The Plant Lady

I really love houseplants. I mean I REALLY love houseplants. One thing remaining consistent in the last couple of years of constant change has been houseplants. Even though the garden jones seems to have died, I am still rescuing houseplants.  Even dumpster diving to rescue plants, like this sanseviera rescued from work.  Multiple pots thrown out because they were horribly pot bound and overgrown.  I went into the dumpster, repotted them into two matching pots for the deck, they rewarded me later that year by blooming their little rootstocks off!

There is not a room in my house without plants in it. My sunroom, about 12 x 24 bears the heaviest load, but when I decided it was time to clear my dining room of furniture, it became the auxiliary greenhouse. About this time of year the Green Goddess starts the itch somewhere between my shoulder blades, I have to find something green, new, fabulous to add to the collection. Otherwise, the itch just get worse.  You may call it a monkey on my back, but I prefer Green Goddess, reminding me spring is soon here.

I do a nursery crawl until something grabs and doesn’t let go. I know the places to feed my jones for plants, cool pots.  And YES, it does feel a bit like a monkey on my back, directing me to back alleys and darkened doorways until there is relief.  I did the drill a couple of weeks ago.  Rescuing a couple of $1 miniature roses, finding some cool dark brown basket weave terra cotta pots at  Bern’s and hitting gold at the next, Knollwood in Beavercreek.  They’re always good for way cool houseplants and very cool pots. An outlying place in Yellow Springs is my fall back position, since it’s a bit far even for a pre-spring fix, but by far they always have the coolest plants.  The KING of all these places, at least centric to my current position is Baker’s Acres.  They don’t open until spring, so local I remain. But already the juices are flowing for my annual (pun intended) visit to Baker’s Acres.

At Knollwood’s are a variety of cool gondola shaped glazed pots in some really beautiful colors and sizes (see the first picture below).  The real coup were succulents.  A very sharp variegated bush-like plant and a vining succulent with a blush of plum in its rounded leaves (unfortunately no tags) .  Had to have. Rounding out the group was a nice stand of sanseviera “laurentii”.  Ghostly white-blue spears about two feet tall. OH, yes, load them up.

                                                                                   

Whew, I feel so much better now!

Like many gardeners, I love the unusual, the variegated, black, chartreuse, red, plum wild foliage on plants both inside and out.  Like this black taffeta begonia and the red chinese evergreen……

         

In addition to the begonia blooming above, amaryllis, cyclamen, angel trumpets, sanseviera, echeveria, hibiscus are all blooming.  Getting ready to cut loose are orchids.

Yes, I said orchids.

Never cared for them much.  Much too high maintenance for my lazy-girl program.  Not until the onslaught of the easy care types that started flooding Kroger’s, Trader Joes, and other similar retail outlets.  Even I could justify spending $10 on an orchid, even if I knew the fussy thing would probably not be around in a year.  But then I had to have one of every flower type.  I was hooked.  A row of them sprung up on my kitchen windowsill, where they could be exposed to constant southern light, partially protected by an ancient silver maple and another wall of the house.  They would also benefit from the humidity and warmth from the kitchen sink.  They even got to vacation on the deck, only losing one.

And then a year or so ago, I was visiting my dear friend Diane in Dallas.  Dear until she hog tied me and forced me to go with her to an orchid greenhouse near her home.  I just did it to humor her; I had no interest.  I had my $10 orchids, I was satisfied.  Until……

                                                                  

Are you kidding me?  I had to FLY back.  I could not possibly leave this place without something.  And there were too many varieties to count.  Mind blowing acres of orchids.  Yes, I said acres.  Maybe only 1.5 acres, but I felt as though I had found the secret meet up place for orchids, all milling about in wild glorious abandon.  At this point, I hate Diane!  What have you done to me, I am the orchid-hater!!

So, I narrow it down to three.  Yes, Virginia, you can take plants as carry ons.

                  

So three beauties came home with me, causing quite a stir in the airport and on the plane.  I’m fairly certain I heard whispers of “who’s the crazy plant lady” as I walked through to board with the biggest loon-crazy grin on my face EVER!  I love Diane!

I really had no delusions though about their longevity.  Orchids of most varieties are notoriously finicky and I wasn’t kidding about my lazy girl tendencies, so I knew where the two coincided death was sure to follow.  So they vacationed on the deck with the others and migrated in during the fall round up.  To date they are thriving.  When checked this morning, one of them is covered with buds, thumbing its nose at my benevolent neglect.  I plan to post pictures back to this blog when the blessed event occurs.

Of my grocery store children, several of them were repotted, two of them now offering up their fragile looking bloom stems for a spring explosion.  A note to the wise, many of the grocery store orchids are stuck into some pretty sorry peat moss, so repotting sooner rather than later is beneficial.  And the rescue of which I am most proud?  An orchid languishing in the office of my former company’s owner spirited out by her assistant.  It was of the grocery store variety, just in much nicer pot.  It had been overwatered and neglected, its leaves turning thin and crepey, not a good sign in my new found orchid knowledge.  I repotted this invalid with another of its healthier cousins in the fabulous container it was given to me in.  I placed it on my kitchen bar so I could keep an eye on the duo in their new digs. With spring just around the corner with all its promise, the poor little invalid has turned its own corner and will soon be joining its extended family for the annual pilgrimage on the deck, healthy and vibrant.

