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

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.
 

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!
 
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
 
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.

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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.
 
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.
 
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!

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

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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.

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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.
 
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Some of these photos have been shared before but thinking about my friend @hawkdon and reminiscing about my more active times makes me want to go here again.

It has been a while but it used to be a common occurrence for me to drive to Fort Funston beach in San Francisco, early enough to see sunrise there. I find that time of day very special though pictures of sunset here are more spectacular.

This is Mount Davidson, the highest point in San Francisco, as seen from the East, facing the ocean.

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And here is my view of it at dawn from Fort Funston beach facing East one June morning in 2017.

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I find dawn to be a somber time but also a time when one can feel more connected to the rest of nature. It starts in darkness and then the light comes on. But here where the beach is to the West and much lower than the bluffs above it, the light sunrise seen to the East will be a while arriving down along the beach.

This next one was taken in September of the previous year. As you can see the light hits the clouds above the beach long before it makes it to the bottom.

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There were a few times we made it to the beach before there was much light at all down there but here is Heidi and Smokey running on the beach before much sun made it down that far. And then other early morning light on the beach.

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The land sloping down to the beach could cast long shadows with dramatic contrast between what was directly lit and what was not.

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Later in the day was still a fine time to walk at the beach but there is just something special about the dawn.

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Of course Lia used to come with us on many trips to Fort Funston. If she succeeds with her knee replacement in October maybe she will again.

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