A Garden Outside the Door

To "come full circle" means "to complete a cycle of transition, returning to where one started after gaining experience or exploring other things:, according to Wiktionary.

The side entrance to my home, which serves as the main entrance to my home, has always been a prime spot for a container garden.  Lots of display room, sunlight, and access to water.  Early in my gardening career, I would fill five or six pots with a geranium, some petunias, a couple spikes, and call it done.  By midsummer, the flowers and I were both tired - tired of watering, fertilizing, and deadheading.

I tried different combinations of flowers and foliage, with each year becoming more simplified.  I had tired of the look and work of containers. Five or six pots, became only two, in time. The last several years have seen huge macho ferns take center stage, as they were a dependable specimen, easy to take care of, and provided a lot of bang for the gardening buck.

This year, however, the yearning for a bright, fussy garden outside my door took hold, after laying dormant inside my soul for years.  I had to have lots of color, and lots of blooms greet me each time I opened the door.  It had been a long difficult winter.  Summer, warmth, and flowers seemed to be just the ticket to throw off the doldrums.

Since I gave up on multiple containers full of  blooms years ago, I also gave up on keeping lots of empty containers around. So, it was off to several garden centers in search of containers.  This group sits to the left.  Note the photobomb by Mama the cat.

This group sits to the right of the door.  Just off to the side is a bale of Pro-Mix, my material of choice for potting up plants.  It is a soilless potting mixture.  I start all my seeds in it in the winter.  I have used it for all outdoor containers for years.  It is a stalwart product found in my garage year round.

And, here are the stars of the stage.  Each and every color is represented.  The range of color and texture available at garden centers is remarkable.  This year, I particularly thrilled at the deep scarlet reds and oranges, from coral to peach to pumpkin.  

There was no theme, no consistency, no plan. I bought what I liked.  And, then, I became a little afraid.  What if this madcap collection of color and texture looks terrible?  What if orange, and pink, and yellow, and blue, and white and red and purple don't look good jumbled together?

Forging on, I began to plant the containers one cool day in late April.  As you can see, I am not a neat gardener.  Once I got started, I threw caution and just about everything else to the winds.

Here are the pots after planting, seemingly lost in their containers in late April.

By May 17, the plants had settled into their new homes, and had begun to fill out nicely.

This morning, June 7, the pots are almost overflowing their pots.  They are bright, exuberant
and thriving.

Pinks and oranges share the same pot, and sit comfortably next to one filled yellow and blues.   My favorite combination is the primary color pot featuring red, 2 yellows and a blue which sidles up to a white and purple combination.  Huge zinnias and snapdragons are just about ready to bloom, and who knows what colors they will bring?

Closeups of some of my favorites, as they gleamed in the early morning sunshine.  

My "walk on the wild side" this year has already given me more joy than I could have hoped.  One cannot help but smile at the carnival outside my door.  I am glad to have "come full circle".

A Soulful Potting Bench

Better Half and I spent the "better half" of a day recently building this utilitarian potting bench, which fairly brims with history.  She was designed for dirty work. Hers will be a hard life.  She will sit in the elements after her photo shoot in the garage.  She will never look this good again. 

 

I have yearned for a potting bench for years.  My yearning usually takes place when I am awkwardly potting plants on the uneven stone wall that surrounds the garden or as I kneel in the pea gravel, tiny pebbles digging into the flesh of my knees.  This year, however, I began to yearn early.

As Better Half and I drove to pick up sod (another post in itself), I began to design a potting bench. For ease, the bench would be constructed of all 2 x 4s, with finished measurements of 48 x 21 1/2 x 36.  4 legs, each 34 1/2 inches high, would be enclosed by two aprons or skirts on which the top and shelf would sit.  Easy enough.  I chose pressure treated wood because the bench would sit outside and because I did not want to spend a fortune for cedar. After all, the bench was designed for work.

The initial plans, hatched Saturday morning, were tossed to the wayside by Sunday midmorning, thanks to the intervention of Better Half.  I will be eternally grateful for his intervention.

Better Half remarked that he had salvaged some 4 x 4s, real oak ancient 4 x 4s, from the old grain scales on the farm. The beefy timbers formed the bed over which tons and tons of grain wagons and tractors rumbled. I stood on those timbers while pregnant with my first son to allow my husband to weigh me.  I did not weigh a ton, but it sure felt like it..

My curiosity was aroused, so a quick trip to the farm was made to inspect 4 x 4s.  They were perfect. Stout. Sturdy. Aged. Grey  

Here they are after having been cut to 34 1/2 inches.  Aren't they gorgeous? (And remember, measure twice, cut once.  We didn't..)  There was no way in the world I intended to wrap those gorgeous legs in common treated 2 x 4s. 

 A walk to the last almost standing barn on the farm revealed a wealth of weather battered lumber, protected well by more poison ivy than I have ever seen in one place.  Carefully, we were able to harvest enough boards for the aprons, both top and bottom.

Rather than sitting the pressure treated boards on top of the apron, we added three 2 x 4 supports to the inside of the apron and recessed the top boards to the level of the apron top.  While a general plan had been developed for this project, most of the construction was done "on the fly", so it is impossible to give step by step directions.

While we were salvaging barn wood and beams, I noticed  a pile of pickets from the old first fence on The North Forty.  I thought they would make a great lower shelf, having the same weathered appearance as the barn wood and aprons..

  The rounded picket ends and the nail holes added even more character.  Better Half even saved the screws from the old fence and used them to affix the shelf to the apron.  The old fence holds a dear place in my heart because it was one of the projects I completed with my dad many years ago.

Once the top and shelf were attached it was time to figure out how to recess the blue tub into the top.  I created a paper template tracing the outside of the basin, then cutting it down to account for the size of the lip.

