Upside Down

In the last month or so, we have been working on the gardens around the outside of our suburban house here in Roswell. Springtime in Georgia is gorgeous and is like a magnet pulling me outside. Once the pine tree pollen count has dimmed a bit, I want to put a trowel in the dirt. I love basking in the morning sun and light wind, pulling weeds and dreaming of color to come.

Christine (my daughter-in-law) and I agreed that we would use a red and white theme in the front yard and we have chosen plants to reflect that.

Across the lawn and down by the mailbox, we have Don Juan climbing roses on an arched trellis. These roses are hanging on although Georgia is not their favorite place to be. Their long canes are bare but their top branches are like deep red, beating hearts waving in the light they catch filtering through the two front yard oak trees. At their feet, little Knock Out roses in a pinker red scramble around and push up scranny twig branches in the hope of finding a little sun, too.

Under this wrought-iron trellis, milkweed and wild white viola compete as weedy naturalizers around the shady base of the three large oxblood brown urns holding the white Shasta Doublefile viburum that has yet to ever bloom or fruit. The matching wrought iron bench backing up to the trellis finishes up the rustic picture we can see from the front room picture windows.

This spring I managed to get my bulky self down onto the ground and to put down about 100 spring perennial bulbs - lillies and dahlias - in shades of red and white.

When we first moved into the house in the middle of the front lawn there was a flower bed outlined by piled 8 inch high stacks of odd-shaped rustic looking Georgia clay and granite rocks in a large oval around the base of the two front yard oak trees. There were five lonely yellow blooming day-lillies, squatting together in a curve by the lower arc of the rock circle. Now they have the company of about 50 little parade soldiers of solid white lilies (Muscadet) and a type called Black-tie (red and white). The dahlias are also a red-white combination but about half of the bulbs were duds. I also put in a few solid deep red (Arabian Nights) versions of the dahlia just to see what happens. I am looking forward to The Lily & Dahlia Show in mid-June.

Last year, first of the years of the great Southeastern drought, unknowingly we planted 25 minature white azaleas under the oaks. Alas, they succumbed and their skeletons remain as a reminder of the lack of water killing mercilessly as we are facing the climate changes even here in the land of trees and the land where water used to fall from the sky and not from hoses.

I found some Star Fire (deep red) phlox and planted three, and it seems that two may have taken. Again, we are watching them to see if they will 'take' and put down roots and stay awhile.

And finally, the gladioli.

Hmm, how can I excuse the poor start I gave the gladioli? Hefting my huge self off my electric scooter and flopping down onto a pad in the dirt was a chore for me this spring. I had put the glad bulbs in their bag on the work table in the garage but they kept calling to me.

When I started cleaning a spot for the glads on the side yard slope below the spiraea, Michael made a comment for me to watch out and not kill any of the 'ornamental grasses' that Christine loved. I stopped and watched for a couple of weeks how these grasses were doing.

Again, the glads were calling to me. Again I flopped down and tried to clear a little space on the hill for the 96 glad bulbs still in their sealed dry bags from Holland. I worked around the base of long leafed clumps of grass and managed to make three sort of natural looking dirt lines. Then I soaked the red Georgia clay for a few days to soften it up.

Again, I flopped myself down. The mosquitos loved the damp dirt. The poison ivy loved the damp dirt. Both attacked me. My trowel loved the damp dirt, too. I managed to plow three rows and to dump each bag of glad bulbs into the dirt. They looked dried and dead. I didn't lay down even a little fertilizer or soil conditioner. I just dumped the bulbs in. I suppose I didn't give them much hope. However, half-heartedly I lined the bulbs up shoulder to shoulder, root side down (too crowded but what the hell) and covered them with about 3 inches of red clay dirt.

The drought has lifted a little here. Now we are allowed to water for 25 minutes by hand-held hose every other day before 9 am. Our Cobb County allowed rotation days for addresses ending in odd numbers are Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays. Christine and I take turns with the watering. She is generally in charge of the backyard and I do the front.

I spattered a little water the glads way and by golly, they started to sprout. They are much too close to each other and I definitely will have to go in and break up the bed at the end of autumn but we will have a pretty good show of brilliant red spears this summer, all sort of 'naturalized' amid the grass clumps.

California Dreaming

On one of our weekend trips to Home Depot, I saw a patio furniture sale and picked up a chaise lounge and a little black wrought iron table to put next to it. We unpacked it and put it in the backyard under the tree arching over the top end of the cement at the head of the side parking area.

Why did I do that you ask?

