Plots, Pans and Garbage Pails

I have been plotting for most of the spring to get these iris into something other than a bright blue Kiddie pool. They were given to me by a lady who bought them and then found out her ground was mostly tree roots. We managed to get them home and drag them under the grape arbor...then we collapsed for the sheer weight of moving them! I have made plots and put things in pans, garbage pails but never a kiddie pool! I choose to dig when it's damp for red clay because though it is heavy as crap and dense you can dig and it holds it's shape like a clay pot...you just have to make sure you make a way for the water to get out or it'll drown your plants. Just like a pot with no hole in the bottom!
I have this thing about iris...they seduce me every time I see one. J and I have bought Denim blue, Damask purples, Immortality white, as well as inherited palest apricot from my grandmothers.  Now we are searching for a black iris called Old Black Magic which is a re blooming iris! So here are the pics of whats blooming for the week...Blessings and prayers!

Life Began in a Garden

As you grow you start rethinking things. I like to think of gardening as an art form. It is painting with plants, therapy with soil! Gardening is a very forgiving medium of art.  You can have failure after failure and begin with a clean canvas every time. Dig it up plant something else, somewhere else. Get plants from all your family and become the historian.  Some people like a garden that's one color and minimum ornamentation, some like masses of color and structures. I happen to like color! ALL of it! I haven't yet met a plant I didn't fall in love with. It adds to your life in so many ways. I have learned to talk to people! Did you know I have not met a gardener who didn't like talking about what they did how they did it? They are the most caring and sharing people I have ever met! Want to start a conversation ask someone about a flower or plant and see their eyes light up!
I have also learned that we need to be good stewards of this small earth. Little things matter! That everything you do has repercussions. Want to teach a child to be responsible? Begin in the garden! 

Adding to the Universe...Midnight thoughts

Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and look at the night sky. The stars and moon seem to sing to you in the deep dark velvet blue sky and look at the shadows and plat of white and light that is my garden. I say my prayers then and in those quiet moments when you find yourself alone. We so seldom find ourselves alone any more. Even when we are in the house alone there is the phone, TV and computer constantly going off, begging us to talk trash, play games and spend more money! I think that's why I like gardening so much. You get to turn off the day and the electronics (if your wise.) Spend some quality time with yourself.  I am not alone. I am alone with myself!

Turn on some soothing music, kneel down and think about how the universe really works for you. Peace and balance come after a few hours in the sun and you take that cool drink while you inspect what you've done. People say I don't always answer my phone and sometimes I can't be reached...it could be important! I think to myself as human beings we've gone from solitary farmers, artists and makers of things to people who answer the phone. The dead will still be dead, the disaster will still be a disaster...and little Timmi will still be a brat if I wait to answer your call. What's important to you is not always important to me and I swear some people talk just so they know they are still alive. 

You get so little time to just breath and stand in the sun. When I am sad I go to the garden. When I am happy you'll find me there too. I am straining to make a place where you can walk, think and be. That's what a garden is to me. 

A garden is not something to make curb appeal... that means the things there mean so little to you and you'd sell it in a heart beat. It's not something to show off (although you can do that). I don't want to pick my plants because they would impress the neighbors. Although I sometimes find them staring at my riot of color and shaking their heads. A garden is something special to me. My grandmother's and Aunt Alice's peonies. The iris from my great grandmothers yard. Plants my husband bought me because I trained him not to buy me cut flowers I'd rather have live!

There is nothing better than standing in the middle of your own garden looking at the plants you grew and feeling that sense of accomplishment...and feeling the need to pull weeds instead of answer your phone! How much of ourselves have we lost by becoming the Tech-nation? 

While you are out browsing and consuming wander out and buy a few plants. Turn off everything as you plant them. Focus on making them grow and listen to some good tunes...breath and feel your life  change (if you stick with it) and yes become obsessed  with growing something and adding to the universe instead of taking.  Now I think it's time for me to go back to bed. 

Getting Wild in the Garden! Cultivation & Cultivars, know your native plants!

My name is Edna and I am a Wild Gardener. 

Wild gardening to me means you mix in as many native plants as you do cultivars. According to Wiki, "a cultivar is a plant or grouping of plants selected for desirable characteristics that can be maintained by propagation." They usually don't belong in the area, humans have replaced native plants with cultivars. Wild gardening is to preserve the native wild landscape and nature. I have golden rod, milkweed and dead nettles growing in my flower beds. The dead nettles are also being used as ground cover and as a natural fertilizer called green manure. {More on green manure later!}

milkweed plants

Make room in your garden for some native species, for those plants that support the natural order around you. Some butterflies and animals have died out because we chose to interrupt nature and plant our own cultivars. They had nowhere to go and nothing they could eat. Most people remember how many butterflies we had in our youth, now they are a rare sight, mostly because we,  in our ignorance, did away with their habitat and food sources by drying up ponds and planting grass. 

Where do you think all the frogs, dragonflies have gone? 

Don't think of native plants and grass as weeds or dry up a natural pond in your yard, embrace the natural surroundings, and find a way to incorporate into your garden.  Natural plants need a place to call home, butterflies need a home to make a family. 
Plant some native milkweed, let the bees have their goldenrod, then lean back and enjoy the sounds of nature. 

{garden photos by me, please share with links}