 The circle was traced onto the wood and Better Half patiently cut the circle with a jigsaw.

Voila!  It fits!  Check out the beautiful knot and pattern on the front of the apron!

A little styling and then it's time for photos.  From the side.  From the back. 

 I just can't get enough of this beauty.  

And now, my soulful potting bench as she does the work for which she was intended.  

The Squirrel Nest

Yesterday, as I finished the last of the day's garden chores, I glanced out to the front yard.  Piles of fresh green leaves lay all around one of the majestic oak trees that surround The North Forty.  I picked up the piles of leaves, believing Better Half had done some pruning and forgotten to pick up the clippings.

 Today, more piles of leaves were strewn all about the yard, so I asked Better Half what he had been doing.  He drew my attention way up to a fork in the tree, professing his innocence.

Sure enough, he was not the culprit.  Squirrels have been busy building a new nest in the oak tree.  

Here is another look at their handiwork.  I have never seen a squirrel nest under construction. 

 It looks to be about 2 feet around. 

 It is quite impressive and quite large.

 My reading tells me that the interior measures only 6 or 8 inches in width and is lined with grass, moss and leaves.

Many spring evenings, as darkness approached, Better Half and I have watched a family of three squirrels flit from oak tree to oak tree to reach this home, located in another of The North Forty oak trees. We have enjoyed their acrobatics as they scamper about the branches. This nest has seen better days.  All that remains are twigs and mulch.  

Movin' on up!

The Dahlia Adventure

God willing and the creek don't rise, dahlias will make a debut appearance on The North Forty sometime in July.  I can't wait!

My Papaw Bauer grew dahlias in the garden that graced the north side of  his house, a garden whose layout remains etched in my mind, 50 years later.  Dahlias, of the hot pink variety, occupied the southwest corner of the garden, every year, without fail.  They were supported with beefy posts of locust.  I LOVED those dahlias, just as I loved the zinnias, the gooseberry bushes, the rambling red rose, the lettuce patch, and the Kennebecs.  I loved the smell; I loved the perfect arrangement of the petals; I loved the bright, clear, almost fluorescent color.  But mostly, I loved going to the garden with Papaw to pick luscious armloads of them with their stout straight stems.

It would seem only natural that I should want to grow dahlias myself, and I can't imagine why it has taken me all these years to finally do so.

This past February, I placed my first dahlia order with Sunny Meadows Flower Farm, an urban flower farm located just outside Columbus, Ohio, one day before beginning my cancer journey.  In placing the order, at a moment in my life when certainties were few, I believed that, one way or the other, life would go on.  And if life were to go on, then gardening would follow right along behind it.

Life is going on. So is gardening.  While the physical mechanics of the cancer journey will end in May, the emotional remnants and worries will rattle around in my brain forever.  I am grateful, however, beyond measure, to be a survivor.

As so frequently happens,  I seriously digress or did I digress seriously.  On to the dahlia adventure!

This afternoon, while Toddler Grandson napped, I nabbed a thermometer from the kitchen drawer and strolled up to The North Forty to take the temperature of the soil. No, I haven't told Better Half I used a food thermometer to take the temperature of dirt.  He would have difficulties with that concept.   It read 78 degrees, well above the  60 degree planting minimum recommended by dahlia growers. Looks like it's time to plant the first 13 of the 28 tubers I ordered, but in order to do so, I needed stakes and bonemeal for the bottom of each planting hole. Better Half willingly agreed to fetch both stakes and bonemeal from the feed store.   

Armed with tools, tubers, bonemeal, stakes, and loads of determination,  I made my way to the fortress on The North Forty, which used to be called a garden, in pre-deer days.  These days, one must unlock a gate, remove bright orange string hanging across the entrance, and wind through a maze of black plastic fencing to gain access to the garden. 

In preparation for planting I arranged some of the splintery 6 foot stakes and began to pound them into the ground, only to have the heads of both hammers fly off the handles.  The first head collided with my hand, bruising my knuckle, while the second head actually flew over my shoulder, landing with a thud in the dirt behind me. The green tape holding the handle together should have been warning enough

I was left to use a sledge hammer and a plywood stool to pound 6 foot oak stakes into the ground. Needless to say, I pounded in only enough stakes for the tubers I intended to plant.  Wow, what a workout! Better Half assures me he has repaired the offending hammers. 

Next to each stake, I dug a 6 inch deep hole, and threw in a small handful of bonemeal.  There is nothing I like about bonemeal after my experience with it.  It smells weird, and the powder flies everywhere. But, dahlia gurus recommend the addition of it to the planting hole.

Each variety took up residence next to its personal stake in preparation for planting.  Here, Eggplant patiently waits its turn to be planted.

The first 13 of 28 tubers are ready to go into their homes for the next several months.

This beauty, called White Dinnerplate, was planted horizontally at the bottom of the hole.  You can see the white bonemeal residue.  Only a splash of water was added to the hole, as dahlias, at this stage, do not like excess water. The tuber was enormous. I am expecting big things of White Dinnerplate given its expansive name. I closed each hole by pushing dirt over it with my workboot, just as I saw Papaw Bauer do decades ago.

The sunshine is about gone from The North Forty by the time I finish planting my fledgling group of dahlias. The next group of 15 will be winging their way to The North Forty soon.  They are coming from Swan Island Dahlias, a family farm in Canby, Oregon.  

As I return to the house, I am grateful for this new dahlia experience.  I am grateful for the exquisite beauty of the waning April day.  I am grateful to be able to garden.  I am grateful to the remarkable team of medical professionals who have helped me to regain my health. I am grateful, most of all, for life.

Swan Island Dahlias