SURVIVORS

The thermometer has relentlessly topped the hundred degree mark day after day.  Rain has been scarce.  Garden hoses have been used for deep, overnight irrigation once a week.  Shudder to think of the water bill.  No matter.  When a drought and hellish temperatures are combined, there's little hope for many plants.  Unless, of course, they're natives like the ones on this picture.  The monardas have been laughing at the scorching sun.  The amsonias are fresh green and breezy under the hammer of Vulcan and the phlox, albeit a hybrid, is still a native,  cooling the garden with her snow-white pom-poms.  All this accompanied by a multitude of bees, butterflies, goldfinches, hummingbirds.  Natives rule!

LAZY MORNING

NOW is the time to enjoy what's out there... Sit down, take a deep breath and look around you...  Don't worry about the weeds that need to be pulled, the edges that need to be dug, the spent blooms that need deadheading.  Just breathe...  Inhale... Exhale...  It's summer... It won't last forever except in your memory.

SUMMER BOUQUET

A friend called it "Shabby Chic"

I'm all for that!

JUST A LITTLE QUESTION...

Who said that pink and orange don't go together?

FROM THE BEDROOM WINDOW

No, it's not snowing, sleepy head.  Wake up and enjoy the view.  The cherry tree is treating you to its ephemeral show.  By tomorrow it will be gone, so enjoy it today for all it's worth.  A good way to live your life, you know.  

ORCHIDS FROM A FRIEND

Rules were made to be broken, so I'm breaking my own rule.  From the start it's been about MY flowers, MY garden, MY photos.  Then this work of art arrived as a gift.  How to say no to a vanda sent by an artist? 

Marielle Deluna has a vision of her world that defies all preconceived ideas.  Her work is  moody, dramatic, spontaneous, exotic.  With her camera she captures the dark side of the tropics.  The Caribbean sea becomes an inky morass, the palm trees are enveloped in fog.  This is not your grandmother's sunny postcard.  "Wish you were here" becomes  "Enter at your own psychological risk".  It's a trip well worth taken and an excellent reason to breach one more silly dictate. 

Thanks, Marielle, for helping me take a different road.

FIFTY CENTS

Every winter, when the darkness and the cold and the inability to at least take a walk in the garden get to me, I promise myself to learn how to make hypertufa planters and bird baths.  Every spring and summer I look at the list of materials, the time constraints, the mess involved, and say to myself, 'no way!'.  Admiring from afar the nifty troughs and statuary, the lovely leaf-shaped bird baths and fountains, this failed sculptress sighs and looks the other way.  And then... the Methodist church down the road had its world-renowned rummage sale!  Denise Boal, an old hand at this kind of rumble, outlined the plan of attack for me, a mere neophyte, and in we went, plodding through the crowds.  Dodging sharp elbows we waded through the maelstrom of old stuff, new stuff, the good, the bad, the ugly.  We saw, we chose, we grabbed, we conquered.  Voilá la piéce de resistance:  A birdbath just as I always dreamt I'd make myself someday!  No schlepping of materials, no mucking up, no fuss, no disappointing results.  Life is good when your dreams come true with a pricetag of fifty cents.