Each Little World

The year in photos

This year ended on such an unexpected and sad note, that I really did not want to look back at it. But checking in on my favorite garden blogs suggested that looking at my gardening year would be a positive experience — and it has been. So thanks to all of you who posted about 2021 in your gardens.

JANUARY

I read more books this past year than in any other period in my life; even more than during 2020 which was a record-breaking reading year for me. I know this because I keep a record of everything I read during a given year. I bought a lot of garden books, more than are in this photo, but still haven't made my way through all of them.

FEBRUARY

2021 was also a record year for tree work in our garden. We had old and dying trees of various sizes removed during the year, along with pruning on an assortment of other trees. The garden is healthier and looks better after all the work. And the gardeners are happy to have discovered a great company to do this important work.

MARCH

Once March arrived the garden and I both came alive. One of the first Hellebores I ever bought, Royal Heritage Strain, was moved a few years ago and settled in with no problems. Always a thrill when that happens.

Equally exciting was this combination of Luzula 'Solar Flare' interplanted with snowdrops; an idea I adopted from Adrain Bloom's garden in the U.K. 

APRIL

This is the month that Mark began to disassemble the old ponds and connecting stream as the first step in turning them into symbolic water gardens with raked gravel. 

I will remember April as the month I spent covering and uncovering delicate plants; especially those that were injured by late frost the year before. It was a real slog, but worth the effort when everything bloomed as the season progressed. 

MAY

I went crazy buying plants, bulbs, and shrubs this past year. After going nowhere and hardly buying anything in 2020, I splurged and did not feel a bit guilty. Eventually I did feel exhausted, trying to get everything in the ground while we did a major redesign project as well. 

Our new water feature was put in place and filled this month and turned out just as we had imagined it. 

JUNE

Three other gardeners who all live on my side of town started our own little in-person garden social group with me. We met indoors and out at each others houses and gardens until Omicron put a stop to it. I think it may be time to do a group Zoom this month. We toured each other's gardens, answered questions, shared advice, books, websites and food.

Flowers were blooming and projects continued but the temps started rising and the rain disappeared. I can't complain about drought compared to many other spots in the nation. My water bill, however, is proof that we did not get our typical summer rainfall. 

JULY

We entered the home stretch of the pond redesign when the top layer of quartz chips were delivered. 

AUGUST

During the growing season, something lovely was always blooming in the garden. We were so focused on the pond project, however, that it dominated every week of the year: talking, planning, and doing the work. It was a thrill when Mark made two different rakes and was able to try raking patterns into the gravel. 

SEPTEMBER

We finally unveiled the pond with an open garden day on Mark's 75th birthday.

OCTOBER

If the Spring gave us late frosts, so did the autumn. The Toad Lilies (Tricyrtis) were spectacular. 

The Ginkgoes never got their full golden color before dropping, but the rest of the garden put on a glorious show of color. 

NOVEMBER

We ended the year as it began: Taking down another of the original trees planted when our house was built in the mid-1950s. A good-size Oak seedling has been growing in the maple's shadow. We're hoping that it takes off with  more space and light. 

DECEMBER

The mostly dead Arborvitae hedge, that Mark took out in the spring, was replaced with a cedar fence.

It was so warm and dry for most of December that I was able to cut Helleborus niger to bring indoors for Christmas vases. 

It's hard to know what 2022 will bring; but looking at the weather, politics and Covid, it's also hard to be optimistic. I'm looking forward to time spent in the garden and visiting your garden blogs to keep me sane. 

Final details: Safer steps

After our new deck was finished last autumn, it was obvious that it was a bit higher than the old one; just enough to make stepping on and off of it awkward. The step we installed on two sides of the deck were stones that had been set with a bobcat back in 1998.

I suggested replacing them with a large limestone step. Mark thought that the old stones could be dug out and raised up enough to make them work as well as they used to. But he was unable to move them in the slightest degree.

Since we are about to have an open garden event to celebrate our redesign, we did not want to have to worry about whether people would find it difficult getting on and off of the deck. So Mark quickly made wooden steps to temporarily cover their stone predecessors. 

They're much easier to use and a great solution. Though you can see the stone underneath in these photos, you don't really notice them when you are using the wooden steps. 

I like this temporary solution so much, I suggested to Mark that we talk to the craftsman who built our deck, to see if he would make steps out of Ipe wood to match the deck. Stay tuned.