I need a greenhouse.  I mean REALLY.

 

Hello, Laeliocattelya Fire Dance ‘Blanch’

Back to the Future

In many ways, I feel as though I am being expelled from Eden.  Since 1999, we ripped and dug and managed and dreamed a blank slate into a personal paradise.  Every plant, every shrub, every piece of hardscape selected, positioned, nurtured to create a sanctuary for us, for birds, all comers.  We created an Arboretum.

2008 was the beginning.  Most of the hardscape was in, but plants were immature.  Bones were fleshing out , making their presence known.  Suddenly, it was no longer a series of disparate plants and beds.  For the first time, there was the appearance of a plan.  There was a sense of place, of organization, of thought process.  9 years in the  making.

It took 10 years for the garden to explode, just as the beginning of the end made itself known.  Unbelievable health, color, insects, birds. A decade of sweat, wishes, dreams and yes a lot of coin, coming to the party.

   

2010 proved to be the second best spring yet.  Taking a note from the high points and low points of 2009, I moved stock around, tucking here and there, editing, expanding.  Roses that never bloomed before cut loose in 2010.  So beautiful.

Then came the fall from grace, followed by indifference and then drought.

When I began this blog in 2011, my intention was to write primarily on the natural world around me, or unnatural if that is how one defines gardening.  My gardening experiences, my passion for plants, for beauty, for letting go, letting nature.  My passion for an organic lifestyle.  So much has gotten in the way, and on the journey something was lost.  All those gardening passions missing in action.  Although I have been admonished for writing about too much sadness, it has been cathartic, healthy.  It has helped me excise those wounds too deep for the public to see, purge the poison.  But now I am ready.  Ready to get back to the future.

As I prepare to leave this languishing Eden, I look forward to finding the place on earth I can call mine.  A place where I can look back to the hard work and choices of a decade or so and cherry pick for my plans for the future.  Apply the results and lessons learned in 2009 and 2010 and create my personal Eden.  My place of rest and respite, peace and contentment.  I am older now and no longer the warhorse I used to be, filling entire days with farm work without rest.  I will have to be kinder and gentler on myself, not be too impatient for results.

I want this back, in my future.

Devil Dog

Back in the day was a most excellent bakery in our neck of the woods. Sue’s.  It was the hangout of choice for retired steel workers and the 50+ crowd for a great cup of coffee and a righteous pastry. And Sue was always there slinging pastries, sharing stories and hugs.

It was happy day when as a family we would venture over for a morning pastry, usually on the way to church.  My achilles heal was something I had never seen before:  the chocolate cake bar.  A pastry roughly six inches long, three inches on a side, topped with a some sort of white buttercream frosting/filling and on top of that a marvelous milk chocolate ganache oozing over all.  Oh my, good thing we only went by occasionally.

I ventured off to college, where ramen noodles and pots of coffee were de rigeur.  But on occasion, came the care packages.  Personal goods, newspaper clippings, Home Pride Wheat Bread (unavailable where I schooled) and Sue’s chocolate cake bars.  Although starting to get stale by the time I received them, those cake bars were metered out like they were gold.  They had to last a long time, and sometimes I just didn’t have the fortitude to let them.  Oh my, oh my, oh my.

After marrying and a couple of moves later, found myself in southwest Ohio. Finally finding another place making a similar delectable treat, and this time a name, a real name.  One that wasn’t as much of a mouthful as the treat itself.  Devil Dogs.

It’s 2013 and I have another devil dog.  Gorgeous to look at but has the potential to be painfully bad for you, just like all that chocolate.  Andante, Dante for short.  My Joy was already such an allegro I needed an andante to slow her down.

He was roughly seven months old when I brought him home.  He had been in the shelter a week when I saw him.  Starved, frightened, sick.  Part golden lab, part American Staffordshire terrier, part something small, spaniel maybe. Part soulful baby.  Part kangaroo.  His only interest was food.  Due I am sure to his entire skeleton being identifiable beneath his golden coat.  Literally starving.

He and Joy hit it off from the moment they met.  Playful abandon, two pups finding each other on the whim of rescue adoption.  They are like siblings from different litters, brother from another mother.  Six months later they still have not stopped playing.  She taught him about toys and hiding under the bed.  He always has to know where she is and will search until he finds her.

His need for food became a useful tool, but not before some basic learning.  He had never been in a house before.  I taught him to climb stairs, about doors and doorways.  Because his food drive was so large, in a week he had learned his name, to sit, to come.  Anything for another morsel.

