Round Two

Yesterday, I spent the whole day in my garden. It was so wonderful to finally have a day to do that (my first since March) that I want to type it again:

Yesterday, I spent the whole day in my garden.

Aaahhhh.... :)

Sometimes I forget how restorative it is to just immerse yourself in the yard. How many problems you can solve--or at least make peace with-- while you are weeding and mulching and moving plants. The parts of your brain that hum along while you work with your hands in such a way must fuel the thinking parts of your brain in a magically synergistic way.

Speaking of humming, I was very happy to see so many bees busily working away at the flowers in my yard. They seemed particularly fond of the drumstick alliums and the 'Caradonna' salvia.

The lawn visible below those allium flowers and baptisia foliage is approaching a prairie/wheat hue... beautiful, but very inappropriate for a fescue mix. I don't know the statistics off the top of my head, but I don't need numbers to tell me that we are very dry. The pictures say it all. I refuse to water my lawn, though. Watering is reserved for the newly planted--and things that show obvious signs of distress, like the cardinalflowers and cimicifuga that I found lying horizontal yesterday.

In addition to some emergency watering, I did get a few other projects accomplished. I built a small retaining wall and mulched the bed where the baptisia reside. I harvested the rest of my garlic and hung it in bunches downstairs to cure. That left me with several holes in "the canna bed," as you see in the second picture... to fill them I planted everything from clearance dahlia roots and gladiolus corms to pepper plants and beet seeds.

Sometimes I think that my blog title, "A Study in Contrasts," sounds too artistically snobby or grandiose. And then I wonder what else you would call a blog by a crazy gardener who grows tropical cannas, wooly thyme, native grasses like little bluestem, and brussels sprouts all in the same garden bed. (Well, okay, so you might call it a riot or a mess... but I guess I like to look on the bright side!)

"Do I contradict myself? Very well, then, I contradict myself. (I contain multitudes.)"
- Walt Whitman

Today was my longest day at work this week, an 8am-10pm marathon. But if I just get through the next three days, round two of our big weekend events at work will be finished. The nicest part about the finishing is that three comp days will be waiting for me on the other side of this weekend, and then I can go out and drink in the joy of gardening... really and truly gardening, not just throwing my attention to one or two little necessary tasks here and there in an evening... once again.

Aaaahhhh......