Pond-redesign update: The little gravel garden goes away

Garden projects like re-doing the pond are never quick or easy. They also create related projects that need doing at the same time. That's the case with this secondary project that we finished last week. This shows the area as it looked in the early years as you came around the house to the back garden. The old is deck on the left and the pond on the right. 

In 2008 we decided to turn this discreet area into a raked gravel garden to relate it to the one out front. Mark removed the grass, made a sinuous rock wall and put down weed barrier. 

It got topped off with fine gravel, raked and looked perfect. 

Thirteen years later, it is less than perfect with construction debris — limestone pieces and an old wood bench — taking up space. Both shrubs had seriously deteriorated from bad winters and bad bunnies. Mark and I decided that this raked gravel garden made no sense if we were turning the big pond into one as well. This smaller one would detract from the pond re-do, so it had to go. To revert this area back to a planting zone, meant that everything that had gone into its creation now had to come out.

First Mark removed the best gravel off the top and added it to the front gravel garden. The rest went into the pond (below) as filler. 

Then he pulled up all those pieces of weed barrier to reach the soil level.

But before we could add more dirt, we had to pull out the stone wall. 

Despite being smallish stones, they were heavy and not easy to just grab and pull out. I know since I helped on this part of the project. 

As stones were being pulled out on one side of this slope below the Tea House, they were being used to create a new wall on the other side. Previously logs delineated the path. 

First load of soil goes down just before the mostly dead shrubs were removed. The one on the left is a Burning Bush so I was fine with seeing it go.

Glad I left the flags in place as I never would have been able to figure out where my spring ephemerals were planted once the rock wall was gone. 

A second load of dirt and the area is ready for me to plant. The rock piles on the back right are for a different project. 

I used two bags of our chopped leaf much to keep the dirt from blowing away. 

I more or less have a planting plan; I just need to get up and out early enough to have energy to do the work. 

A resolution for 2021

During the holidays Mark and I attempted to reduce the amount of artwork we have stored in the basement in flat files. As we pulled out artwork to examine, Mark gave me a hard time for not continuing with my drawing, which he highly praised. That conversation — and the sight of my last drawings — reminded me of how much I miss making visual, and not just written, work.

Thus I am resolved to try to get back to drawing more, which means writing less. I am going to use the winter, which is always a downtime for northern gardeners, to draw rather than blog so often. But I don't want to totally give up my connection to all of you; therefore I am going to blog once a week on Tuesdays, beginning tomorrow. 

See you then.

A collaged garden journal page I created for a workshop I conducted.

The bedroom re-do

i always get an urge to do a project over the Labor Day holiday weekend. In 2010, we painted the library walls before the bookcases were installed. Mark and I each picked a quote about books and wrote them in magic marker on the wall where the bookcases were going to go. We loved the idea of someone discovering our messages years from now.  

This year I suggested we repaint our bedroom from deep yellow ochre to gray. Last winter we bought a new silvery gray duvet which was visually at odds with the rest of the room.  Plus it has been this color since 2008. (This image is closer to the actual wall color than the pictures below which look much more pumpkin colored.) 

Mark made a quick foray into the local Benjamin Moore paint store to grab some sample paint cards. That was followed by a curbside pickup of two different gray paint samples. He tried both colors around the window frames . . . 

and on the wall with a black and white photo, since we were considering using all b/w art in the re-painted room. That's the curtain fabric (linen from Purl Soho in NYC, purchased online) spread out on the bed. One paint sample matches the duvet and the other one matches this fabric.

i met friends for a weekly Saturday morning chat while Mark got started painting. 

He is a focused, meticulous painter. When I got home at noon, he had the ceiling repainted and had done all around the windows, the corners of the room and the top and bottom of the walls where they met another color or material. All the really persnickety parts of painting a room. 

I went out to garden while he painted. When I came in a few hours later, I was pooped. He was almost finished and said he was tired out as well. But where I stopped working, he kept going. End result was he took a tumble off our two-step safety ladder, landed on his side on the bed post and broke a rib. 

I was equal parts sympathetic and furious. Mostly I was really scared to have him take a fall for the second time this summer, after rarely even modestly injuring himself in thirty years of marriage. He sat around — medicated — for a few days and then decided he was ready to hang art. We considered b/w prints and photos. 