Just so everyone could have a time out for the first night, I set Dante up in my guest bathroom.  Linoleum tile, plenty of space.  He would be warm and secure and Joy would know she was still my baby.   My first lesson came the next morning.  There had been no noise during the night, all is calm, all is bright.  Then I opened the door, one of my freshly hung solid poplar doors with new trim.  Inside was the aftermath of a whirling dervish.  Drywall, trim, door all succumbed.  He had peed in the floor but that was to be expected.  Never inside before, remember?  Interestingly enough, despite the shrapnel from his evening’s activities not a scratch on him.  No blood, no wounds, nothing.  I don’t know how he did it.

So my next attempt was to try kenneling.  After he damaged and broke out of three different kennels I stopped trying, the third one an all metal contraption he pushed out of and broke the welds.  All forty pounds of him.  Again not a scratch, not an ounce of blood.  He’s starting to sound like James Bond.

Quarantined in the garage? Trim pulled off the garage door, door knob mauled, a hey day on top of my rag top convertible, puncturing the same.

So I talked with a dog behavioralist and the folks at the shelter.  Trying to analyze his behavior, this frenzied drive to not be contained, it seems he was one of those puppies abandoned. First chained up, relegated to the backyard, not really a family pet, and then for good, maybe a foreclosure, maybe not, but left for good.  He figured out how to get away and if it worked the first time………

Of his other talents, he’s a jumper and a climber.  A veritable canine MacGyver, escaping most situations. He can jump from a standing position to my eye level.  The first non traditional command I taught him was he would not be touched until he sat at my feet, otherwise I would be treated to his wild pogo dancing.  He picked it up pretty quickly too, but it doesn’t mean the kangaroo has left the building.  When he and Joy went to the kennel while I vacationed, he repeatedly climbed the wall of his enclosure, on his way to where?

Recently, he has taken to heart the new attitude of deconstruction found in high end restaurants, except with my pillows.  Cases, pillows, shams ripped to bits.  The first time was funny, after that not so much.  A newly redecorated bedroom on the ropes.

By now if you are not asking yourself why do I still have this dog, you I gotta wonder about.  I started several times to take him back.  Couldn’t. It was his eyes.  Deep, deep chocolate redolent of those devil dogs of days gone by.  The first time I have ever seen a dog speak love with his eyes.  And he wants so badly to please.  He looks at you all wiggle and jump and those eyes speak. Please don’t leave me, I’ll be good, I’m really trying.

And I also know what would eventually happen to him.  He would be taken home because of his cuteness, his Marley-good looks.  And then the trail of destruction and anxiety and lack of house brokenness would begin and how long would he last?  A week, two? Then back to the shelter.  How many cycles of that before a dog becomes unadoptable?  He is so sweet and so sensitive, how could that possibly help him?

He’s smart and a puppy still, recently crossing the year mark (I think).  His sweetness, his goodness with Joy, the wiggle-rama whenever I come home.  The warm little body snuggled up in the cold of the night.  What’s stuff compared to that?  And, believe it or not, he is getting better.  Small teacup poodle strides, but getting better.

He’s my modern day devil dog.  Without the calories.

For  my friend Shirley.

Cocoon

So here I am in 2013, having followed in the footsteps of Margaret Roach, Martha Stewart’s lieutenant, in leaving corporate life.  Margaret’s book, And I Shall Have Peace There, became an inspiration to me, on a much smaller scale.   

I have launched into several projects both intentional and unintentional, broadening my handyman chops.  I learned to use the pnuematic nailer which scared me to death.  But in twenty minutes a project I had dreaded for months was off the list.  I am a convert.  Pnuematic forever!

I started sorting through detritus in the basement, but this has proven more difficult than I had imagined.  Living history, or more like dead history, surrounded me and even though I did what all organizers recommend – throw away pile, keep pile, goodwill pile, it’s been like moving through jello.  Small, hard victories.

I’ve torn apart the foyer and hall closet and started painting, had new can lights installed. Sorted through old coats, the one I can’t part with a full length black leather trench from our first Christmas.  I had put it on layaway and paid it off with my $8 an hour job.  

The garage door opener malfunctioned and I had to figure out why.  Didn’t figure it, but in the meantime accidentally pulled it off the track.  Had to use the truck to haul it back, using the steel cable tie out I normally use to put the dogs outside.  American ingenuity?  It works now, but I’m worried about the aftermath.  Need an expert to take a look, make sure that it won’t collapse down around me some night pulling into the garage.

More importantly, I am cocooning. I feel the protection and the security of this house.  I have been rediscovering myself.  Cooking and baking like I did back in the day before stress got in the way.  I get up every day with a handful of tasks and address them without worry, without hurry, without judgement, without resentment.  

I have signed up for the local gardening conference and the county’s master gardener program.  I am actually looking FORWARD to what I will be doing.  I started feeding the birds again.  Victories.  

