As a non-recovering plant addict, it is not safe to allow me within about 100 yards of a nursery...or chain store garden center...or a trash pile at the dump (my junkin' addiction is another sordid affair...my son has logged lots of time hunched down in the mini-van while I dragged assorted trash off the curbs of our town)...

Normally, I enforce a self-imposed rule of No New Plants After June 1st...the heat and humidity just make it so difficult for newly installed plants to flourish...hell, makes it difficult for them to even survive without major output of effort on my part...

But...a couple of months ago, Mr. G & I blew by an interesting nursery on our way into Swainsboro (we were hunting down a country buffet a friend clued me into)...I think G knew the garden center was coming up and sped up as we approached so I couldn't get a good look...his mistake because, oh yeah, I remember all that pertains to retail and that flyin' low espisode pretty much guaranteed a return trip...Anyhoo, Mr. G, being the Doll Baby that he can occasionally be, took yesterday off and we drove up to get a peek...man, he hates trailing along behind me in a nursery...

the name of the place turns out to be Yard Master and it is more than a nursery...carries seeds and some animal supplies...but getting back to important matters...the annuals and perennials were lookin' a little peaked~most of the stock is of common variety, but when you're building a big garden from scratch like we are, common can be good...

in short, the haul was 2 scuppernog vines, 2 healthy-lookin' gauras, 1 pomegranate bush, and 2 Red Confetti hypoestes...I'm not much of an annual fan, but hypoestes love to self-sow all over the place...

Yard Master does have the most beautiful Japanese Maple I've ever seen...I love JMs and I would love to have this one in my garden...however, since G seems to find the $175 price tag a little much, currently, I am without this dream tree...we'll see about what goes on at the negotiating table...I had my digital camera with me and didn't even think to snap a pix...but I expect I'll be going by to stare it at least once more here shortly...I can just envision Sangko (I recall that much of the name...I think...maybe Sagara...) regally ensconced in a beautiful pot, gently swaying in a soft breeze, with little bits of sunshine moving about through the leaves...

Maybe an early Christmas present?

Starting what has designs to be primarily a garden blog in June...in coastal Georgia...probably displays a great amount of non-thinking...in the lower part of Georgia (not being able to speak to anything more than a few miles off the coastline), June and July and August...and even September are pretty much all about Hangin' On...hangin' on until that first cool breeze skips across your face...hangin' on until it is cooler when you get up in the morning than when you went to bed last night...hangin' on until just running a quick errand to the store isn't an exercise in Steeling One's Will...hangin' on until rain finally comes in countable amounts...

If you come down South in the summertime, you'll probably see lots of southerners with their faces tilted one of two ways...either up to the sky, scanning for rain clouds, hoping to catch that cool breeze or down towards the earth...beaten down by the heat and humidity, trying to escape the sun...Southerners get hot and harried and downright ugly (say like "ugg-leeee") when the heat comes on...because we know it ain't just passin' through...the people I admire the most have to be people who maintain their grace and manners long after the 4th of July comes on...because after the 4th, well, things can get grim...the 4th is supposed to be hot...so we suck it up & deal with it...but then there is all that leftover part of July with August hot on his heels...and then September...in the coastal South, September can be such a disappointment...

I remember going back to school (years and years and years ago) to find my teachers (dreaming of cool fall weather, Robert Frost's poems and scarlet-clad trees...and mannerly scholarly children) filling bulletin boards and door covers with cardboard cut-outs of leaves in the traditional colors of fall~brilliant gold. pumpkin orange. blazing red. nut-colored brown. One glance out the classroom window into the schoolyard would reveal mostly live oaks, still hanging onto their limp heat-beat green leaves, eternally green pines, and wilted azaleas~obviously my teachers and I bought into the same New England Fall Fantasy peddled by all sorts of enterprising businesses...

When leaves do finally hit the ground around these parts (usually somewhere between Thanksgiving and Christmas), mostly they are dirt brown...brown oak leaves...brown magnolia leaves...brown & sickly greenish yellowish pecan leaves...I think if you're a fallen brown leaf, it must be your responsibility to limb and root to be confoundedly difficult to rake...if you grow up with oaks, magnolias, and pecan trees in your yard, you'll probably be of the I Do Not Rake Leaves variety when you get a yard of your own... or you'll circumvent even havin' to hold that particular conversation with your Home Owner's Association by buying a yardless condominium

Anyway, I've never given up hope of having the Fall that I learned about all those years ago in elementary school...the mythical Fall of September lit by a sun hangin' in a clear light blue sky, clouds scudding along driven by a brisk cool breeze, leaves just beginning to turn, temperatures that just barely break 80 in the middle of the day and nights that beguile one with easy coolness...

