It's become clear to me through posts and PMs that there are some gardeners here just waiting for the chance to discuss gardening!
So, I was thinking... how do you use gardening, or how does it affect you if you need a break, need some respite, need to relax, need inspiration....how do you use it as a therapy tool in caregiving?
What are your activities: Do you go out and pull weeds, read a magazine, design new beds? Look through garden catalogues? Go to garden stores?
And what interests have you added to your gardening? Visit estate or garden displays? Do you go to garden shows?
Does anyone design and plant Knot Gardens? Raised bed planters? Assistive gardens? Pollinator gardens (and have you thought of ways to help the bees and butterflies?)
Are your gardens primarily for pleasure or food, or a mix of both? Do you grow plants for medicinal purposes? Which ones, how do you harvest and process them? Any suggestions?
Do you grow plants that can be used in crafts, such as grapevines for wreaths and lavender for lavender wands? Do you make herbal products such as creams, lotions, chapstick?
What else can you share about gardening and the means in which it nurtures your soul?
The veterans garden has been put on hold, but I did track down the possibility of having some red poppies in a planter. I could have bought some, but the potential bloom colors were not guaranteed.
In L.A. County, we can only water once a week because of a drought, so if anything survives that we already have, that will be good enough. So getting more plants would not work.
Praying for rain.
Catching shower water in a bucket to water outside later.
Prepared a little gazebo for shade outside my window. It has shelves ready to receive plants when that becomes possible. The shade outside helps keep it cooler inside.
It is the plainest kind of Skink in the photos.
The Skink is grey like a lizard, the plain looking kind, no blue stripes, with some not so obvious markings. It's tail is not as long as previous years, so if it's not the same one, it is also less slim. About 10 inches long. Moves it's head in the direction of my voice. If it bites, the bite is not toxic, and won't hurt very much.
So I should not be afraid, but sad to say, I am a bit eeked out. Now it's on my mind. I admit, prefer my nature at the zoo, I visit, they stay there. Lol.
Skink looks strong, has tiny legs, but jumped up onto the porch from the stair- did not crawl or slither. Dh says it can run faster than any lizard he's ever seen.
He was not home at the time of the visit. He had to enter by the back door at my request.
Does anyone observe that the animals, reptiles, and birds may be acting different this March? My budgerigar (common parakeet) has been flying and landing on me (shoulder, hand, bed near me) for about 2-3 days, not his usual behaviors.
Today, I was at the sliding screen door and had just closed it when the Skink jumped up on the porch via the steps. Then it wandered over towards my voice. I gave it some lettuce, it licked it but did not eat. If you knew me, you would know that I just opened the screen a tiny crack and threw the lettuce out there. It's on the porch now, if we open the slider and it could be in the tract, it would get hurt. Nature is wonderful-at a distance I'm thinking. I should not have talked to it as it has apparently misunderstood my being kind for some sort of an invitation. n e r v o u s n o w .
While I was out raking a small raccoon strolled by and I asked him "where the heck did you come from?". It obviously thought that was an invitation because it wandered right in through the open door of my little garden shed. How to get it out??? I tried shooing but of course it hid behind my summer tires. Then I tried banging on the walls behind it. Finally I sidled in the shed with it and prodding with a snow shovel encouraged it to move out the door. Whew!
We are supposed to be having street upgrades sometime in the near future and got new gas lines last year so I know that the trees are all on private property just skirting where the sidewalk will run (if we get sidewalks🙄).
Apparently during subdivision development, the city had trees planted in the berms between the street and the sidewalk. (And they're still doing that.) Over the years, some of these trees grew to mammoth proportions, and their roots grew into and cracked the sewer lines to the homes. Back-ups occurred in the basement.
Whenever I saw a huge pile of earth and a busy backhoe, I knew that someone was having sewer trouble.
My garden is about 6,000 to 7,000 square feet, (+/-), depending on how much I can get planted. The bricks are at one end of the garden; I wanted something to draw attention through the garden and back to the end. They're still there, but unfortunately under dirt, so I have a lot of uncovering to do. I just couldn't keep up with everything over the last several years when I was caring for my father.
A lot of the bricks were left by the former residents; I gathered them over the years as I created new gardens. The area also was anchored by a farmhouse way back in the 1950s or so, and as my father explained, sometimes debris was buried at the back of the farm areas.
I found a lot of old, little bottles and chunks of concrete which I suspect were left over after paving the driveway and sidewalk. So they got added as border to the fern and wildflower garden.
Sometimes creating a new garden was like exploring.
I'm glad you enjoy the magazine; it's special, in my opinion. Earlier this year I read an interesting novel, The Last English Garden, set in 3 time periods and filled with garden descriptions and literature.
It stimulated my gardening desire, and now I want to add some more English touches, such as naming the various gardens. I had done that, but used colors, such as the White Garden, Pink Garden, but now I'll switch to Shade Garden, Sun Garden, the Veterans' Garden, Wildflower Garden, and more than I haven't yet figured out.
One restaurant in town had them so bad they have poured cement mix straight out of the bag (looks like it anyway) to try to keep them from coming in. That will not work.
I treasure the magazine, and looking forward to whatever the subscription brings in the future.
I have always liked bordering garden areas (and a walkway, and a swimming pool) with bricks. There is some unfinished brick lining the driveway that maybe my dH can finish this summer. I don't think he even knows it is unfinished, but once he starts, he can do excellent brick laying-at least prior to his arthritis getting worse. We'll see, but he voluntarily went outside to hand-pull weeds twice this week. So nice!
I will need my magazine even more to distract me from tax preparation.
I do not draw out my plans for the bricks, but maybe I should so E. can understand it.
Do you still have the brick borders GA? Maybe start there-it sounds like a good plan.
Starting from scratch there.!😕😕 Probably late summer.
Send, what do you think of the English Gardens magazine? It always motivated and excited me; there were so many beautiful beds.
As to those who are planning, planting, or plotting - you're very encouraging! I needed a little something to get me motivated, especially since we're in a temporary temperature plunge now although the temp should hit 60 later this week.
My garden needs a lot of work, so this will be the year that it gets the attention it needs and I convert it to what I've always wanted: more English garden style as well as very formal beds, which I'm having fun plotting and sketching.
Before the long years of caregiving began, I had dug up and bordered with bricks a formal garden consisting of 4 beds. I have a lot of designs that I've worked out, but one that I still think of was a border around the 4 beds holding them together, and filled with different colors of Alyssum, twined in what would also be my Ode to Math bed: intertwined sines and cosines. I've been thinking of that since I took Trig back in the mid 1980s.
Take what you want, glad. Even if the house is being built you can still plant in safe places.
I have been thinking about this for the recreational property and what I have here that I still want. I want to bring down a 2 different roses, some delphiniums which have seeded themselves, hosta, lily of the valley, potentilla, Japanese wind flower(anenome), lilac, maybe a tiger lily and a peony. There still will be lots here.
Me?
Son is here helping me get ready for a move and took out a dead tree yesterday. I must remember to take some seeds from my Echinacea and Prairie Cone Flower for the new house.
🍓🍅🌽🌶🥦🥔💐🌹🌻🌷☘