We've always had a table or bench on the wall opposite the bed. This time we added a pair of upholstered chairs. We were about to hang one of our all time favorite paintings (by local artist Tom Sergeant), when we suddenly went in an entirely different direction. (Note our beautiful silk curtains were falling apart from age and too much sunshine. Very Miss Havisham!)

We opted for simplicity and more sculptural forms this time around. 

The tables had been covered with Indian Kanthas down to the floor. Whether they will be covered again — and with what — is still up in the air. 

On the wall between the bed and the closet are a pair of oyster farming sticks that we've had in various locations for almost 20 years.  

We both thought the color and circular features on this African mask were a nice echo of the sticks. 

Instead of a group of artworks on this wall as we originally planned, we opted for one dramatic piece.

We found this painting on corrugated metal by outsider artist Mary T. Smith in Milwaukee. We discovered Smith and fell in love with her at The Milwaukee Art Museum, which has a similar piece. 

A large African sculpture went on the pedestal that has been in this same corner forever. We both thought she was the perfect partner for Mary T. Smith. 

To add some sparkle and contrast, we brought in our chrome cocktail table . . .

and a pair of glittery pillows. I wanted to add sequins and sparkly bits to the curtains but Mark was not enthused with that idea. 

Last, but never least, Mark added some fall decorative pieces to the table. 

We probably won't be painting this room again because, in another dozen years, we will be old enough that this house may be too much for us to deal with. But that gives us a nice long time to enjoy it in its new incarnation.

Aging in place

Mark's birthday is in the autumn and mine is in the spring, today as it happens. He's a year older than me so I catch up to him for a while each year; something that always gets me confused about my actual age. My gardening friend Cindy and I are both turning 72 this month. But we've both spent the last year mistakenly saying we were 72!

I've realized this is not a silly mistake but a great new way to deal with getting older. Cindy and I are getting a free year. We're turning 72 again, so we can do all the things we didn't get to, read all the books, right all the wrongs, whatever. We have a whole new year to spend on a 72 "do over"!

Last Thursday Mark and I went down to State Street which almost always means lunch at Himal Chuli, our favorite Nepalese restaurant. He's got that new camera and is constantly practicing on whatever or whoever is closest to him. Sometimes the subject just wants to eat her lunch and has to scold him.

Looking for Spring!

I was trying to figure out if the little bit of green I saw out the window was a snowdrop emerging.

But I didn't feel like clomping through the snow to get up close and personal, so I grabbed the binoculars. 

No; the green I saw was just the tag identifying the snowdrop's location. But while my attention was focused out of doors, Mark used me as a guinea pig while he played with his new camera. He was quite amused when I discovered these photos in my email!

Art for lovers: 2.14.2019

This lovely couple are snuggled up at the moment, but she easily slips out of his embrace whenever she's feeling independent. 

Origamai figures by Rumi O'Brien of Madison. 

Left on the cutting room floor

When Mark and I were in Cleveland earlier this summer, we spent the better part of a day at the Cleveland Museum of Art. This is such a fabulous museum that we've made it our stop when drive out East to see my family. We even stay at a lovely boutique hotel that's only a block away so can walk over. CMA has stunning old and new buildings, an extraordinary art collection, two restaurants, an excellent shop and admission is free. What more could you want?

On our visit we were thrilled when we walked into the gallery of African art to discover two new large sculptures given pride of place in the center of the gallery. While we were discussing them and Mark was snapping photos, a photo crew and CMA staff members came into the museum. They were shooting a PR video and asked us to be in it. They told Mark to keep taking photos and for both of us to continue our lively discussion about the art.

When they finished shooting us, we signed releases from CMA and laughed because we were actually referred to as "the talent." Yesterday the museum sent us an email with a link to the finished video. Alas we were left on the cutting rom floor in this great one-minute movie. They said they have a longer three-minute version running at the museum. Maybe we made that one; we'll probably never know.

 

If you go to YouTube and search for the Cleveland Museum of Art you will find a number of terrific little videos about the museum that show off the buildings and their stunning collection.

 

Shadowlands

After a number of hot and sunny days, the temps are supposed to drop back into the 70s with some clouds. Nothing nicer than working in the garden when you can labor in cool shadowy spots. I think this shot is of the big dramatic handle of a medieval era sword. Mark thinks it is actually a cross. Too bad we didn't snap a photo of the label.

A fanciful railing on the Notre Dame campus.