A last garden.

Last Friday, everyone else went to Fyvie Castle while Amelia and I went into Aberdeen. The walled garden there was so lovely that the historian wanted me to see it. So today, when the beautiful sunny weather of yesterday had turned again to rain, we went to see it.

still green raspberries

purple cornflowers

'I have to say, I think this is a truly Scottish thing, to be visiting a garden in the rain,' said my daughter. It is a beautiful garden, entirely worth several visits. We opened the umbrellas and took it in.

inside the walled garden

 

still red blackberries

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Scottish apples (James Grieve)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

true Scotland.

 

a lettuce so perfect it is a flower.

It was the children's first day back at school. We walked with them in the morning and met them in the afternoon.

chatting after school.

 

pretty excited to get there.

Then, it was the back to school feast, finishing reading ambitious novel to Miriam and Evie, watching our last few episodes of Still Game, and packing. Sleeping/not sleeping. And goodbyes.

 

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More garden, and more water.

Alnwick Garden we've visited once before, and loved it, so we decided to pay it another visit on our way back to Inverurie. It's a grand garden, a pet project of the Duchess of Northumberland, and it has pleasures and diversions a plenty. Water is a great theme. The Grand Cascade dominates the entrance, but water features surprise you at nearly every turn.

This garden is extravagant, of course, but many, many people enjoy it. I want to generalize here about the English, and people of great wealth, but what do I know? This is an overwhelmingly beautiful place, and I now want, and feel I must have, an Eglantyne rose.

 

 

malus

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In the Serpent Garden--well, let me tell you what the Alnwick Gardens website says:

A topiary serpent in holly snakes through the watery Serpent Garden, revealing a different water sculpture hidden in each of its coils.

The serpent leads you to Torricelli, an interactive water sculpture which fills slowly until its ground jets spring to life. Torricelli works with the scientific principle of hydrostatic pressure, and each of the water sculptures are designed to show a different aspect of water and how it can be made to look and move.

So here's what Torricelli looked like today:

Miriam, very bold:

and Evie, also very bold:

--and Eli, daring to get at least a little near to the spray:

 

 

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June, morning and evening.

Today I ate pancakes for breakfast, went to school and worked on a little publication project with my friends, and saw Tomorrowland with my grandson. I ate (too much) popcorn. I made roasted green beans and melted Gouda on toast (thank you Anna!). But before I left the house in the morning, this is how the front yard garden looked.

It's going to get hot soon, so who knows how long this lushness will last? But I seriously cannot get over it. This evening, the historian was outside doing this and that. I came out and picked a few spent blooms from the nicotianas and marigolds.

Are you coming in soon? I asked him.

I am, he said. I only came out to wash the bird poop off my window, but then it was so nice... He straightened up. The little sprinkler was shedding its mist in the center of all of the above.

I know, I said.

Here's to cool evenings, a little sprinkler water, and roses blooming their heads off.

Hello, June.

I guess we know it's summer because last night, it was too hot to sleep? And also because the rain and cool weather of May made getting the cooler going kind of a 'let's do that later, like in June' thing?

Neither of us could sleep, so we turned on the light and read for awhile, till an hour that made the wake-up hour of 7:30 seem laughable. But arise we did, not laughing at all. More or less--the historian arose, and went to work, while I thought about things for awhile before I got up. Fine, I stayed in bed and slept for another hour.

But at the crack of nine, I began to make a plan, which looked like this:

It's true--until today, we had not planted a thing in our garden. So I betook myself to the exemplary nursery of my town, Glover's, and bought mad amounts of scented geraniums, poppies, true geraniums, roses, pelargonia (which is what people usually think of as geraniums--you're welcome for this pedantic botanical note), single flowered marigolds, and zinnias.  Also: two tomato plants and some lemon verbena and some flowering tobacco.

When I got home with this garden-in-my-trunk, I was nominally going to plant it all except for the roses, and then when the historian got home, we'd plant the roses together. But it was too hot. Also? too windy. My favorite summer combination: hot and windy. (You're welcome, for that link to my own writing on this very blog!, about how hot + windy = the worst.)

Instead, I ate some salad and wrote some more on my draft-before-the-draft of my summer epic poem. And then I went and worked out. And then I made dinner like a champ. And then I took a brief nap and then, the people, THEN we planted our flowers. Pictures tomorrow. The garden looks swell, and its belatedness is quite chic, if I do say so myself.

The garden.

