(no subject)
Last few weeks, when not dealing with real world emergencies, I've been driven to working in my yard, turning it into a garden similar but yet different than the one I had when I first moved here. The years I was on the road it deteriorated into a mess of weeds and brown earth - only my four camellias survived. I just felt like I had to plant and nurture growing things. This time it will be a sacred garden. All my gods and goddesses will have a place as well as my family and those I love. The back yard sports a massive canopy from my I planted Lily of the Valley, my mom's favorite flower, and when I go back home, there will be more we dug up from my mother's yard. There's the pink calla lily from Beth and the two gorgeous hydrangeas Jeffrey gave me last year right before my mom died. They represent the ones which were in the yard of one of my childhood homes in Lowell, Mass. My sister and I called them Grandma balls. I also added columbine (for Shakespeare,) hostas, astilibe, ferns, caladiums, mandilla, fuschia (one of my daugther's favorites), lenten rose and two star jasmine plants for New Orleans and of course Type O Negative. I realized weeks later that I planted the Lily of the Valley and calla lily right next to the heleborous (lenten rose), a subconscious nod in the direction of Fowles and his Magus game.
There's a cermaic turtle hiding in the bushes for Kendall and also to represent Jeff, a Madonna with child for Beth, a copper butterfly for Kendall,(her name means Princess of the Garden of Butterflies) and a stained glass butterfly along with some spearmint from Mark. Two candelabra hang on the shed waiting for a copper fire pit party. My old stone mask of non-descript cultural origin with the moss hair hides beneath the boxwood,(visitors have been frightened by this mask for years. Jeff found it at a flea market.) Peeking from beneath the huge red camillias is a statue of Persephone/Ishtar/Hecate covered in moss,an obelisk inspired by Pagey, my assorted swans - gifts from Cindy (an incredible gardener) a broken middle eastern drum half-buried in the hedge, various windchimes and bird feeders, a New Orleans style metal globe with an arrow through it in the center circle of monkey grass surrounded by snapdragons which we used to see when my mother took my sister and I to Fuller's Gardens in Rye Beach, NH, and foxglove, my favorite among the poisonous flowers which are all my favorites. My ten year old astrological sundial (another gift) has now been moved next to the brick path I built years ago when I first bought the house which leads to a metal swinging bench. There are vedigris and rusted iron suns and moons hiding in the foliage and there will be a Pagoda for Beth and there's lots of lanterns and candle holders for at night on shepherd's hooks.
At some point, I'll dig up the circle, take out some of the monkey grass and create an ourboros a la The Serpent's Kiss.
I don't have a birdbath but everytime I turn the sprinkler on, the birds flock to a French bowl on the cafe set and wash in there. Poor things, they're desperate for water. I have bird feeders out, so we have a ton of cardinals, blue jays, robins, wrens, a wood pecker, a flock of mourning doves, mocking birds, what looks like finches, humming birds, crows and a hawk passes over every once in a while. I often see him perched on a light pole in the Publix parking lot. It's pitiful he's been exiled from his habitat.
I ripped out a lot of the wisteria and planted a mixed color azaela ($1.00 frost damaged plants but sporting new growth from Wal Mart) hosta, coleus and lily garden (pink and yellow pixie lilies, day lilies and brilliant red Asiatic lilies. This section used to be a nightmare of weeds and nasty undergrowth. Salvaged wrotught iron grates from New Orleans hold pots in the front yard and back garden filled with dianthus, sedum, asparagus fern, chives, oregano, marjoram, basil, paper moon and blue moon lobelia, dusty miller, alyssium and pansies. And a wrought iron arbor hicdes the compost pile (sort of) from the rest of the garden.
The old verdrigris griffins (more gifts)guard the shed which has English ivy and fuschia hanging from it and bright red dipladina climb up trellis in the front. An alchemical cermic plaque is on one wall and my Green man on the other with astrological paving stones of the half moon and sun scattered on the ground. The water bearer fountain will be ready next week. She's of particular significance since I had a gorgeous clay wall hanging I found at a yard sale or flea market, but she fell off the fence and broke into lots of pieces. So I buried her in the backyard along with my headless alabaster Diana (now about 35 years old), broken clay fish and Aztec gods (at least 20 years old) from Mexico and my handblown glass bowl, a writing award (15 years old), which was broken when my cat jumped up on the mantle. Lots of other things are buried too, a vase of my mom's from England with Green Griffins on it which got broken a couple of months ago during construction along with a ton of other broken stuff. Can't bear to throw them in the trash so they end up buried in the yard, making a sort of international, time capsule, however, very much out of synch with linear time.
I've become quite adept with my battery opperated hedge trimmers and like Edward Scissorhands get quite addicted from time to time and can't stop. And this week I graduated to a baby battery operated chain saw, my weapon of choice against the rampant weed shrubs and attack wisteria which has taken over numerous trees and most of my lawn with it's network of vines and roots. Yes, indeed, it's quite a rare experience to let her rip and take out wisteria roots as thick as my wrist. Om thre recommendation of experts, I water my plants with a little bit of dish liquid mnixed in with the water (it washes pollutants away from the roots) and I feed my yard a mixture of beer and water (the yeast in the beer promotes the growth of moss - my green plant of choice instead of grass - I hate mowing grass). This has been my therapy these days, so rare in South Carolina, where I can actually work outside during the day, breathe and not be attacked by hordes of mosquitos. My yard is now at least 5 degrees cooler than my street and ten degrees cooler than the busier streets in Greenville. I figure I'm cleaning up the air with all the plants, at least in my little spot of paradise so at least my friends and I can can breathe better. That is, until we get the fire going. If it weren't for the garden I think I'd go nuts with all this car wreck stuff, Beth's surgeries (may be more than one now - seems she has mutiple fractures) lost jobs, lost vehicles, insurance companies, body shops, etc, etc.
