The View from The Parking Lot

My natural vibration is increasing. More of the pictures I take are coming out blurry. Or my eyes are going again. If I cared more about the photography I'd use a tripod, but I don't.

Everything is vibrating at a higher pitch. Everything. What it portends will be determined. A client died last weekend. Not from the corona virus. His bug garden is in the previous post 'Flowers'. I plan to acquire the sign and have a little memento of Dr. David Alsop, entomology professor at Queens College New York in my bug garden.

Three gardens I tend will be on the market soon. Change is coming. A lot of it is age related.

It is the time of Voodoo and a wet and steamy voodoo this year. I sent a full pot of my baby Amorphophallus bulbifer to the nursery last fall. In a larger pot with nursery quality fertilization, they are already bigger than my Voodoo Lilies in one season. I was shocked. She owes me an Amorphophallus konjac bulb.

They have multiplied enough for the Crooked Shed to go full voodoo this year. Maybe I could start selling the annual bulb crop to the nursery?

All these years later and the peasant gardener still has a patch of weed flowers and one Japanese maple grown from seed in the parking lot cabin side bed. There were and still are other priorities. And should I get another gubmint bribe check, the driveway and parking lot are going to get regraded this winter. After my weed flowers are gone. Better to see the grade then.

It's either that or time to have a sign made for the top of the drive, 'Warning - High Hump Ahead'.

Solly Kitty

Remember her? She got fat. It was time to contemplate withholding food. Then she seemed to stabilize and stopped expanding.

Solly is not particularly fond of the outside. She totally leans in the direction of an indoor cat. With a whole new coat of fur, the bad hair life is a thing of the past.

Flowers

Then through the looking glass
Two wilder style gardens.

Liatris

Liatris self sows and can become a bit of a weed in proper gardens with mulched beds. That means it gets pulled as a weed sometimes. The corms follow me home and get planted hither and yon. I have tossed out big sacks full of seed over the years too. It is beginning to show.

Liatris can also disappear in proper gardens over the winter. Damn varmints. I suspect it is the voles.

It grows and self sows in the Tall Flower Meadows now. I don't think I have ever paid money for liatris. At this point it would be difficult to tell if any disappeared over the winter. It's all about populations and good bloom years now.

I got started deconstructing the fixed recessed loft windows thinking I could kill the bugs that had moved in and ponder everything I would need to redesign and rebuild the flaw. I ran into a small problem.

I built this house and installed the windows. They were very well installed. The framing fits the windows like a glove and the windows have a nice seal of caulk between them and the exterior trim holding them in place. There is no wiggle room and they are nailed in by trim and caulked in place. On the outside.

I may need to borrow some scaffolding after all. I'm hoping for another epiphany. I'll kill the bugs some other day.

I brought home a fist full of liatris corms last week. I should have pulled more. They have become a bit of a weed. Here they can run free.

Settling Of Contents

Thirteen years and one month later it can be said I did what I set out to do. A cozy cabin is nestled in beautiful wild cultivated gardens.

Voodoo happens, if a little slower and a bit later this year.

A man can dream.
And new life settles in.

So did a landing on the service entrance stairs. What actually settled was the masonry block wall and the cement footings for the landing. I couldn't raise the ground so I put in taller posts, 2 inches taller, to raise one side of the landing. It went smoothly enough.

I've been watching the block wall for over a year now. I built both it and the dry stack wall below. I know what's under there. I feel pretty confident it has settled as much as it can. But there are other surrounding factors that need attention that would help things out.

Rooted cuttings have grown to become large shrubs.

Time can take many appearances. A ten by ten foot square of stones is slowly growing to heiau. Each stone has become like a day of work. I dig holes. They follow me home, a few here and there, because I need more.

The cultivated in the forest have brought gardens to the wild.

The gardener keeps planting more. A rooted rhododendron stem came home this week with a small bucket of rocks.

There was one design flaw in the cozy cabin, the fixed recessed windows in the loft. They collect snow and ice and rain and rot. One of them had begun leaking and some bugs have obviously moved in from the chewed up insulation bits that are falling from the kitchen ceiling.

I went up on the ladder and re-caulked this one, the one that doesn't leak. Now I wait for the caulk to dry.

But there are two recessed windows in the loft that collect water and rot.

I tried. I did put the ladder up against the house and climbed up there, but I just couldn't do it. This was going to need some scaffolding to make me feel safe. I did kill all the wasps while I was up there though. For next time.

Later and contemplating, there was an epiphany. It's a design flaw that will forever need fixing. I built this house and installed those fixed windows. They are only held in place by wood trim. I can eliminate the flaw by changing the framing trim to get rid of the recess that is collecting the water. The new recess will be completely inside. And that can be done from inside the house standing comfortably on the bedroom floor. I have a new plan. No scaffolding or ladders needed.

Good. That problem is settled and when the windows come out it should be a lot easier to kill whatever bugs have moved inside. The bugs are supposed to be outside.

An Evening Stroll

I did a minor repair on the back stairs service entrance today. Because of advancing age and tight quarters it felt more like a major repair. My body does not bend like it used to. I'm wore out. Tomorrow I will attempt to climb a ladder and effect a more important minor repair. The cozy cabin is ten years old. There has been some settling of contents.

Click on a picture for a slide show. Garden for one is ready for your evening stroll.