And, if I live long enough, maybe I'll see the even more fantastical October of blazing color, 65 degree days, and Halloween Nights where children aren't passin' out from heat exhaustion on the front lawn...I just shake my head when I'm at the store and see full body polyester fur costumes that I know some poor unknowing mother will pick up on clearance after Halloween is just a dim memory and then stuff her child into next year...I always say a little prayer and hope for a cool night for the Trick-or-Treaters here in Coastal Georgia...

But, tryin' to close on a positive note, I guess one good thing about Autumn in the South is once it does finally get here, you have one thankful bunch of people...and we might even be a touch more humble...

Eggplant Purple

For the first time ever, eggplant went into my small vegetable garden

and I think it is lovely!

Even if bugs get the actual eggplant, just seeing those delicate pale purple blossoms has been a treat...if I were going to paint anything purple, it would be that purple...

The rains of Tropical Storm Alberto at Number 17~

even now, 2 days after that blessed 3 inches of rain, the plants are just so refreshed and happy!
You know how us gardeners are~it gets to a point where you are physically pained to look out on a parched garden and you pray every day, many times a day, for rain~any rain..."But, Lord, a nice gentle soaking rain of about 1 inch for the next several days running would be greatly appreciated..."

Here is a new daylily for me~I'm not much on purples in the daylily area, but this one seemed so sturdy and fresh looking that I had to buy it...say "Hello" to Lavender Deal

The first cucumber harvest of the season. There are 2 more on the vine, but we just took these two for today~

I still am completely amazed by everytime a seed produces something I normally buy in the grocery store!

But, look at that funky stuff on the leaf of the neighboring zucchini bush~I'm nervous about that...

I checked my organic gardening encyclopaedia and found nothing about it...reminds me of powdery mildew...maybe I planted the cukes and zucchinis too close together? I'm really tempted to
snip a leaf and cart it over to the county extension
agent's office and ask them 1) what is it? and 2) what can I organically do to control it?

I've done battle with the rampant wisteria this morning~I'm losing, but I'm also too much of a jackass to give up the idea of eliminating this crazed vine from the property...I swear I think it snickers at me...

But, now the heat is ramping up for the day so I'm inside until this evening...

Watering Cans

How many do you own? I have 2~one is a dark green plastic affair that has lost its spout somewhere along the way...I think I picked it up at Wal-Mart or K-Mart or somewhere like that and the second one, a galvanized job, came as a gift some years ago...

Every morning, I take my galvanized watering can out to the veggie patch and give all the plants a good drink. Well, sometimes, I short Squash #3 a little because my path always seems to leave #3 for last. Then, I'm pretty good about remembering to take the same watering can out to the front porch where I have quite the assortment of potted up plants~and I'm not the World's Biggest Fan of keeping a lot of containers sitting about, but I'm also in the running for World's Biggest Sucker when it comes to matters like bedraggled plants on the clearance cart and kittens~so, anyway, I have all these pots and I usually manage to make it through the entire porch with one can of water...not today~I think I overcompensated with the 2 hanging baskets because I forgot them yesterday.

Therefore, Kalanchoe Number Bazillion, Mega Aloe, Mother-in-Law's Tongue and Datura Seedling got only drips this morning...

The 3 Tomato Plants in the front courtyard get their water with the plastic green bucket~the missing head makes it easier to tuck the spout in amongst the bottom leaves and give the roots a good drink.

I also toted a couple of buckets out to the huge flower bed (legacy of the previous owners...a huge empty bed that I'm trying to fill with easygoing perennials, shrubs, and little trees...)because some of the plants, courtesy of sandy soil and lack of significant rainfall in the past couple of weeks, are looking a little peaked...I tend to not coddle ornamentals and will only resort to watering them after several weeks of no rain and hot temps...but when I do relent and start the water brigade out to the areas beyond the courtyard, I have to weigh how much I'm willing to baby each plant.

The plants that shrug off dry conditions and hot weather earn my gratitude each time I pass them by with the bucket...the plants that seem to fade after only a few days start logging time in my peripheral garden eye so I can decide if a move is in order or if this plant just isn't going to work for me with the amount of care I'm willing to hand out...the equation is an entirely subjective thing...sometimes, I'm irrationally going to baby one plant in favor of another and there will be no rhyme or reason to the arrangement...example: me draggin' buckets of water out to water all of those Rescued Kalanchoes when I hate having a bunch of pots around...but since my Granma grew kalanchoes and gave me one years ago, I have an attachment to them that can't be reasoned with...

