Definitely not the Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady

With a bra resembling a crow's nest, full of twigs and scratchy leaves of  a black oak tree, and a shoe containing millet and other assorted bird seeds, by lunch time today, I  was ready for a shower. 

The Black Oak is an untidy evergreen, overhanging our front patio and part of our driveway. It's shade is welcome but it has dangling branchlets that scratch the top of taller vehicles on one side and had spread over the top of a Japanese Maple on the other.

When we first moved in, just over a year ago, the landlord had instructed someone to trim these trees. It being easier to decimate a lithe and supple young Maple than a rugged, rough-barked oak, the poor little maple was chopped and slashed to within an inch of its life. It's been fighting its way back; stretching out one limb after another, in graceful arabesque, cloaked in innumerable multifingered leaves that tremble with every breath of air. 

Promises were made that the oak would be tidied and the maple freed to grow into a flame colored glory in the autumn. Today was the day that the tall step ladder behind the garage and my trusty hedge trimmer connected in my brain and, as the day was not as furnace hot as previous weekends have been, I decided to Lone Ranger it and get the job done.

Mind you, I have been limping and gimping on my advanced osteo-arthritis knee, pending a visit with the ortho surgeon and the last time I "trimmed" the morning glory I slashed through our cable TV line (Amazingly, they come out and fix that for free!) so the outcome was uncertain.

The big step-ladder is much more stable than any I've used before. I was careful to climb slowly and very vigilant against any shifting, leaning or sinking into the dirt and I thought through my moves as I reached out and up with one-handed swipes of the electric trimmer blade to get every last offending twig.

There are large piles of oak cuttings waiting for the lazy gardener to deal with. Gardening is like eating an artichoke, there's more stuff lying around afterwards than when you started, or that's how it is when I do it. Now my maple has some space to flutter and wriggle in the breeze and the flower beds beneath have been returned to a state of filtered sunlight rather than dark shadow. 

I filled the bird feeder, which I hadn't had time to do for a while and the busy chirpers came back in a flash. We enjoy lunch on the patio with the animation of birds coming and going and even from inside the house, we can still hear their conversations.

Forwards, Backwards, Sideways

My garden is in an "in-between" phase. Sweet-peas are waning. My flashy, lipstick-colored Gladioli have had some early glory, and been burned by a quick heat wave. Their apricot and cream clothed cousins are just unfurling their ruffles. Dahlias are beginning to loosen their tight buds, but not enough yet for anyone but me to know their colors, which are cataloged in my plant memory-banks.
There are nasturtiums and geraniums and Persian, night-blooming jasmine but I didn't think I had enough cutting specimens to make a bouquet to take to a friend who had invited us to lunch on Sunday.

But wait! Behind the jasmine, out of sight, I  have a small and isolated herd of bi-color sweet-peas, pretending to be butterflies as they bob around in the breeze. That's a start.

Fuchsia, begonia and petunia are not for cutting but make a glowing oasis of color in the shade.

I scavenged around and came up with enough blooms to fill a vase, after all. From this angle it looks quite formal, with skyscraper gladioli for verticality and rotund hydrangea for foundation volume. When delivering flowers to an Artist, best have a design theory to present along with:)

Rosemary, snap-dragons, sweet-peas and jasmine fill in the gaps between the building blocks.

The back of the bouquet has a separate identity entirely, a wild-child cluster of chaos which is my favorite aspect.
I don't often cut flowers for myself. I enjoy my garden immensely and don't feel the need to bring it indoors. I do love having flowers to cut and take to friends. This bouquet traveled a hundred miles to its destination, seat-belted upright into the back seat in the vase.

The Post-Apocalyptic Tree-Trimmer approach to Gardening.

