new garden - part deux

My apologies to everyone who visited this post earlier! Mark just picked up books at the library for me - one of them was The Jane Austen Book Club. I was reading the back of the book - this copy has info on the movie. "Kathy BAKER" jumps off the page at me. Oh, no, I know I wrote Kathy Bates - shoot. Yup, a quick check of the blog and indeed that's exactly what I did. I'm so sorry. However, if you see the movie, I don't think you'll be disappointed - Kathy BAKER is absolutely wonderful.


Thanks for the comments on my new garden ideas for the driveway. I look forward to reading more! As I was reading the comments, it occurred to me I didn't give you as much info as I could have. The driveway is on the north-northwest side of our house. Last year I placed half barrels along the edge of the driveway in an attempt to ward off some of the construction traffic on our street. The overview photo on yesterday's post was taken at about 9 am - the sun hadn't made it to the driveway yet. The second photo in this post was taken at 10:30 am - and you can see that the barrel is casting a shadow. The first photo shown here was taken at about 6 pm, so I get at least 8 hours of bright, hot sunshine along the edge of the road - where the garden will be placed. (photos taken around 7/20) ((the shadow on the left side of this photo is me trying to get a photo without a shadow - lol))

Last night I was checking more info on the net and making notes, and I started thinking that I'm not sure actually where my sun is in that area. The barrels did fine on all sides because they get all day sun basically from side to side. But if I plant a taller ornamental grass, the street side may not get as much sun as I was thinking. I'm not sure how the summer sun works its way across this space. I wouldn't be too upset to just plant a lovely big stand of ornamental grass - or to have a few other shorter plants on the house side - it would look nice from the house and patio area. I know Mark wants me to keep as much driveway space as possible because he's afraid I'll eventually treat the driveway like I do the yard - it's all potential garden. I can't actually deny that thought has crossed my mind! :) One thought I had was to plant the grasses kind of behind the rocks I want out there - with half barrels of annuals as fill for the forward space. So many possibilities!! I appreciate your input - and no doubt you will be hearing most of the thoughts that flit through my little brain on this topic.

Tuesday night I watched The Jane Austen Book Club. I loved it. I adored the group of women in this movie. Kathy BAKER played the oldest member of the group - and she was so nurturing to the other women - without being overbearing or cloying. I thought perhaps I want to be that character when (if) I grow up. Or maybe better yet, I want a best friend just like her. She was so confident with who she was - again, without being pushy or controlling about it - I just loved her. I thought it was a good chick flick.

curb appeal??

Okay, I've been talking about showing overviews of the gardens. I've been playing with Mark's cameras, trying to learn how to use them more effectively. I think I'm doing much better on the close-up shots. But big-space photos were the pits. Mark finally got through to me: different settings on the camera!!! I think I'm starting to get it. So for the last couple weeks I've been practicing and when I asked Mark to (kindly) critique my efforts, he had some ideas for blog posts that made a lot of sense. So a week or so ago, he took a ladder and did some shots for me that show the gardens from above. That's where I'm going to start.

The second problem was sorting through dozens of photos trying to pick which ones show what I want to show. So my next decision was to show a different area of our yard in each post. I have a lot of gardens, so if this is boring, just come back in a week or two, and I should have it out of my system!
When you live on the lake, the street side is considered your back door. Our street is like a little paved alley - you pull over if you meet a car and let it pass. Because there is no on-street parking, we have a driveway going the entire width of our property along the street. To keep the dogs in the yard, and to make a clear border between driveway and house, we put up an iron fence that Mark made, and we have paver stones on the patio. When they did the patio area about 3 years ago, they also made me a couple raised planting beds that are lined with limestone. It's nice to have some perennial spaces along with container plantings.

This first photo is the entry to the patio: window box on the fence, gate (with welcome sign), paver walkway going either to garage side door or to steps down to patio. The raised planting space has some fun stuff: siberian iris, dwarf bearded iris, geraniums, mountain bluet, asiatic lilies, daylilies, Hawkeye Belle rose, hibiscus, yarrow, veronica - and probably a couple more things I can't think of right now. I wanted color there throughout the season rather than a big splash of color for a short time. So, at times it is showy, at others not so much - but I'm pretty happy with it. Oh, and can you see my cool iron bench? The previous owner left it for us when we bought the house - it's very old, and I love it. The gate in the garden is from a neighbor - it's old and fun too.

The grill doesn't add much - lol - but it's close to the kitchen and is usually sheltered from the wind - so it's staying. The caladium in the iron planters have been phenomenol this year.

This shows the other side of the patio: door that goes directly into the kitchen (so handy - NOT!), a small metal table and chairs, great iron urn by the door, and the other raised planting bed. This planting space is shadier and has goats beard, The Rocket ligularia, daisies, asiatic lilies, ferns, geraniums, and a ton of daylilies.

This shows a view from the street - we put the half-barrel planters in to try and deflect some of the big truck traffic from a construction project across the street. The first one has a rose and filler, the next 2 have cannas and filler, and the last one has purple fountain grass and filler. They actually look way nicer than just having a big ugly driveway space and if we decide to use them next year, I'll spend more time making them look nice!

The house: the flat roof needs a railing (still deciding on a design and when on earth we'll have the time to actually do it - you know how that goes!), but I have 4 iron urns up there. Two have double red impatiens and 2 have Boston ferns. I bought the ferns at Home Depot for $12 each and they have been fabulous! If I find them again next year, I may do all ferns. The construction project across the street involved taking down most of the trees, so we now have views from this side of the house of the sun setting. I'm thinking when we do get a railing put in, I may put a bench up there for sunset viewing - that would be fun!

(some or all of the photos should click big, I think)

HAPPY ANNIVERSARY (yesterday), RYAN & SARA!!