I have taken to opening the Bible in the morning and reading a passage and thinking on it. Some of it has way too many begets and begats for me to find relevance.  The other day I got stuck on Proverbs 15 verses 1 – 10.  This was me, this was my cross.  Making sure that the words of my mouth and the sentiments of my heart are right and just. (I can be a mouthy broad, but if you think I am bad you shoulda heard my brother!)  I have been re-reading these verses for a week, absorbing, encouraging the seed to germinate.  The Bible is left open on my breakfast bar in the kitchen so as I drink my coffee I can read a passage.  This morning, the Bible was turned to Psalm 127.  The last I looked it was on Proverbs 15.  Gale force winds in the kitchen last night?

 Psalm 127 – Unless the Lord builds the house, they labor in vain who build it;  unless the Lord guards the city the watchman keeps awake in vain.

It is vain for you to rise up early, to retire late, to eat the bread of painful labors; for He gives to His beloved even in his sleep.

Thank You for my cocoon, for my cocoon time.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Happy Mayan New Year!

In early 2012 when I read my first article about the end of the Mayan calendar calculation predicting the end of the world, I just loved it. I am an archaeology, History Channel, conspiracy theory junkie. This was like crack, it had it all!

And then the All-Paranoid-All-the-Time TV channels started on the subject, riling up the dooms dayers into frenzies about the end of the world. There is an end of the world for all of us folks, it just ain’t gonna be that dramatic for most of us.

Shortly after reading the first article, I ran into another one. This one written by a Mayan scholar. Don’t you just love scholars? They can connect the dots between Mozart and Jon Bon Jovi and make it seem effortless, masking the years of tedious research, and publishing and waiting. The scholarly paper debunked the end of the world theory. Very easily I might add. The basis being the Mayans only knew this was the completion of their highly complex astrological calculations. And after that, a whole new era, one even they could not predict.

I loved that concept: 2013 – a whole new era. How could I make that work for me?

Coming into 2012 I had so much baggage. I dragged it through the year, sometimes getting the best of me. Other times, allowing me to break the surface.  Every time I was able to take in real air and breathe I knew more and more of what I didn’t want.  I was just having difficulty knowing what I did want.

I did want to get all, or most, of the projects done for the house.  Hoping by the end I would know whether I could remain there or not.  I did want to downsize.  I did want a means of using my skills for meaningful pursuits.  Knowing how to do all this became the problem.

By the time the majority of the house projects were done, I knew I didn’t want to stay.  Too much house, too much lot, just too much.  But I also had 25 years of a shared life residing in my basement.  All needing sorted. Months of work.  Emotional heavy lifting work.

Let Go or Be Dragged.  One of my favorite kitchen magnets.  So true in so many ways.  Outside of everything else in my life, I was being dragged.  By my job.  A career path I had fallen into to support a mutually chosen life.  A life gone, and not one I would have chosen on my own.  I had become a corporate punching bag, in the last few years becoming even more so.  Being dragged and punched and kicked at the same time.  Let Go or Be Dragged.  Time to let go.

Looking ahead to what the first quarter of 2013 will bring, a house listing in the spring, a lot of organizational work to get it there, the last few projects to complete before the sign goes up in the yard, I knew what 2013 would bring.  A chance to reconstruct my life.  To take a moment, and determine how my life will look in these remaining years.  Having prayed, soul searched, discussed what I could do, where I could go, I was no further.  Much due, I am afraid, to the constant squeeze my brain has been in just to make all it all work, survive my daily beatings.  I needed time for my brain to reboot.

Let Go or Be Dragged.  I know in my past line of work, sometimes constant work on a problem is what prevents it being solved.  Working for days on something pesky and unsolvable, becomes instantly clear once time and distance, like a day off, is taken.  How could I achieve that with my problems, my searches?  As long as my best brain time was being allocated toward the pursuits of others, my brain would not have the recharge it would need to think for me.

And so,  I have decided not to be dragged any longer.  The new era of the Mayans is a new era for me. Letting go, letting God. Not being dragged.  I am loving it.  Wish me luck folks.

Happy 2013!

Bring out Your Dead

I love Monty Python.  And of course the response to this is, “But I’m not dead yet”.

I’m not dead yet.

For over two years, I started and ended each day hoping it would be my last.  The burden of my grief, sorrow and love was too much too bear.  Every day assembling my game face and going out into the world.  And coming home, praying I wouldn’t wake up and have to do it again.  From this sprang people’s perception I was so strong, I was doing so well.  Sometimes when the energy was low or the day had been particularly bad, I broke character. A glimpse of the mess behind the curtain.

I actually went home at lunchtime from work with the intention of never going back, ever.  Never leaving my house again. Talking myself away from the moment was perhaps one of the hardest things I have ever done. When I returned to work, I was amazed no one saw the devastation on my face.  I was beginning to understand how my husband pulled it off.

I don’t think I turned the corner until I brought home the dog.  Joy.  Here was a little being that personified everything I lost.  And what a freaking aggravation!  I’m not sure if I turned the corner because I needed her or I was determined to win our battle of wills.