A few years ago, readers of this blog may remember, the megastore garden had a run-in with the law. Since that day, we have strived to manage the meadow in the front so that it is in compliance with the regime of tidiness called for by municipal code, if only barely; but we have also sought to adhere to our own aesthetic and spiritual tendencies. This meant a big redesign of the front yard, which still has untidiness and free-spiritedness to recommend it. Basically, we took out almost half of the sod and replaced it with flowers and plants in pots. It is messy and, especially at certain moments during the year, almost unbearably beautiful, if I do say so myself. And I do, I do say so.

Anyway, this morning I planted all the pots. It was nice to find that some of them have resurging plants in them already--miniature roses that are striving mightily to be medium sized, mints, a little blue flax which is a prodigious, not to say promiscuous spreader. So I tucked new plants in around the old. I've mixed vegetables, herbs, and flowers. I have geranium, which reminds me of my grandmother, marigold, lavender, rosemary, basil of all stripes, many tomatoes. I also planted a handful of delphiniums in a mostly sunny spot. I am hopeful about these. I also feel I may need to buy a few more pots, and why not? More is more around here.

We also may dig up a little more lawn. Right now, there are perennial geraniums and columbine and lemon balm growing in the lawn, and the thyme continues its encroachment (go, thyme!), with bees aplenty when it's flowering. So if we dig up a little more grass, I say we add more blue flowers, of which I am a fan. Maybe the flax will help out there.

Here's a little of what I did this morning. It looks more green than flowery, but that's where it all starts.

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Garden.

My friend Ann has been posting pictures from her garden. I have several friends who are superb gardeners--my friend gilian and my oldest friend in NoCal, and Ann. They're artists and philosophers of gardens. I really admire this.

The past few years, the gardening around here has been catch-as-catch-can--we've gone hither and yon, to Idaho and back, to Scotland. This year, there have been enough work-related things that it's been hard to even recognize that we live on, you know, the earth.

That's probably the point, right? To recognize that we live on the earth and not just in and through screens. Or words or pages or whatever. In the air. Under the sky. With the dirt.

We had family over tonight, and the historian (who finished and sent off an essay last week) worked in the yard while I worked in the kitchen. Cinco de Mayo, so enchiladas. Some of my best ever, if I do say so myself. Then we ate outside.

Our yard at its best is beautiful and untidy. Right now, there's an equal proportion of both the gorgeous and the messy. We're gradually shifting the proportions. But it's May, it's spring, everything is abloom. If I weren't going to spend the next four days grading, I might think about adding some beautiful to the beautiful. But that will have to come later. For now, it's enough to just go out, breathe it in, sit out there in the evening while kids run around playing superheroes, letting the sun sink, under the apple and cherry trees full of flower.

Glorious.

I know, I know. Who can stand looking at pictures of other people's flowers? Still, I am foisting them upon you. Deal.

The meadow: a progress report.

Today, of note is the fact that some volunteer blue flax, aka cornflowers, are blooming in the upper quadrant of the front lawn ("meadow"). Also, a new and tiny little true geranium.

These facts, along with some modest little front gardens I spotted when I was at Eggs in the City recently, have inspired the historian and me to make plans for an actual landscape in the front yard. A meadow-scape, if you will.

The plan may be a little ambitious, but we may be taking it in stages. The first stage involved a curving path made of paving stones, which will demarcate the shady part, which already has thyme galore, as well as little start-up true geraniums and columbine. I plan, therefore, to go with what is already happening, planting more of these plants and also some mint, because all of that stuff loves shade.

Along with the curving path and the enhancement of the shady plant action already happening in that part of the yard, I plan to make 24-inch wide beds around the front of the yard, next to the sidewalk, as well as the driveway. When I say "I plan," I mean "I will pay singing son to do this." In this space I am going to plant an informal hedge of rosemary and lavender (also considering adding some thyme plants with a more hedge-y tendency, as well as possible lemon balm). Fragrant, lovely shaped plants, making a more definitive statement about how this -scape is a plan and not accidental.

This leaves three more portions of the lawn remaining (I'm dividing it four ways). They are sunnier spaces. One we plan to leave as lawn. Another we plan to plant in roses. The last, I plan to plant in a riot of tall, gangly, colorful plants, such as cosmos, coreopsis, bachelor's buttons, and more cornflowers.

This might be too much for the space we have. We'll see. In the meantime, phase one will be an improvement and a joy. I am all stoked about this!