dreams
I think I need to illustrate this journal more. I am, after all, a visual person. LJ doesn't make this as easy as I'd like - perhaps it is time to move to a new blog altogether. The spring sun is causing my sap to warm and flow so who knows what's going to happen next.
We are talking with our landlord about the possibility of buying the house we live in, and I have so many ideas about how I'd like to change and improve the place if it were mine, to invest in how I like. More windows, skylights in the studio. All new applicances. Gas range. Re-do the whole front yard to make a sactuary instead of a useless slope. I dream of a garden I can sit in and read and draw and sip wine in the evening. I imagine a place of privacy, where I don't feel like my presence is on display for the whole street. I dream of not seeing the telephone pole that currently grows out of the front lawn. There must be creative ways to disguise it (Lisa proposes morning glory vines, but I think the utility company might not approve). On our bike rides, I screech to a stop in front of homes that have the gardens I love, so I can take notes. Defined spaces, rooms, softened by wild growth that blooms and softens the hard lines of fences and arbors. Doors and windows that enclose the space but soften it. Rob told me his mother cultivated a garden in his childhood home that bloomed all year. When she noticed a lull in the flowers, she'd go find some plants that would bloom for those two weeks, to fill the gap. I've been reading "The 20-minute Gardener," and beginning to believe I could have a beautiful lush garden without being a slave to it or hiring a gardener to care for it, either. Santa Cruz is such a good place to garden, but things grow so fast here, and for so long, that if you don't stay on top of the maintainance things grow out of control. Like our dahlias did last year. Lisa found me a great gardening book that is so me: "The Free-Spirited Garden." I'm so influenced by the cottage gardens of my ancestral home, but things grow so much bigger here than they do in the North of England!
We've planted our front flower bed with seeds and bulbs, and although it looks like not much more than an expanse of groomed dirt and plant markers at this point, I know it will be lush in a month. Tiny sprouts are beginning, and we are out there every evening, greeting the new babies, guessing what they might be. So far we can't tell which are weeds and which are flowers. The dahlias are sending up strong, tight shoots that look like they mean business. We will have gorgeous flowers through the beginning of next winter, and I'm so excited. We have one early start - a rannuculus tuber left over from last year that was fooled by the January sun, but hardy enough to last through the onslaught of rain since. It is right in the middle of the bed, blooming cheerfully in red and orange and yellow, unfazed by its solitude.
We are talking with our landlord about the possibility of buying the house we live in, and I have so many ideas about how I'd like to change and improve the place if it were mine, to invest in how I like. More windows, skylights in the studio. All new applicances. Gas range. Re-do the whole front yard to make a sactuary instead of a useless slope. I dream of a garden I can sit in and read and draw and sip wine in the evening. I imagine a place of privacy, where I don't feel like my presence is on display for the whole street. I dream of not seeing the telephone pole that currently grows out of the front lawn. There must be creative ways to disguise it (Lisa proposes morning glory vines, but I think the utility company might not approve). On our bike rides, I screech to a stop in front of homes that have the gardens I love, so I can take notes. Defined spaces, rooms, softened by wild growth that blooms and softens the hard lines of fences and arbors. Doors and windows that enclose the space but soften it. Rob told me his mother cultivated a garden in his childhood home that bloomed all year. When she noticed a lull in the flowers, she'd go find some plants that would bloom for those two weeks, to fill the gap. I've been reading "The 20-minute Gardener," and beginning to believe I could have a beautiful lush garden without being a slave to it or hiring a gardener to care for it, either. Santa Cruz is such a good place to garden, but things grow so fast here, and for so long, that if you don't stay on top of the maintainance things grow out of control. Like our dahlias did last year. Lisa found me a great gardening book that is so me: "The Free-Spirited Garden." I'm so influenced by the cottage gardens of my ancestral home, but things grow so much bigger here than they do in the North of England!
We've planted our front flower bed with seeds and bulbs, and although it looks like not much more than an expanse of groomed dirt and plant markers at this point, I know it will be lush in a month. Tiny sprouts are beginning, and we are out there every evening, greeting the new babies, guessing what they might be. So far we can't tell which are weeds and which are flowers. The dahlias are sending up strong, tight shoots that look like they mean business. We will have gorgeous flowers through the beginning of next winter, and I'm so excited. We have one early start - a rannuculus tuber left over from last year that was fooled by the January sun, but hardy enough to last through the onslaught of rain since. It is right in the middle of the bed, blooming cheerfully in red and orange and yellow, unfazed by its solitude.