I remember as a child spending many sunny summer days on a chaise in our backyard reading books under the plum tree. By the end of August, the plums ripened, and reading stacks of library books and munching the three types of plums was a sweet drippy treat. Our plum tree was a specially grafted novelty tree - three varieties of cross pollinating plums on one tree. It thrived in the mediterranean weather of the San Francisco bay.

When our own little Georgia plum-sproutlet trees started to fruit this year for the first time, my childhood Reading-Plum memory came back to me strongly. Now I have my chaise, a shade tree, plenty of books, and the potential for plum treats in my future summers again.

The Screening Hedge

Two other gardening projects occurred this spring, too.

When we put up the new fence on the hill slope on the north side of the house above the retaining wall it still was not tall enough to block the view from the second-story front room windows of the house up the hill next door.

Their picture window faces our side yard and they can see into our very large bay-style window wrapping around both sides of the corner of our second-story master bedroom. This gives them a full and too intimate view. We decided to try to put up a 40 foot tall hedge along the fence line at the top of the slope to block that view.

Leyland cypress grow well here, so we managed to get 25 8-inch starters and to get them in the ground. Nine of them are along the top of that hill now, and the rest are planted around the outside edge of the drainage culvert in the backyard. The literature tells us that the cypress will be 5 to 8 feet wide and about 30 to 50 feet in height at maturity. We planted them about 3 feet apart hoping for complete hedge screening as they grow. We imagine that 8 to 10 years will give us the view blockage we seek.

“The best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men gang aft agley.” -- Robert Burns in the poem "To a Mouse".

Naturally, one of the new little plants died. Right in the middle of our line. Got to fix this soon to keep them growing in line, (*sigh*).

The Ice Cream Social

The final project this spring was the 'get ready for the Ice Cream Social event'. Christine joined a babysitting co-op and offered to host an event to raise money for the group. A sunday in June was chosen, so an effort to spruce up our gardens before-hand was made.

Grass was mown, re-seeded and fertilized. Garlic juice was shipped in and sprayed around to squelch the mosquitoes. This natural solution seems to have worked well. For the backyard, we had several trips to the nursery gathering sun-loving perennials like purple foxglove, purple delphiniums, and petunias and vinca in Easter-like colors of purple, pink and white.

We found several varieties of wall climbing vines (large and small flowering white clementis) and planted them in the bed on the south facing foot of the two-story deck on the back of the house and to climb the wrought iron arch kept as a souvenir from their wedding. Christine planted an ivory colored black-eyed susan plant under the arch.

Christine favors the odd-looking or oddly named plants, the more 'alien', the more the fascination. I favor pink, apricot or salmon-colored flowered things with aromas.

On the deck we revived two flower boxes mounted on the deck railing, planting one with iridescent pink vinca, the other with kitchen aromatic herbs (feverfew, oregano, basil, thyme, rosemary and mints).

Emails from the co-op chairman cancelling the 'Social' have calmed our hurried refurbishing pace, but the netted butterfly pavalion, hanging bird seed feeder, the red hummingbird feeder and the potting of plants and deck clean-up amid the soapy bubbles of the bubble-making machine go on.

My Front Porch Nook

Several weeks ago, a tornado came roaring in near Janel's house. The tv cable company sent honking alarms, disrupting day-time crime-drama repeats. I opened the garage and watched the fast moving swirling clouds from the safety of my electric scooter. My observation spot was by the open garage door (amid our motley wood shop machines) and the wooden stairs leading up to the small wooden porch and the front door of the house.

In a shady nook by these front porch steps, I have built what I call The Russell Crowe memorial garden.

It consists of three more oxblood brown large fiberglass urns (like the ones with the viburnum down by the mailbox) and a large broad terracotta discus-shaped bowl. There is a very young silver-dollar australian (sweet gum) eucalyptus tree in one pot and each of the other two urns have their own male and female Artic Beauty kiwi fruit vines. These three will have to find permanent in-ground homes in a few years, but in the meantime, I savor their looks and their aroma and their potential to please me.

In the large bowl I have put lemon balm, peppermint, spearmint and rosemary. The aromas should help with the mosquitoes, passers by will brush the mints and keep them from going hog wild. This is my little personal retreat garden and I will be enjoying it for a long time to come as I watch the clouds roll by.

Our plum trees are fruiting, our lilies are budding, our glads are spiking, our dahlias are leaf flapping. Tornados pass us by, but we are getting a little rain, now and again.

The lazy, dazy time of sweet summer is upon us and we are dreaming in color these days.