Sorry So Selfish

I've been holding out on giving back to the online community that I've learned so much from. I've taken what I've learned and had fun making things but kept it all to myself! Actually I've been busy living life. Although the internet can do so much for us, it can also completely take over us. That's my belief. Stickin' to it. Learned from experience. So I've needed to put the internet back in its rightful place in life. I never did nor never will do Facebook or Twitter (and I'm comfortable enough to violate "never say never") -- keeping up with email, web sites, blogs and discussion boards is enough. I just don't understand how people can have enough to talk about, without having time to live offline enough to have something to talk about online. ??? Am I missing something? Or am I just lame? Can't juggle it all? Whatever, we all make our choices. I live online here, in some discussion boards, and I share trips my husband and I take in our plane on another blog. That's enough for me.

What ignited instant obsession and drove me back here is this chair from Anthropologie:

One of these would sit by my marble table, the one that was once my single woman's tiny apartment dining table, but is now a perfect garden table, tucked among plants that tower over both table and chair, hidden.

Only one chair, though. Two would lessen the uniqueness.

I'm growing more gardens. Since spring, been building a raised bed behind our sunroom that will someday cradle a patio in its own outdoor room between walls of foliage and flowers and the windows of our sunroom. Where our cats will probably be sitting, inside but longing to be out, meowing and whining. Thus marring the peaceful gardeny ambiance. Of course I will get up from the Anthropologie flower chair and let them out, but they must roam, and as I follow them, I'll soon be out of sight of the flower chair and my coffee on the marble table will go cold. But I love my cats and I'm happy when they're happy, and I can always return to the flower chair which will sit waiting for me, surrounded by a garden of brilliant color in the summer, but really designed to glow in waves of burnished red, orange, yellow, purple, and brown in the fall, and stay standing all winter. I love autumn gardens.

Beautiful autumn gardens don't just happen, they have to be planned that way. My shade beds look barren after the hosta leaves go mushy. They're not so wonderful to look at then. But the garden outside the sunroom must be beautiful over four seasons. It will be unavoidable to see from the sunroom, close to the house. So someday we can drink morning coffee out there in December and see snow sitting on little brown puffballs and fluffs of grasses swaying. I love the strong shapes of plants like millet. I might install witch hazel, so in January and February we get the promises of spring even before the daffodils.

Struck With Sundial Obsession

Well doesn't time pass so fast. Been too busy for blogging. Still busy. But tonight any busy-ness was waylaid by trying to track down an armillary sundial for a new raised garden bed I'm building. Before I got the current issue of This Old House and saw the armillary sundial in it, I never knew these things existed. But now, life has changed. I must have one. Apparently, life just won't be the same without one of these on a pedestal:


I am attracted to objects that hint of travel, globes, time passing slowly. Maybe because that's the antithesis of my daily life: going to an office in the same spot on the planet and racing the clock all day. Now tonight I lost all track of time chasing a new object of wanderlust. My blog title is still appropriate. Some things don't change.

So where did these come from and what do you do with them? Here's a nice explanation. And a Naples, Florida publication has an upscale explanation with armillary sundial eye candy photos.

I love the looks of these because they're both a little different than the mass produced versions in Google Images:

Other people like these enough to steal them. Or they steal them to serve the one-of-a-kind purchase market for hungry people like me who want a piece of another place, another time.

Speaking of another place and another time ... I've gotta get back downstairs to doing some cleaning I was supposed to do earlier. But this was a nice journey. Time to share ideas here more often, too ...

Peony Power

Peonies blooming! And iris, clematis, geranium, catmint, salvia, columbine. My gardens are mostly in shade, so lots of shade-tolerant flowering plants mixed with hosta, ferns and grasses. My garden colors are purple, lilac, lavendar, magenta, only a few pinks, and throw in some yellows and whites for contrast. I use a lot of variegated hosta with yellows like June and her offspring. Took pics for a few hours this morning while I hung around outside with the cats. Will post soon ...

Stone Cold Crazy 2

So there's this great stone showroom not far away, Schwake Stone. They have what I need. For the past two summers, I've been piece by piece, bit by bit, building a 6-8" tall, rustic stone edge along the front garden. Yeah, just an edging of stone, but I'm very precise about what I want there. And it's taking forever to complete it as I pick up one or two, or sometimes if I'm very lucky, I find three or four pieces at the same time that are the right shape, width, height. Can you imagine how long it would take me to build a 2-foot tall wall? And that's still a very short wall!

Now, I must build stone edging under my cascading curved swaths of Japanese Forest Grass, which when it grows up will look like this from Heronswood:


It's not as full and lush yet, but it's getting there. And it needs a low bank of stone under it to support it and set it aside from the grass. See, Heronswood thought so too.

And, after two years, I can't believe that all I have to do is drive down to the Schwake showroom and find the stone I want, like one of these:

So coming soon, a photo not from the Internet but from my own garden of Hakonechloa macra 'Aureola' spilling over a low edging of dry-stacked thin stone.