But even that did not reboot my psyche.  Death daily in my thoughts, no longer thinking of how to orchestrate it, but thinking how I wouldn’t fight it when it came.  I needed my dead.

All through this time I spoke daily to my dead. Sometimes in anger, sometimes pleading, sometimes just talking about my day or asking for help.  I knew they were there.  This professionally skeptical CPA saw, heard, smelled irrefutable signs her people were around.  But I wanted more.  The longing to be in their presence was overwhelming.

God had obviously carried me through the minefield in which I had been living.  There were too many irrefutable signs there too.  I couldn’t understand it.  As a young woman I had prayed to find someone to really love me.  Years later being presented with the young man who would become my husband, all too clear he was my soulmate.  How could God give me this incredible gift, answering my prayers, and then rip it away from me without so much as a by-your-leave?  If there weren’t a plan, why leave me alive?  I prayed for the plan to reveal itself, I prayed for patience (which I have little of), to wait, I prayed for understanding.

In  my waiting I needed a plan of action.  Being very terrier-like myself, I needed a job to do otherwise there might be trouble.  So I embarked on a program of updating my house.  Completing all the remodeling jobs in residence on the to do list for almost a decade.  Hardwood floors, new carpet, new trim and on and on.  Learning I would never make it as a general contractor.  There’s a reason those people have jobs, dealing with contractors is like herding squirrels.  Delay, excuses, non-performance, I ran into it all.  It kept me so busy that by the time the drought really settled in here, I was toast, needing a respite in the air conditioning.

Still a plan had not presented itself, but I was able to see how my dreams for the house looked.  What a pleasure.  But when the main projects were done, it became obvious I could no longer stay here.  Too much property, too much work, too much cash drain.  I needed to sell the house.  As the summer sizzled into fall, my detachment from the property began.  I had a realtor come through who liked the updates and the feel of the house now.  She was very positive about the prospects.  We landed on a spring 2013 list date.

Still no plan, still my dead were more real than most of the folks around me.  I traveled to Italy, hoping the trip would knock me back into the land of the living.  Even that did not provide an exorcism.

As Thanksgiving approached, I thought about the few holidays we had been able to have in the house.  How much we had loved staying home during those times, and rarely having the opportunity.  Then it hit me, this season would be the last season in my house, our house.  These next few months would be terminal ones for enjoying the beautiful sunroom my husband remodeled stem to stern with his own hands, to enjoy curling up on the sofa with a fire, look out over the “Queendom” (his word, not mine) from our bedroom.

This was the season to say goodbye.  I needed to release my dead.  If I didn’t I would never live, I would continue life in this coma-like state, hearing and seeing life going on around me, unable to participate.  I needed to spend this Christmas in the house, saying good bye.

This was not an easy thing.  First, I had to clear it with Mom.  We have been alone, together for a long time.  It was not a conversation I looked forward to.  She understood.  Having wrestled with her own dead for 25 years, she understood.

I planned the bones of my long Christmas weekend.  I wanted to cook; to make that last big turkey dinner.  I wanted to attend Christmas Eve service.  But I made no plans for my dead.  I didn’t realize the strain this decision put on me until I began to notice I had started having anxiety attacks again.  Needing medication.  Frantic I was down to my last pill and couldn’t raise the doctor to renew the prescription.  Being asked to sing at the Christmas Eve service sent me into a tailspin.  Just sending the declining email put me on the couch in a puddle; what if I had been foolish enough to say yes?

And so Christmas Eve, out of the blue, I confronted my dead.  The conversation isn’t important; it was the feeling of release, from both them and me.  Their worry that I was not going to be able to take care of myself evaporated.  I had been holding them close, while they needed to continue their journeys.  I had to let them go so they could let go of me.  It was time.  And we are all on our way.

I’m not dead yet.

Bikini Wax – Garden Style

I am still trying to locate those joneses in my garden, in the meantime maintenance of the overgrown is a priority.  No new plants, just deal with what is here.

For those of you titillated by the title, freshly off 50 Shades of Gray.  Sorry no can do.  Although……..

Wild Irish Rose:  You are not beautiful, or thin or virginal, but I am embedding 16 thorns into your scalp and arms and back.  Once you have experienced the exquisite pain of my entry into your skin, the only thing more exquisite will be the rapturous extrication and removal to the compost bin……

Almost but no cigar.

So this week, editing.  What should be seen by the public.  Editing.  The limbing up of shrubbery that have had the audacity to be successful despite multiple years of neglect and drought.  Bikini Wax for a Gardener’s Soul.  Should I write a book?

I had the pleasure of a successful partnership in the last few weeks with Beavercreek Landscaping.  I had envisioned a fence that would mirror an arbor that my beloved had built, years ago.  Working with Mark was indeed a pleasure and he took my artsy directions and gave it life.  Which meant I had to get to work.  Rose of Sharon, lilac, elderberry all needed editing.  As did my volunteer wild roses, progeny of a ditch rescue. A planting bed built willy nilly suddenly became a blank canvas with a gorgeous fence backdrop.  Scalpel, suture.

