Gardening for nature, walks with my dogs and the books I’m reading.

[MarkD]

Oh my gosh Mark I'm so sorry that you had that terrible accident! It's amazing that no one got hurt. Are you sure that you and Lia don't have some neck pain like the day after? Well I hope you get a new car soon and everything goes well with the insurance Take care.

Thank you. I intend to ask Lis that when she wakes up. But I’m fine this morning though I did feel a little disoriented immediately after the impact.

 

[Fritz]

I’m feeling inspired by #Gary's diary about building his cabin in retirement to share what I’m doing in retirement.

Until the pandemic hit working out at the YMCA was a big part of retirement and made a huge difference in how I felt. Even before that I decided to lose the extra weight I’d put on as the teaching I used to love became more stressful and less fulfilling after No Child Left Behind. I lost more than 20 pounds as part of a New Year’s resolution in my first year of retirement seven years ago. I joined a Healthy Eating class at Kaiser which met ten times, once a week. I did another class in the fall and one last one the following January losing 50 pounds in all. But quitting the Y has resulted in gaining back 15.

Anyhow the best parts of retirement has been more time to develop my garden, walk my dogs and read great books.

Here are a couple of plot plans I once made of my garden before it was as finished as it is now. (No garden is ever truly finished.) I didn’t make a plan at the beginning and then stick with it. The garden and my vision for it evolved together unhurriedly.

I started making the back garden soon after I started teaching, more than thirty years ago. Our back fence abuts a city park to the east. To the south is a community orchard and on the north a year around creek separates our parcel from our neighbor. Our place is a a little cracker box of a warehouse, 40 by 80 feet situated in the southwest corner of our 100 feet wide by 120 feet deep lot. It isn’t large by rural standards but is unusually large by suburban standards and we have far more open ground than neighboring commercial buildings.

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The second one is centered on the back garden and the first drawing, showing the side garden m, has been rotated 90 degrees from its orientation in the other drawing.

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To give you a feel for it now here is a short video I took two years ago walking out the side doors, heading out to the back garden as far as to the pond where a hummingbird working over a red flowering Salvia wagneriana and a mostly orange colored Lobelia aguana seemed like a natural place to end it.

beautiful garden! the peach colored flowers at the beginning were pretty. i've always enjoyed humming birds. awesome job!

 

[MarkD]

beautiful garden! the peach colored flowers at the beginning were pretty. i've always enjoyed humming birds. awesome job!

Thank you. I think those would have been the climbing rose Royal Sunset on the side of the gazebo.

 

[MarkD]

Anyone looking for some amazingly creative art in the garden? Not mine. For me it's all about the plants but there is someone near me who is colorist with plants, with paints and a creative designer. Keela Meadows. Here is her website: landscape Artist – Keelya Meadows Gardens & Art

And here are 50 photos I've taken in her own garden over the years. We're not buddies but I love her work. https://flic.kr/s/aHsjru8HJR

 

[MarkD]

Here is a new place I'll likely never visit. But as a plant nerd I can only be happy that it exists.

 

[MarkD]

Here is a quick tour of my garden starting just inside the side garden and then around the gazebo, through the back gate and on around most of the back garden taken in April of 2024.

 

[MountainRa]

Wonderful! I’m so envious.

 

[MarkD]

Wonderful! I’m so envious.

Of course it is just too big for one person. I’m concentrating on just the back garden now.

 

[MarkD]

Wonderful! I’m so envious.

I just noticed you're in SC. Somehow I'd had the idea you were in Australia. I stayed with relatives in Greer and visited a cousin in Spartanburg a few years back to see the total eclipse in August of 2017 from there.

 

[MountainRa]

The eclipse was really a big deal in our area. We had a good view of it from our home. Greer and Spartanburg are about 2 hours from us.
I enjoy your garden pictures because I see plants I don’t normally encounter in upstate SC unless in a public botanical garden.

 

[MarkD]

The eclipse was really a big deal in our area. We had a good view of it from our home. Greer and Spartanburg are about 2 hours from us.
I enjoy your garden pictures because I see plants I don’t normally encounter in upstate SC unless in a public botanical garden.

My cousin near Greer has wonderful garden near a lake with lots of plants for butterflies. But we stayed with my aunt in Greer because she could easily accommodate my wife and I along with my youngest brother, his wife and two kids. Huge house also on a lake. That's the one I took the most photos of.

 

[MarkD]

I recently posted pictures of Adirondack chairs taken at Chanticleer in Wayne, Pennsylvania. Then this morning I just discovered some lovely videos taken there this year, just about one per week. Here is one that includes an Adirondack or two along with views of my favorite part, the Ruins Garden which was created in the artfully curated and enhanced remains of one of the original houses.

My own photos from the Ruins garden there in July of 2005. So very hot that day!

In addition to these heads in the fountain there are other items sculpted from stone in this garden by Marcia Donahue including these.

I recently posted a picture of one of my wife's weavings framed by Marcia Donahue on the left and garden designer Cevan Forrest on the right.

It might seem weird that they are dressed so eccentrically for the opening of Lia's show in 2018 but these two approach their wardrobe as artistically as everything else they do, wherever they go.