Welcome to summer! It's finally here and The Old Sprawler is happy to announce that The Detectives' Garden is nearly complete. With a tip of the beanie to everyone's herb guru, the late Adelma Simmons, the theme garden is alive and thriving in the Star City of the South.
I was amused by my darling niece's conundrum this past week. She's been readying her daughter's clothes for Girl Scout camp and said that she was having trouble coming up with grubbies because there was nothing like that in The Closet of Cute! She had to hit the thrift shops for some clothes that were suitable for getting totally trashed at camp. I mulled this as I matched socks that I'd bleached to within an inch of their lives. The red clay stains remained, and enough to help me match the pairs!
We gardeners know from grubby, don't we? I was on a mission to get the noxious weeds dug from the garden, and between one deluge, when I needed to wait a bit because you cannot dig in wet clay, and the drought weeks when the clay was like bricks, too much time had passed. They'd gotten busy and mushroomed. So I got a window of opportunity - just enough rain had fallen and been absorbed - and I was going like a house afire. My gardening duds were rank, my sneakers were toxic and I was getting some interesting aches and pains. Didn't matter because I was having too good a time to care! I thought of the Closet of Cute as I was trying to decide which pair of shorts was the least odoriferous, and just collapsed in laughter!
The Detectives' Garden has been a work in progress for many years, but never seemed to coalesce. It began as a butterfly and hummingbird garden, but those native varieties tend to get out of hand and that garden was happy to do just that. However when I had a three year infestation of passiflora lutea (native passionflower) as well as chameleon plant, I knew I had to get serious. The Facebook support group agreed: you gotta dig.
All of this coincided with the need to redo Miss Mary the Fairy's digs. She'd served notice that she'd be moving next door unless I dealt with her home. No longer was she content to live in the dogwood in Uncle Doc's Garden (that's the hosta garden pictured above). And she had a point. Every time I ventured in to enjoy some quiet time on the blue bench, she'd been knocked over or her furniture had been scattered by Chip and Dale or some other interloper.
My solution to her problem was to make use of a Jack Daniels barrel, but it needed a good location. The best possible place was the Detectives' Garden, so I got out the graph paper and started noodling around. If I had to dig up that mess, might as well just go for broke, right? And so it came to pass that the redesign gave Miss Mary pride of place and my noxious weed issue was addressed.
We gardeners know from grubby, don't we? I was on a mission to get the noxious weeds dug from the garden, and between one deluge, when I needed to wait a bit because you cannot dig in wet clay, and the drought weeks when the clay was like bricks, too much time had passed. They'd gotten busy and mushroomed. So I got a window of opportunity - just enough rain had fallen and been absorbed - and I was going like a house afire. My gardening duds were rank, my sneakers were toxic and I was getting some interesting aches and pains. Didn't matter because I was having too good a time to care! I thought of the Closet of Cute as I was trying to decide which pair of shorts was the least odoriferous, and just collapsed in laughter!
The Detectives' Garden has been a work in progress for many years, but never seemed to coalesce. It began as a butterfly and hummingbird garden, but those native varieties tend to get out of hand and that garden was happy to do just that. However when I had a three year infestation of passiflora lutea (native passionflower) as well as chameleon plant, I knew I had to get serious. The Facebook support group agreed: you gotta dig.
All of this coincided with the need to redo Miss Mary the Fairy's digs. She'd served notice that she'd be moving next door unless I dealt with her home. No longer was she content to live in the dogwood in Uncle Doc's Garden (that's the hosta garden pictured above). And she had a point. Every time I ventured in to enjoy some quiet time on the blue bench, she'd been knocked over or her furniture had been scattered by Chip and Dale or some other interloper.
My solution to her problem was to make use of a Jack Daniels barrel, but it needed a good location. The best possible place was the Detectives' Garden, so I got out the graph paper and started noodling around. If I had to dig up that mess, might as well just go for broke, right? And so it came to pass that the redesign gave Miss Mary pride of place and my noxious weed issue was addressed.
You can see that she's pretty pleased with the outcome, and as soon as I finish the rest of the garden, she can quit cracking the whip. In the meantime, I'm taking a break because The Drawer of Disgusting has been depleted and it's all in the wash getting sanitized! I'll have pictures soon enough, as well as a nice list of who's been included in the garden. I need to make more stepping stones for the path, and I've decided Jake is right - brick chips will be the best possible pathway because of their durability.
And so it goes, on this Midsummer Day. Miss Mary can frolic and throw a Solstice celebration late tonight for all her wee folk friends, while her garden slave rests her weary back. Miss Patty has decreed a complete write up about the garden and I think that given how much everyone has heard about it, it does deserve a final reckoning and some good pictures to prove it exists!
Wishing all of you a blessed Litha ~ May your gardens bring you peace and enjoyment with all the blessings nature can bestow!
And so it goes, on this Midsummer Day. Miss Mary can frolic and throw a Solstice celebration late tonight for all her wee folk friends, while her garden slave rests her weary back. Miss Patty has decreed a complete write up about the garden and I think that given how much everyone has heard about it, it does deserve a final reckoning and some good pictures to prove it exists!
Wishing all of you a blessed Litha ~ May your gardens bring you peace and enjoyment with all the blessings nature can bestow!
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