Summer is...

for exploring

for dreaming

for taking a break

This summer I'm finally taking that stained glass class I've often thought about signing up for...but just never got around to it...And, now that I'm all registered, have delivered the non-refundable class deposit and found a friend to drag along with me...well, I'm not all that keen to go...

See, part of me thinks I want to be in the middle of things~a full calendar, a Herculean to-do list, and just on absolutely everyone's speed dial. Did I watch the Enjoli commercial too many times in my impressionable youth? But, the part of me that likes to spend long days without even answering the phone dreads having those calendar notations Inked In instead of faintly etched in No. 2.

It can be irritating to have this two personas continually poking at one another like me and my younger brothers on the way to our summer stay with my grandparents...in the back of the Ford Pinto wagon...with crappy air conditioning...and a monster hump in the center of the backseat that got hot after several hours of interstate driving...maybe I should try and figure out where the Stay (ed) Home Little Piggy is coming from...or maybe I should see what is up with Vunder Voman...but not this summer

Summer isn't...for self-analysis other than the shallow kind at the make-up counter trying to find a stellar new eye shadow to play off that summer glow

for trying to be a Role Model except in the areas of Extensive Hammock Use, Chilling Wine to Enjoy on Long Summer Evenings, and Making Warm Memories with Family and Friends (note: memories involving too much sun, too much beer, long-standing family feuds, and/or the sheriff showing up aren't the memories I'm talking about)

for House Improvement projects and endless lists that suck up summer weekends and extra cash while fall's short days and winter's longer nights are just a handful of spins around the clock's face away

Sometimes I can be oblivious...

As a gardener of 15-plus years, I ought to know to check the soil before dragging my Husband to look at a house in hopes that we'll finally reach an agreement on whether or not to make an offer. And, crappy soil really ought to be a legal deal breaker if you're serious about creating your backyard and/or frontyard paradise. Of course, I'm thinking the sellers might not appreciate having a prospective buyer appearing with trowel in hand to dig holes at various points throughout their flower beds and lawn...if they know about it, that is.

At our last house where we only lived 3 years, the soil was good in some spots, horrible in others. But, the good balanced the bad and by putting in some thuggy plants in the hard spots, things were looking pretty good our last fall there. I made the mistake of driving by our former house on the way to a friend's home. (Another thing I should have learned not to do after breaking down in tears after driving by our first home where I gardened for 12 years.) The side garden was glorious. I'm a firm believer that it takes about 3 to 5 years of hard work to start a new garden and get it looking, on the whole, good. Good in the sense that the overall garden is starting to re-invent itself, filling in where you left a gaping hole, letting go of the sickly things that you really should have had the kindness to put out of their misery a long time ago, blending, spilling, softening...in short, covering up all the mistakes the gardener (me) made out of laziness, ignorance, or sheer stupidity.

But, I guess, to give myself an out about the whole Sandy Soil debacle, after looking at anywhere between 25 to 30 houses in a short time, and after starting to panic that we would never find a house we agreed upon and our house already on the marketing and getting lots of attention, I just put those blinders on and we blithely signed that contract.

Moving the week before Christmas left very little time for doing much of anything holiday decorating-wise, but I made a point of buying several flats of pansies and violas to line the walk in the courtyard area. Oh, how my heart sank as I lifted that first clump of gritty damp soil out of the ground. I couldn't believe it. I even called The Husband out to watch as I lifted a trowelful of soil up and let the sandy stuff fall back to ground, expressing my disbelief all the while and watching his face to see if he was truly being supportive and understanding why we should move again or just nodding and trying to plan his escape for when my attention wandered back to the soil.

But, all is well here at Number 17. Just about everything I've planted has taken root and is growing better than I expected, especially considering my expectations involved visions of Wasteland and beeping dump trucks filled with top soil backing up in our driveway. Of course, every thing planted has gone in with major soil amendment and lots of eagle-eye watching on my part plus liberal watering. I'm not much on watering for ornamentals when having drinkable water is an issue in so many places around the world, but I do baby plants for the first few weeks. After that, any plant that can't survive without daily coddling pretty much goes the way of the carrier pigeon. Except for the vegetables. I do carry water out to the veggies every a.m. while I'm feeding the furry four-legged ones of Number 17.

I think the countless rounds of totin' water to new plants is starting to help with the toneless flabby arms. Well, that is what I'm telling myself as I carefully avoid the dreaded over-the-shoulder-glimpse-in-the-bathroom-mirror. So, I'm being a conservator of water and toning the wing flaps~dang, I'm good. I wonder if hanging buckets off my hips would help in that department...

Anyway, welcome to Life at Number 17~I hope you enjoy what you'll read and see here when you drop in for a quick hello.