Each Little World

No place like home

Why not stay here forever and ever

enjoying this immortal rhythm,

in which both eye and soul are at rest?

— Virginia Woolf —

 

A Chinese necklace (probably bone) and a dried Magnolia leaf resting in our Thai Spirit House.

Look low

On Valentine's Day Mark and I drove out to Stoughton to the Abel Contemporary Gallery. We hadn't been out to visit and look at art in a while. The openings are so crowded that we've been avoiding them. A Tuesday morning was perfect.

Both the owner, gallery director and a new staff member were all there and with time to talk. After I caught up with everyone, I wandered off while Mark told them about his upcoming photo show.

As always, I am as captivated by the floor as much as the artworks in this 1891 building — originally a tobacco warehouse. Every step you take reveals new marks and changes in the wood. 

Eventually I looked up again and bought myself a necklace for Valentine's day and Mark treated himself to a tea bowl to add to his collection.

Holiday decor

Last month, a long-time artist/gardener friend had a big sale of his artwork at a gallery space he created in his home. Artists never stop making new work and eventually they need to move it on to make room for new work; thus the sale. Mark bought a large print and I opted for this painting. I found the scene very calming despite its intense coloration. 

I added this ornament being pulled by a toy farm tractor as a nod to the holiday. The big green glass ball already had the pink bow on it. Clearly it was meant to join the painting. 

We are starting to come out of our cold spell. I'm a bit worried that it may get warm enough and rainy enough later this week to melt the snow cover. I'm thinking of going out looking for a couple of curbside Christmas trees to bring home. I will cut the branches off and have them ready to put over new plantings when the temperatures plunge back into winter. 

IVOM: The perfect vase

Some vases are perfect because they are just right for short-stemmed blooms.

If you're lucky, they're equally good for long-stemmed beauties. 

But the very best vases look perfect even when they don't have any flowers. 

I love the glass vases by Richard Jones of Studio Paran in Madison. Given that I have three more of his vases in different shapes, sizes and colors, you could probably say I am addicted.

Jones is closing his studio and has been slowly selling his stock; first online and now Saturday afternoons in person at his shop. 

I bought this one knowing it was unlike any of my other black and silver vases. Mark suggested I display them as a group without flowers. I was thrilled he said that as that is exactly what I was thinking of doing!

I added a pot of Cyclamen to turn it into a Christmas display. Though I admit the flower color looked much more red in the shop than in my living room. Still, I am happy with my new purchase and love the group as a holiday display. 

Where they went No. 3

This image looking down the Tea House slope has always been one of my favorite views of the garden. For the last few years it has also been the area where I've been replacing high maintenance perennials like Hostas with shrubs.

It has been a problem free landscape except for the rabbits; thus the caged Deinanthe cerulea. Deinanthe is a shrubby perennial which dies back in the autumn and returns each spring. Its size makes it function like a no-fuss shrub. 

Despite a lot of extra watering, this year's weather and the loss of a neighboring tree proved too much for the Deinanthe. In September I dug it up and moved it to a much shadier location where I hope it can recover. I've had this lovely plant since 2006. It came from the the source of so many of my treasures: the late Seneca Hill Perennials.

I replaced it with New Jersey Tea (Ceanothus Americans), a low growing  native shrub whose flowers attract humming birds. An Oak Leaf Hydrangea (H. quercifolia 'Pee Wee') is behind it. The Hydrangea flowers on old wood and our erratic early spring temperatures have kept this from flowering for the last two years. Luckily it has distinctive foliage to recommend it.  

Among the other shrubs along the edge of this slope are Cornus sanguinea 'Compressa", a trio of Thuja occidentals 'Pancake' and a few others that are not visible. There are still a few Hostas because they are one of the few plants that provide so many foliage options in my Zone 5 climate. 

Where they went No. 2

More looks at where some of my 2022 plant purchases have gone.

. . . 

The Lower Moon Garden

Thuja orientalis 'Franky Boy' performed beautifully in a pot all summer.

It has such great texture that it was nice enjoying it up close.

Its permanent location is far out in the front garden. Given it's potential size — 4'-6' high x 3'-4' wide — I am hoping it won't take too long for to become visible at a glance out the kitchen window. Right now it's barely noticeable among the nearby ferns, ground cover shrubs and trees.

Once the leaves disappear and the Geraniums die back for winter, it will definitely be more visible, especially with a little snow cover on the ground.

The West Gate Garden

On the west side of the house we planted three seedling European spindle trees that I bought from the original Heronswood nursery. Opposite them were three burning bushes original to the house. Over time, both plantings were devastated by tent caterpillars and we removed them all.The ground covers in this 2011 photo are also long gone.

I loved the transition from the shady front space to this short sunny corridor. But Mark has been after me to put something taller in there. I don't want to lose all that light so I have been focusing on tall but narrow plantings. 

On the front left is a Thuja occidentals 'DeGroot's Spire' which will get around 16' high and a little under 3' wide. This is the last big plant that I intend to put in this area. It went in late in the summer. 

There are clumps of Epimediums echoing the same plants across the path. Between them on the left is a very small Taxus cuspidata 'Amersfoort' (6' x 4'), followed by a Cornus sericea 'Pucker Up' (eventually 4' tall) and ending with a Carpinus betulus 'Columnar nana', a dwarf fastigiate Hornbeam that will ultimately get up to 6'-8'.