The Artistic One has a birthday in May. He'll be 78 this month, despite the odds and recent traveling blood clots. A handful of years back TAO didn't want to talk about birthdays. He didn't want a party, or gifts, or anyone to know. Then we had a few struggle-years, like the rest of America and it was hard to get up the energy or think much about extravagances, beyond a full tank of gas. Well, it's official, he's over it! It has been made known that this boy wants a party.
We're formulating a plan; to accommodate everyone's busy schedules and the last-minute nature of the affair; a two-phase event with a sit down garden lunch and a buffet of edibles for those who will randomly appear and disappear. We're planning a menu for carnivores and vegetarian tastes. Nothing high-maintenance; preferably things we can somewhat prepare the day before.
I'll get the pool heater turned on so that the Feral Grandchildren won't be so chilled that they'll come bother us. I've invited friends and foster-dog graduates and some clients we like as well, one of whom offered to give me his poolside furniture, which he is replacing. I hope he comes through before May 19th.
I made a major push to restore my back garden to some level of presentability. We have about 20 ft of flat area before the 60 degree downward slope, embellished with prickly, holly-like bushes that the landlord thinks were a great addition because they produce yellow flowers, for about five minutes every year. With sprinklers that were out of action due to a major underground water leak, for most of last summer and into fall, the lawn was crispy and even the gophers gave up on us.
This Spring I relaunched my efforts and put in sweet-peas and Dahlias and reseeded the grass; which has grown in some luxurious patches and not at all in others; still it's better than it was and the cat thinks the dead patches, covered with planting mix, are perfect for her plein-air bathroom.
This whole "Gotta have a Party!" story started about three weeks ago. I went into full-bore Mad Gardener mode and hauled car loads of bedding plants from the nursery. I can't plant anything much bigger than a 4" pot. The hillside doesn't have too many gophers for the simple reason that they'd need dynamite to tunnel through the rocks and even our friendly NRA hasn't started arming rodents with blasting caps and such.
I lifted and carried and dragged pots and flats of plants and piled bags of chicken compost on the dolly, to trundle down the bumpy side path; leaning back as a counter-weight to stop from careening downhill and off the edge of the four foot vertical retaining wall, drop-off at the bottom, that would land me on the strategic cement rim, rather than into the less deadly water. (I have been in the pool before; in-advertantly; in the winter; fully dressed, including boots and gardening gloves, but that's a story for another day).
It would almost have been a pleasure to take a dip this time. We've had one record-breakingly hot weekend after another  and I'm quite surprised that anything has flourished, as the soil contains a high level of salt from the sweat dripping off my forehead.
Just as I arrived at a level of satisfaction and could believe in the promise of a respectable show of flowers by B-Day, my landlord, who never fixes anything, decided that trimming the overgrown trees would save him money on pool filter and pump repairs. Of course most of what I'd planted was right beneath the offending trees, and the rest was a selection of fuschias, and other shade plants, appropriate to the patio which last saw full sun about five years ago.

I've just skipped a week since my last paragraph. Every spare minute has gone to hand watering the patchy grass and few remaining flowers. There was trampling by tree-trimmer boots, crushing by branches, dragging, tearing and uprooting as part of the cleanup and, "Surprise! Surprise!" broken watering system, leading into another very warm spell.
The fuchsias and begonias that I'd placed in large terra cotta pots, on the previously shaded patio, wilted visibly, the minute they felt the blistering California sun, as it rounded the naked trunk and bore through the skeleton branches of the previously impervious blockade of Blue Spruce. The cannas that have already grown quite tall for May have been dragged over to bridge the gap and offer some shade to the roots of the sweet pea trellis, beneath the stunted remains of the crabapple tree. I've thrown a few more bedding plants into the beds around the edge of the lawn but they won't reach maturity between now and Sunday, not even if there's an App for that.
It's curiously liberating to have reached the decision to quit fighting the impossible fight (in the garden). Tomorrow is B-Day minus two. Planning food, drinks, seating and cutlery for a multinational, multicultural, gang of 30-40 people is the task to be tackled.
We'll begin the morning by writing lists....

A Little Color to Share

 A small vase to hold a collection of colors, textures, perfumes and corresponding memories.

Rosemary, spiky, aromatic, dressed in Provencale colors.

Velvet wallflowers in burnished orange, wafting scents that take me back to the garden of my Mother's Great Aunt Flossie.

 Brash petunias and perfumed stock, encroached upon by a bustle of sweet-pea starters and the evergreen leaves of jasmine. The stakes are there to support the Dahlias that are hidden to all but my inner eye, for now.

 Forget-me-nots blueing up in my overcrowded pots.

 Wall flower habitat. Unstructured, willful, messy. 

 Birds-eye view of sweet-pea plants that have reached a foot tall already, and had to be tied up to the trellis today. There is a seating area just the other side of this low wall, and a crab-apple tree behind, that flowers in an abundance of rich cotton candy pinks.

 The small green leaves down in front are Columbines. I see the flowers that are not there yet.

Orchids in a pot, by my front door. They come back every year, from this plant that I bought at the flea-market, on a jaunt with faraway friends. This year's abundance has let me use orchids as a cutting flower.