These beautifully hardy, successful shrubs needed  a little context to highlight their existence. Enter the okatosunes the loppers, the handsaw.  Suddenly, the beautiful fence made these horticultural ass-kickers seem like hillbillies on a beach in Brazil.  Hulking, over grown, hiding God knows what underneath all the overgrowth.  Time to edit with extreme prejudice.  Limbing up everything. Taking away everything not adding to horticultural beauty.  Cross branches, suckers, low fillers.  All gone.  Now suddenly airy with real estate to fill underneath.

Now many more decisions to be made.  How best to take advantage of this revealed horticultural landscape?  50 shades of green.  Right here in River City.  With a capital G and that rhymes with P and that stands for ………..?

Oh cistern, where art thou?

The next really great battle won’t be over budgets or oil. It will be water. Who owns it. Who controls it.  The Great Lakes Consortium is already locking down water rights so that others, even home owners, cannot impinge on sovereign rights. Even on their own properties.  Scary, huh?

Where will we be if there is no water to drink?

So, I’ve become a water hoarder.  Okay a water hoarder wanna be.  Don’t look for me on Hoarders. At least not for water.

I am enamored of rain barrels, especially of the recycled-food industry type.  I have four barrels in operation, roughly 70 – 90 gallons each.  There are two open downspouts on the house, one impossible to adapt to a rain barrel, the other awaiting a trip for a REALLY BIG rain barrel, in the soon to be future.  Still figuring out how to capture the last one, in a bad spot for foot traffic, but give me time.

Had a gutter installed on the back of the potting shed to add more. Another REALLY BIG rain barrel planned for that spot.  Maybe even serial rainbarrels!!

I am jealous of free run off or when the rain barrels overflow due to debris.  All that wasted water. Given the droughts we’ve experienced over the last couple of years, water will be much needed in a few weeks time.  I don’t water my lawn.  When it gets hot and dry, grasses are way ahead of us on the evolutionary scale, they go dormant.  Constantly poking them with moisture screws up the cycle and weakens the plants.  I water the planting beds, but generally only those with new additions or particularly water sensitive inhabitants, like hydrangeas.  Rain barrels extend my watering capability.  Yes, it means hauling buckets, but it’s FREE and it’s soft and even slightly composted as it has picked up detritus in the gutters on the way to the downspout.

Yes it smells.  Especially the barrels  on those gutters near trees.  Trees that pile the roof and gutter covers with all the little down pourings of their active sex lives.  Maple helicopters, acorn, locust blossoms.  Breaking down through the gutter covers, washed into the filter on the top of the barrel, making a slight compost tea.

Those who like soldierly rows of flowers and everything in its place probably won’t like my watering scheme.  I use buckets.  Lots of them.  Always keeping at least a couple full for a  quick watering task on the fly.  Who’s in distress….grab a bucket.  It’s been called my mosquito farm.  I just think the larvae calling my buckets home become protein for the recipients.  A little more organic fertilizer please.

The absolute worst was the chipmunk.  Aren’t they cute?  Yes, destructive in a rodent kinda way.  Toys for the farm cats, targets for the hawks.  But cute.  And one day, one poor unfortunate fellow slipped into a water bucket, unable to free himself.  A horrible day.  I stopped filling buckets for a while.  Couldn’t stand the thought of finding another one.  But the pragmatism of having a quick douse ready to hand overrode my remorse and soon the bucket brigade was back.

What I really want Santa to bring is a cistern.  I mean a really gigantic underground cistern with an electric pump.  I’ve dreamed of it for years.  Even have a spot picked out.  When I’ve looked at houses to buy in the near past nothing has been sexier to me than a house with a cistern, (okay or a house with a double concrete utility sink but that’s a completely different jones).  Forget granite, and hardwood and decks.  Give me a cistern.  Oh, the things I could do with a cistern.

Is it funny, someone who grew up in a suburb of the second city and has never lived in the country is such a farm girl.  A farm girl with a city veneer.  I value quiet and good air and a chemical free environment.  Don’t talk to me about sprinkler systems and leaf blowers.  Let’s talk about soft free water I don’t have to let the chlorine dissipate before using on my leafy buddies.  Now that, my friends, is a turn on.  In a hippie, tree hugging sort of way.  Free love — of free water……..

Finding the Joneses

David Letterman must have been the first place I heard the phrase, “jonesing”. I loved it. It doesn’t have a pretty connotation, but I applied it to everything, I was jonesing for a new plant, new shoes,  a great meal. Does that not set a scene?