Good fences . . .

A number of years ago the young couple who lived behind us announced they were getting a dog — and thus needed to fence their yard. To our surprise they wanted our advice on what kind of fence they might get. They wanted something that would not detract from Mark's beautiful Asian-influenced fence (below) that separated our two properties. We talked about possibilities over a glass of wine and gave them a couple of books that had inspired Mark. 

We were so pleased with the fencing they added that we hired the same company and extended it into our garden on the side that had ancient wire fencing. Last year we added similar fencing in the front garden. Nothing fancy; it will fade and blend into the landscape and give me a nice backdrop for planting. 

Imagine our surprise when we looked out from our usual chairs into the garden late Wednesday afternoon. We could suddenly see a blinding bright light in a back yard a couple of houses east of us on the street behind us. At first we thought it was a huge "pod" structure. But when we looked closer this is what we saw. 

The properties behind us are all higher on the slope that runs down to our property. So this solid white plastic fence is extremely visible from a distance — visible right into our living room. I took this photo through our garden fence across two neighbor's properties. 

Mark is already trying to decide what we can plant to hide that view. I figure the fence should be less visible this winter when it snows and everything is white. At least we don't live directly next door to the fence. I'm afraid I would be hard pressed to be polite about such a visual monstrosity running along my garden. If only they had gone with a picket fence, I'd be a lot less frustrated. 

IVOM: Pumpkin decor

I am not a big fan of Halloween decor, but I decided it was time to change the objects on the Chinese wine tables in the living room. 

My autumnal display includes "Pumpkin Mine" by artist Chuck Bauer. The dried pumpkin is covered in sculpt metal with rifle bullets glued on. I got it at an annual art weekend this summer. Not my usual type of purchase but I was instantly smitten with it; I suppose because I knew I had other not-quite-the-usual-pumpkin objects.

We found this gorgeously illustrated squash at the Farmers Market in Milwaukee a number of years ago. 

A metal container and an incense burner that both seemed to fit in with the others. Alas, that is all I know about them. 

Hanging above this display are three new photos by Mark of autumnal fall color — printed in black and white. 

I think they tell the story in a surprisingly subtle, yet strong, manner. (Ignore the lampshade in the lower left!)

Wordless Wednesday

Pond re-design: The final frontier

Before adding the next layer of fill to the pond, Mark put down permeable weed barrier.

The weed barrier is intended to keep the layer of screened top soil from filtering below. 

We took advantage of a big hole partly full of dirt to replicate our portrait taken on the day we started to build the pond in 1997.

Once the soil brought the pond level up high, Mark attacked the stream bed and waterfalls. He took out all the rocks from that area, piling them temporarily on the soil in the big pond. Then he removed as much rubber liner and carpet from the stream as possible. A number of the rocks in this area were set with a bobcat and two people. 

We were lucky to be able to borrow a couple of contractor's wheelbarrows. These are built to carry loads of concrete. Even empty, I could barely lift and move them. 

Mark's assistant, Angelo, had no trouble moving them full of dirt or gravel. Everything had to go from the driveway up an incline into the back. Angelo was amazing in how quickly he could move those barrows. 

The soil layer also got rained on which helped to settle it and let Mark determine if his calculations were correct. 

At this point, Mark began preparing for the final layer: Quartzite chips. He put wooden stakes in the ground, linked with string, to indicate the depth the chips needed to be, tiny surveyor's stakes. 

The quartzite chips needed to be put down without mixing any dirt up into this final layer. We were following the system that Olbrich Botanical Gardens uses in their sustainable gravel gardens. 

Once all the quartzite chips were settled on top of the soil. Mark began to level the pond surface. (It may not hold water but Mark and I still call it the big pond, stream and upper pool.) This was amazing to me to watch as he went the length of the pond on his hands and knees with a long, even board, a level and smaller pieces of wood to smooth the surface. 

He took design breaks to work on placement of the stones around the pond edges. The round stone was moved a number of times, getting it just the right distance from the pebble beach. 

You can see he changed his mind on how this area should be edged compared to the big stone blocks he experimented with above.

This view from the Upper Pool shows the stepping stones that cross it and the top of the stream on the other side of them. 

Even the stream bed has raked patterns. 

The sharply curving rock in the bottom pool of the stream symbolizes a jumping fish. 

Once Mark removed that wide swath of Carexes to make his working "bridge," we decided not to replace any of them. Instead he created a beautiful little path down to the east end of the big pond.

He set a grindstone into the quartzite chips so you could step out into the pond for a different experience than just viewing from a distance. 

Mark's first raking design was a very traditional linear pattern, the length of the pond. 

The big stones in the pond and the curving edges mean there will always be curvilinear patterns. 

This is where the stream meets the pond. 

I love this view from the path between the two hills in the garden. It is a view I rarely noticed when the pond had water. 

This was his first raindrop pattern, which was quickly followed by more elaborate version. 

This was his most recent pattern: diagonal lines across the width of the pond. Though it is a very simple design, it has proven one of the most effective because we can "read" it from inside the house. It also gets lit by east and west raking sun which makes the pattern pop.

Mark began this project on April 4th and finished on Aug. 17 — four and a half months later. It was an almost daily effort; whether with a wheelbarrow or a pen and paper. We couldn't be happier with the result. We celebrated the "unveiling" with an open garden event in early September. It was also Mark's 75th birthday.