flower nirvana

my mother has two very green thumbs. 

i find that it is really hard to live up to her standards. 

 i have my own two very helpful opposable digits, sadly neither is particularly green.  

nerts. 

 i am good at telling someone like my very willing husband, 

what i think would look nice in our garden. 

unfortunately, i am much better off using metal flowers and laying them out 

to show to other like minded flower junkies. 

i am getting a little excited also to hear that my daughter may have inherited the gardening genes. she planted stuff with my husband a couple weekends ago and it has all seemingly integrated into the ground where it was added. 

she also told me that she really enjoyed it. a little light was glowing in her eyes!

(she is 19 and a little jaded about living with us after a year in college. excitement is unusual and very nice to see... a respite from a lot of computer time and grunting and eye rolling. )

the plants that she rejoined with terra firma were in shock at first and now are blossoming 

in a fresh rainbow of blues and purples. 

she showed them all who is boss and had the  enthusiastic support of my husband in doing so. 

i often think of him as a modern day, urban, Gunga Din in my mind. 

the man loves to water things. trees, plants, bushes and flowers all are benefitted by his toddling down the street with two 5 gallon buckets one in each hand.

 he is like an overaged  little dutch boy
minus all of the hair and its stylings.

 he does this balancing act  in his summer shorts and high topped construction boots
 just to emphasize his version of street cred.

i have held dinner many a summer evening while his foray into saving trees was in play. 
about a dozen years ago, he applied for a city tree grant.
 our street was awarded about 20 trees under this program. 
the deal was that we denizens would plant them with help from the city.
the grant   paid for the trees and the mechanical power to move them. 
so much support was waiting, cause it really does look so much better with greenery lining our urban landscape.
  we got ornamental pear and another blooming tree species for chris' efforts.
 pears on one side and the other bloomers on the opposite side. 
it is quite breath-taking come spring. 
chris  has always been so civically or arborially minded when it came to maintaining "his" trees. 
this was often to my frustration, since we had two toddlers at  home all day.
i was pretty tired by the time he would get home, and looking for relief, 
i was bypassed for his beloved saplings.  
(crabby mommy syndrome)
seriously, i think i was a bit more than jealous of the watering routine
 taking his attention away from us.


when any of the trees would die, 

i would try my best to muster some grief  for them. 

he took each event so personally.

1. sigh, we lost another one... a trash truck backed up over the one in front of the pink house.
2. a neighborhood teen drove into that sapling down the street when he boosted his mom's car.
3. some owners did not do their own watering to his standards & their trees just punked out. 
4. too much wintry snow management  and salting of the streets wrecked the root system.
5. nuts! tree at the end of the street got dug out so the new house owners could put in more concrete for extra illegal parking.  joni mitchell... can you hear me? they paved paradise and put up a parking lot.

it's like i live with an alterkocker reading the tree obits in the latest  organic gardening newspaper. {UGH}

my contribution to our personally lush garden show,
 has been the multi-hued and many shaped leafy hostas living in front of the house. 

they are my bitches. 

i planted them a few years ago and told them that i would totally admire and appreciate them,
 however i was NOT by any stroke of imagination, going to coddle them. 

since then, they have NOT been weeded. 

they have NOT been divided. 

they have only been watered. 

they live under a remarkably shady, a  water grubbing maple tree. 

anything that can co-habitate with those greedy maples all around our yard,
 is my kind of plant material. 

i am very impressed with my hostas so far. 
they have risen to the challenging mean streak i wield and my non-green thumbs. 

i may be able to go out on a limb and say, i am very proud of them. 

and yes, they have done so very  nicely under my abuse. 

 one of my garden gifted neighbors thinks that i may have some hidden chlorophyll in my digits after all. 

i assure you, i do not, but i am willing to let other folks think so. 


this one is called "sum and substance"
it is my fave just because it is immense.

my hand is here for an attempt to show its size. 
not really doing the task well due to the foreshortened angle of the photo. 
i think you can see that it is really a big leafed plant. 

the girls out front are showing their plumes. 

they are really this golden to a deeper shade of blue green. 

all pretty in a row with tall shasta daisies 
{and recycling bins that my kids have neglected to put away!!!} 

* * *

meanwhile in my real life, i have a small blister contemplating development

 on my right forefinger. 

i didn't plan this discussion to include boring chat about the  quality and
 assessment of all of my fingers. 

however, it all is coming together pretty nicely. 

i am on the downside of a load of colorizing things.

ie... tagging. 

i am developing a nice set of painting skills using an aerosol propellent system.

if i could harness my inner bad girl, i might tag a local building in my city with some pretty posies. 
ok, maybe not. 
i am all too aware of the mayor's graffiti task force. 

as much as i might enjoy accessing a naughty fantasy personality hidden inside of me,
 i am just too chicken-hearted to do anything remotely like that.

i am a big weenie through and through. 

so here are some of the most recent gardens harvested for my sweet lady customers. 

they enjoy making their own jewels for personal adornment and for sale to others. 

happily, i am supportive of all these dreams. 

i used to be one of the florally challenged. i kind of fell into this, and am happy to satisfy my interests in getting a nice little personal garden. 

the fact that these blooms will last a nice long time is  good for me.
i also really appreciate my hostas growing well regardless of my diet of threats and utter neglect. 


 blooming masses for discerning customers... 
love you guys!

and

and....

also...

plus...

ok, this has been enough babbling on. i am sure that i am in need of a hearty big red pencil to go over my terrible grammatical errors and redundant statements. 

i am gonna hit the publish button and deal tomorrow with that housekeeping. 

just so i don't lose this. 

i already messed up the format of the blog earlier today. 

what possesses me to keep fiddling with this stuff that is so far out of my range of ability? 

try not to answer that. it is utterly rhetorical. 

until the morning.

xoxoxo. 

W.