I live in a neighborhood full of Joneses.  Big houses, fancy cars, vacation homes, portfolios.  Then there’s me.  The token hillbilly.  Driving cars until they’re dead. I’m usually found during the weekend with mud up to my eyeballs,  immersed in the ecstasy of the dance with Mother Nature, not going to the country club for brunch with the girls.  Popping out of bed at 7 on a Saturday, usually working straight through until 3 or 4 — when I would be prompted about lunch time.  I had a serious jones.  Nurseries, plant catalogs, gardening magazines.  Lists of the newest got-to-haves invading my iphone and my notebook.  I built big exuberant display pots, banana trees and cannas and elephant ears.  Show stoppers by themselves, over the top when crammed into a huge terra cotta vessel all together.  Figured out uses for repurposed items, old galvanized tubs, broken terra cotta, left over brick.

Come 2010, my jones died.  I looked at this space we had called paradise, our Eden and it was dust.   I forgot to water, plants over wintered were left too long and perished in the garage.  And I felt nothing.  In the day, I would have been bereft to have been responsible to for the loss of one of these companions.  While I was sorry for each loss, it was akin to hearing of the death of the 12th cousin by marriage twice removed.  Unfortunate, but it didn’t penetrate the armor.

I couldn’t look to the neighborhood and keep up with the Jones’, their Joneses were not mine. I had to find where my jones lived, entice it from its burrow.  Breath on its embers, beg for life.

So here I am, into two years of onesie-ism, crawling out of a tunnel whose length seems to change each day.  In the winter I concentrated on updating the house with projects deferred for years.  My game plan to move the house forward so I could concentrate on the garden come spring.  Spring came early,  oh, so early.  Way, way too early for the plan.

Spring came too warm, too fast.  80 degrees in March.  Bad form, Spring, this is just not done.  My midwestern perennials were too easily teased from short naps; fooled by the vagaries of weather not settled.  This was a spring for the record books.  I don’t want to imagine what July and August will deliver.

The garden pulled itself through two years of benevolent neglect. Drought. Apathy. Marauders.  There have been moments of exquisite beauty, 13 year old tree peonies kicking out their can-can skirted flowers over a four foot high bush.  Can’t stop them, don’t try.  Lost my lady slipper orchid due to drought, due to too warm temperatures, voles, moles, name a bad guy.  No sign of her. Exuent all.

But hellebores, oh my goodness, the hellebores were happy come February.  Busting out great drooping blooms of dusky pink and mourning purple, having grown great guns.  Became bushes instead of raggedy perennials.  Welcome back, friends.

I was hoping come May to have house projects over, garden projects to launch. The outcome not so much maintenance, but to rekindle the jones via total immersion.  Baptised in weed pulling and compost and planting strategies. Unfortunately, the floor contractors screwed up and I was still mopping up house duties at the end of May.  Delay led to delay.  Memorial week became the jumping off point.  Took a week to slip into the deep end, to try and tread water.  There was so much to do.  Japanese sedges had moved into Poland and Czechoslavakia like there were no borders, squeezing out more timid neighbors, some wiped off the map for good.  An upside of the sedge-icide was the finding of a beloved trowel, lost in the fall of 2009.  Beloved because my beloved had found and presented this much loved, much used tool.

Hot off the success of clearing the rampant sedge, no jonesing.  Pleased at the accomplishment, check, ready to garden at 7 in the morning?  Not so much.  What is the nature of jonesing after all?

I moved on to removal of thuggish garden trees, seedlings taking advantage of a back being turned. Sweet gum, red bud, maples and other unidentified interlopers.  Sucking up nutrients and bed space from the intended inhabitants.  Cleared.  Check. No jones, no forest.

Put together two small pots of coral and burgundy and pink.  Angel wing begonias, fuchsia, sweet potato vine, coleus crammed into terra cotta pedestals, viewable from the deck.  Like the old days.  Jones in absentia.

I took a whole weekend to prune and edit deadwood and errant branches from lilacs, roses of sharon, viburnum and nine bark.  Taking back a hedge one piece of dead wood at a time.  Lost my beloved’s japanese saw in the process.  Another lost implement, victim of my inattention.  Returned to me by a neighbor that hadn’t spoken since 2010.  Fallout from a too full garden cart, it landed in his side yard, found when mowing.  Two years of averted eyes and denial, forgiven by his return of a now rusty saw.  Hedge cleaned up, weeded and mulched.  Check.  No jones, not even a little.

I had to clean out a fence line to make way for the crew coming to put in its replacement.  Finally, a strong desire to edit.  Not only was the spidery web of self-pegging seven sisters roses history, so was the under-performing forsythia.  I needed to make room for the fence crew but also for the refugees from an island bed I no longer have the bandwidth to maintain.  Roses and irises and tree peonies, oh my.  All needing a new country to call their own.  Room must be  made; a plan must be hatched.  So the scorched earth of the fence line will be back filled with cousins from across the yard.  No cost but the muscle and the time to move them.  Jones? Now we’re talking, at least a little. No one left behind.

Plotting and planning the move from campuchia, check.  Still no “jones”, but closer maybe.  Assessing what is the right refugee for the each open space, timing on when to engender as little damage to the migrant, worry that some might not make it, despite my best effort. This is movement in a positive direction.  But no 7 a.m. clarion calls.  Not yet.  But closer.