Well my back hurts, Cellar Dwellers are cranking it up and a cold beer (I don't feed it all to the moss gods) is waiting for me.
There's a cermaic turtle hiding in the bushes for Kendall and also to represent Jeff, a Madonna with child for Beth, a copper butterfly for Kendall,(her name means Princess of the Garden of Butterflies) and a stained glass butterfly along with some spearmint from Mark. Two candelabra hang on the shed waiting for a copper fire pit party. My old stone mask of non-descript cultural origin with the moss hair hides beneath the boxwood,(visitors have been frightened by this mask for years. Jeff found it at a flea market.) Peeking from beneath the huge red camillias is a statue of Persephone/Ishtar/Hecate covered in moss,an obelisk inspired by Pagey, my assorted swans - gifts from Cindy (an incredible gardener) a broken middle eastern drum half-buried in the hedge, various windchimes and bird feeders, a New Orleans style metal globe with an arrow through it in the center circle of monkey grass surrounded by snapdragons which we used to see when my mother took my sister and I to Fuller's Gardens in Rye Beach, NH, and foxglove, my favorite among the poisonous flowers which are all my favorites. My ten year old astrological sundial (another gift) has now been moved next to the brick path I built years ago when I first bought the house which leads to a metal swinging bench. There are vedigris and rusted iron suns and moons hiding in the foliage and there will be a Pagoda for Beth and there's lots of lanterns and candle holders for at night on shepherd's hooks.
At some point, I'll dig up the circle, take out some of the monkey grass and create an ourboros a la The Serpent's Kiss.
I don't have a birdbath but everytime I turn the sprinkler on, the birds flock to a French bowl on the cafe set and wash in there. Poor things, they're desperate for water. I have bird feeders out, so we have a ton of cardinals, blue jays, robins, wrens, a wood pecker, a flock of mourning doves, mocking birds, what looks like finches, humming birds, crows and a hawk passes over every once in a while. I often see him perched on a light pole in the Publix parking lot. It's pitiful he's been exiled from his habitat.
I ripped out a lot of the wisteria and planted a mixed color azaela ($1.00 frost damaged plants but sporting new growth from Wal Mart) hosta, coleus and lily garden (pink and yellow pixie lilies, day lilies and brilliant red Asiatic lilies. This section used to be a nightmare of weeds and nasty undergrowth. Salvaged wrotught iron grates from New Orleans hold pots in the front yard and back garden filled with dianthus, sedum, asparagus fern, chives, oregano, marjoram, basil, paper moon and blue moon lobelia, dusty miller, alyssium and pansies. And a wrought iron arbor hicdes the compost pile (sort of) from the rest of the garden.
The old verdrigris griffins (more gifts)guard the shed which has English ivy and fuschia hanging from it and bright red dipladina climb up trellis in the front. An alchemical cermic plaque is on one wall and my Green man on the other with astrological paving stones of the half moon and sun scattered on the ground. The water bearer fountain will be ready next week. She's of particular significance since I had a gorgeous clay wall hanging I found at a yard sale or flea market, but she fell off the fence and broke into lots of pieces. So I buried her in the backyard along with my headless alabaster Diana (now about 35 years old), broken clay fish and Aztec gods (at least 20 years old) from Mexico and my handblown glass bowl, a writing award (15 years old), which was broken when my cat jumped up on the mantle. Lots of other things are buried too, a vase of my mom's from England with Green Griffins on it which got broken a couple of months ago during construction along with a ton of other broken stuff. Can't bear to throw them in the trash so they end up buried in the yard, making a sort of international, time capsule, however, very much out of synch with linear time.
I've become quite adept with my battery opperated hedge trimmers and like Edward Scissorhands get quite addicted from time to time and can't stop. And this week I graduated to a baby battery operated chain saw, my weapon of choice against the rampant weed shrubs and attack wisteria which has taken over numerous trees and most of my lawn with it's network of vines and roots. Yes, indeed, it's quite a rare experience to let her rip and take out wisteria roots as thick as my wrist. Om thre recommendation of experts, I water my plants with a little bit of dish liquid mnixed in with the water (it washes pollutants away from the roots) and I feed my yard a mixture of beer and water (the yeast in the beer promotes the growth of moss - my green plant of choice instead of grass - I hate mowing grass). This has been my therapy these days, so rare in South Carolina, where I can actually work outside during the day, breathe and not be attacked by hordes of mosquitos. My yard is now at least 5 degrees cooler than my street and ten degrees cooler than the busier streets in Greenville. I figure I'm cleaning up the air with all the plants, at least in my little spot of paradise so at least my friends and I can can breathe better. That is, until we get the fire going. If it weren't for the garden I think I'd go nuts with all this car wreck stuff, Beth's surgeries (may be more than one now - seems she has mutiple fractures) lost jobs, lost vehicles, insurance companies, body shops, etc, etc.
Well my back hurts, Cellar Dwellers are cranking it up and a cold beer (I don't feed it all to the moss gods) is waiting for me.