There are good places in the wild cultivated garden and nightmare places in the wild cultivated garden.



One nightmare place is in the sunny utility meadow where the Clematis virginiana, the Virgin's Bower vine is smothering a big chunk of the meadow. It's got to come out and it has roots like steel cables.

Instead I stroll by the black iris to admire it while it is still here.



In the right light you can tell the black iris is really the deepest purple you can imagine. In this picture it has taken on more of a burgundy tone. To my eye it is really more purple. From a distance there is no doubt. It is black.



The mountain laurels and the native Flame Azaleas follow the rhododendron and bloom while the lush continues its momentum.



Without the editing gardeners all the thugs would soon take over, slowly smothering the light and the life out of so much of the cultivated.



It's a growing jungle out there in need of some serious editing. I'll need to add the wild cultivated garden to my client list to ensure it gets the attention it deserves.

The Race Is On

I have grown a very good crop of some juicy and quite tasty strawberries that some varmint has taken a liking to. Every morning it looks like something has tunneled through the bed then passed out in a strawberry stupor leaving a mashed spot in the patch. The strangest thing is there are never any strawberry remnants. Varmints always leave remnants, taking a bite or two out of as many fruits as they see and spitting out the rest until they finally move on. They must be very good berries if there aren't any remnants.

The other options could be kitties chasing mices and dive bombing them from above or my varmint could be a human at breakfast time and the mashed spot a foot print.



We'll just see who can pick the most strawberries before the harvest winds down.



I promised myself I would not let the sunflowers get out of hand in the roadside vegetable garden this year. They get way to big and cast too much shade. They are fully self sowing now. I don't plant them. I swear I have been pulling plenty of them and look how many are left. The dern things keep coming up.

Time is short and the rush to grow and reproduce is on.



In that vein all the starts are planted, all the seeds are seeded. Seeds get to be problematic when things warm up a bit because rolly pollies and grasshoppers just love fresh sprouts. I have to outseed them while there is still time. Last year I promised myself I would get some row covers for the critical germination period. Never got around to that.

I did however manage to buy some acorn squash and cantaloupe starts and found a few places to squeeze them in to the vegetable garden. Maybe if I didn't have quite so many tomatoes. And then there are the tomatoes germinating on their own in the garden, most likely the pear shaped 'Juliet' cherry tomato and I have to have at least one of those.

Oh woe is me. The roadside vegetable garden is too small. Maybe if I didn't have three rows of potatoes.



The summer wildflower season will be here shortly and the front roadside bed is getting ready with the first flush of bloom. Some self seeded Campanula 'Canterbury Bells' is joining in this year.

Perhaps the coming wildflower season will help distract me from trying to cram more plants in to the roadside vegetable garden.



A Pieris, white lilac and some purple iris fell out of the ground at work today. I need to find homes for them in the lush of the garden to be. There is more than enough to keep me occupied and out of the vegetable garden. I just don't think it will happen. The race is on.