I fall back on my favorite gardening magazine, Fine Gardening.  Porn for the gardener.  Beautiful plants, beautiful lay outs, beautiful photography.  I skim articles but can’t engage; proof is in the consuming need for some new perennial introduction.  I have no desire for acquisitions, no lovely new variegated introduction, some dusky purple leaved got to have.  It’s all beautiful; my eye can appreciate the planting schemes and the interplay of texture and color and shape.  But nothing to make me part coin.

Still many projects to do — rescue hostas from a too exuberant variegated myrtle, must be done before the hostas are smothered, building a water feature from a handful of repurposed items, halfway there.  Clean out and convert a shed/workshop to a more garden-friendly space, figure out a use for the old rescued clay chimney flues, discarded by a friend.

What is the nature of jonesing?  There are embers, not yet sparks.  Can fire be rekindled, if nurtured?  In the classic use of the word jones, I would be looking for the next hit, the next high.  In my use of jones, I am looking for the rebloom of stewardship, kinship with my garden denizens.  A stewardship so overwhelming it propels me out of the bed at 7 just to see what’s happened over night, make a new mark on my queendom.  Scratch an itch only reachable by filling a void in vegetation, providing better garden neighbors, tweaking plant combinations, improving hardscape, enabling a vision.

Where there are embers, will there be flames?  I have hope.  After all, it’s why I garden, it’s why I’ve always gardened.  Gardeners are driven not by what is on the list for today, but by the vision of tomorrow.  A vision full of leaf and light and hope.

Come visit sometime.  You might meet the jones.

Moment of Joy

My brother called her ‘Joy Unspeakable’ after an old Baptist hymn, learned when we were growing up. And she is Joy Unspeakable, no words, just the embodiment of all that is Joy.

Unfortunately, my brother never met her. He talked about her constantly as if he had. He wanted desperately to play ball with her; but in his fragile state her athletic 45 pounds would have turned him into a bowling pin. Now, he sees her all the time. Sometimes I think she actually sees him.

Joy was a rescue. I went to the shelter to check out another dog.  An older dog, good with cats.   But then again, not so much.  We all learned something that day. So I strolled through the maniacal din of unhappy dogs, about 25 of them, all desperate to tell me,  someone, anyone  their sad tale.    In the very last run, sat a dog, silent.  Yellow colored, short haired, beautiful cleopatra-esque markings on her face.  Looking very expectant.  At me.  Hey you, get it, I AM NOT BARKING.

I have since learned she wills everything with her eyes.

Her name was Dafney.   This dog was NOT a Dafney.  Built like a linebacker, sloping shoulders, enormous chest, almost no waist.  All muscle.  Built to run like her boxer forebears.  Wow, I had no idea what I was getting into.

Having been head feline in a multiple cat household for over 20 years, my life was about to be turned into constant canine chaos.  She does not move at walk speed. Her moves are all high speed, kangaroo like as she hops two or three stairs at a time.  When excited and wanting to play, she morphs into a Tasmanian devil.

When I brought her home, I could not call her Dafney.  I was bowled over by her joy in life,  her exuberance, her sense of adventure.  Having lived without joy, hope, or expectations for months, I was astonished to see what it looked like. A meteor of positive energy constantly questing for what’s next. I wanted that.  I wanted that back.

So, she was Joy, incarnate.  And I hoped that by naming her Joy, she would bring me some.

So, first like many new dog owners, we went to dog training.  Boy, is she smart.  Most commands, she learned the first time.  After that, I was on my own. She was more interested in what the other instructor was doing or managing her neighbors.  She became especially fond of the rottweiler princess next to us.   Glad they never tangled.  We passed the class, but more importantly, our bonding process began.

I brought her home a year ago in March.   There were valleys, many of them.  Some mine, some hers.   I was almost ready to return her to the shelter when fortuitously a cousin gave me the book, The Inside of A Dog.  It taught me as much about myself as it did about her.  To make her successful I had to look inward; I had to find some inner calm so my presence would communicate calm to her.  Unbelievably hard at this stage of my life.  But I had lassoed her into my life, not the other way around.  It was up to me to manage some control of myself, so she could better control herself.  I learned about ‘mean face’.  A few simple changes to the look on my face can drastically change her.  Devastated by a single well placed frown.

I’ve also learned that being a rescue is a matter of opinion.  Should Joy be able to speak, I am sure she would indicate she had pointed out the merely obvious to me.  I needed her.  I needed to be rescued.  I needed 45 pounds of loving, torpedo-like muscle to pull me by the leash back away from the edge.  We’re still moving, and she hasn’t let go.  Held by a thread, looking like a leash.

To those not making the cut, she must be addressed by her formal name, Princess Joy Wiggles.  And wiggle she does, like a worm boring its way into my deadened heart muscle.  So inextricably bound, to try and remove her would leave me terminally compromised.  She is the Cerberus to my soul, my heart. She is my Joy.