Eye-Balls, Golf-Balls, Equestrian Egg and Spoon Race.

I have had a very satisfactory weekend. I started yesterday by turning off house and cell phone and ignoring an email from a client who hasn't given any sign of life for several weeks and suddenly thought it would be convenient to meet on a Saturday.
I went early to Curves, exercise club for women, that I had put on hold in favor of Foster-dog walking and training for months. I like the variety of working different muscle groups. I like the friendly atmosphere and I liked that my new shoes seemed to help rather than aggravate my gimpy toes.
All pink in the face and a-buzz with blood circulating in temporarily neglected body parts, I stopped in at the best veggie store you could wish for, which is in the same group of businesses. Ultra fresh produce, great bread, cheese and all kinds of hams and sausages to inspire the lunch menu. The Mexican family that took over this shop last year have worked their asses off and seen amazing results. They've just pushed through the wall into the space next door and there is always a line, despite running four cash registers. It's so great to see people do well.
My garden has been calling to me, in desperate need of tidy-up and prepping for the next season. All summer long my front door, garage driveway and entry patio/walkway are in the deep shade of two silk trees. As those leaves begin to fall it transforms into a full-sun area. The afternoon sun is at a long low angle and powers into that otherwise shady space, until it dips behind the hillside.
Most of my plantings there are in pots and containers of different sizes. I have a dolly that I can use to move them around, depending on what is in bloom or what needs more or less light. The nasturtiums are appearing, showing their umbrella leaves and a few bright blooms. The first of the paper-white narcissi are in bud like mini-cousins to the equally fragrant Hawaiian Ginger plants. Geraniums cheer in red, pink and coral and I threw in a few pansies and iceland poppies to fill any gaps and dug out an unhappy fuchsia to plant a wisteria vine in its place. Whew! I hadn't realized how overgrown that had all become. I was able to tame it all in one eight hour session. There was lunch and a short nap somewhere in the middle but I didn't have to stop for any dog-walking so I was more productive and had more energy left to get the job done.
Sunday morning is the highlight of my week. My riding class is small. We are three or four "mature" women in the 9 am class. We get there early enough to bring horses in from the paddock and groom and tack up our own mounts. The class varies from dressage to small jumping courses and I've been getting to know the different horses and my class mates.
Today our teacher showed up in a unicorn hat and wanted us to play games, in honor of Halloween. Bending poles (slalom) with candies to be picked up at one end and then tossed into a bucket at speed at the other before crossing the finish line. I was far enough ahead that I was able to halt my, rather tall, horse and drop the candy vertically so that it actually went into the bucket and then gallop home. An accidental win as there is not a competitive bone in my body where games are concerned. I was trying for good style and balance rather than resembling an elbow-flapping banshee that might inspire a Thelwell cartoon entitled "Mad Old Women on Horseback".
Next we were given plastic spoons and golf balls with eyes painted on them, the goal being to ride around until the last "eye-ball" hit the dirt. The dry-run quickly had us all holding empty spoons. We tried harder at our second attempt. Two of us made it through walk, two-point position, posting trot and even sitting trot. Canter transition foiled both of us simultaneously. It was fun, in a juvenile kind of way. I look forward to resumption of our more mundane curriculum next week.
Lunch was salad, followed by stir-fried zucchinis/courgettes, from my veggie merchant, and an omelette made with free-range eggs we bought at the farm.
No major plans or obligations this afternoon. A little catch-up reading blogs I've missed and an otherwise tranquil (read lazy) afternoon and evening, before being swept away in the Monday Morning Maelstrom.

Gardeners: Seers of the future.

"Seer"- a person with unusual powers of foresight; - one who divines the future.

Gardening is a leap of faith; optimism personified; visionary belief that planting, tending and nurturing will produce concrete results. Indefatigable Gardener Egos are prepared to accept that  lack of success does not mean surrender. There will always be next year.

The strange, finger-like leaves unfurling relentlessly from the shadows are this year's peonies-to-be. Part of my pleasure in gardening is that I see the images of the future; beautiful flowers to come. In my minds eye I leap from this to fragrant, pristine white flowers tinged with rose.

I tried and failed for three years to grow peonies. Then I had plants with leaves only. The blooms did not reappear the following year.  Now I have consistent success, using what I learned from each disappointment and counting on each previous failure to multiply my satisfaction.