Once Upon A Garden

The first path mowing happened this evening. The Great Lawn remains unscythed. These pictures are from a good week before. Things are different now. Company is coming. Some navigation assistance was in order.

Living In The Ethereal World

It's spring. I have been very busy. Lots and lots of pollen. By the time I sit down, I have become somewhat stupefied. I have more pictures. They may appear at some point.

The native and naturalized stinze of the forest is mesmerizing. I wander until off sets in.

On Sun Sunday

The temperature remained above freezing
The sky showed blue
The sun came out.

The concept of stinze - an intentional flowering lawn, really resonated with me.

Not just because of the spring bulbs

It was the lawn part that so intrigued me.

A lawn is not so different from a meadow, if you are willing to let it bloom.

The flowers don't have to be confined to spring bulbs.

The forest said, 'I'll show you some stinze.' That is pretty much my lawn through out the entire three acres of wild cultivated gardens.

Then I got intentional with it.

I don't know that there is a word to adequately describe how I manage the land and gardens here. Am I practicing a form of stinze that lasts the entire season as a blooming meadow, long past the late spring end and first mowing of stinze as a green grass lawn?

I think what I have been doing needs a new word.

I have been intentionally adding many more natives, bulbs and herbaceous perennials that can be mowed down once a year right into the 'lawn' that was already here.

The lawn that was here was just more flowering meadow than grass.

I will leave you to ponder, to wander the native stinze, high on the low spot of a North Carolina mountain top. What is it am I doing?

The Japanese Maples

On Snow Saturday
It had trouble sticking
But it was snow, most of the time.

This can be a perilous time for the Japanese Maples. They look so fine when they are first leafing out, but a hard freeze now will hurt them. After all these years and a number of setbacks, the twigs and seedlings I planted are turning into trees. They have acclimated a bit. They are kama'aina now. And it's not supposed to freeze - fingers crossed.

This one came home as a tiny first year seedling from beneath two upright, twenty foot high, Acer palmatum in my first client's office garden. I still work for him near twelve years later. I am such a creature of habit.

'Kagiri Nishiki' was purchased as a second year graft. I was choosing by the leaves.

On the shores of Turd Blossom Lake.

The Rough Bark Japanese Maple, Acer palmatum 'Arakawa' was one of the very first things I planted. It came as a raffle win from a 'Speaking of Gardening' symposium the very first year I arrived while attempting to break in to the Asheville gardening elite. That was not my fate.

Trust me, I made no effort towards this, but Nishiki and Arakawa were the names of my Maui County mayor and council member.

This is the saddest maple of them all. It is the root stock of 'Red Pygmy'. The top graft froze to death. The root stock sprouted. It looked pretty enough for me and there was no need to remove it.

I'll have to do a post on all the different kind trillium as they come up. Their rising times are spread over a full month.

This one came home as maybe a three year sapling from beneath the same parents as the first one at the top. The seedlings that sprout under these two trees come in all kinds of colors. This one had lime green bark. I need to look closer and see if it still does.

The garden is not the same anymore.

It keeps changing. Becoming more.

On Wet Friday

The waters rose to they eye of Creation
Then disappeared beneath the Great Lawn.

The water flowed for quite some time.
Speaking as it went below the surface.

With spring rising

I keep peddling on down the road.