Mountains and Molehills

   During year long quest to get my lawn and gardens---and former motorcycle track---in shape for the  wedding I fought Mother Nature on several fronts: the weather was not one of my original concerns,  after all, its JULY for heaven’s sake! It never rains after the Fourth of July, everyone knows that!

    Uh, yeah....good thing I had golf umbrellas for the petunias...

 Elk were my main concern, keeping them out of my flower beds and wild flower garden my primary  focus. I spent lots of energy on getting a fencing contractor to come give me a bid, sure that a fence  would be the perfect solution. But when the bid for 600 plus feet of eight foot high fencing (with four gates) came back at $15,000 I decided I could buy one HECK of a lot of Invisible Fencing/a.k.a. Stinky Spray for that kind of money. And after the wedding I could use all of my newly freed up time to go back to twisting friend’s arms into helping me build a fence with a more reasonable price tag. So I sprayed the stinky spray once a week, instead of once a month, to insure the heavy footed beasties stay the heck out of my gardens, and it worked pretty well. I could sure tell which flower I might have missed spraying though, as their absence was rather conspicuous.

Stonehenge: the Mole Version

It was the moles that sneaked up on my blind side.

Next time: the Saga of the Mole Invasion continues...

White Lace And Promises

 It’s hard to know where to start, really. The wedding day dawned, the sun shone---both the elk and the rain stayed away...everything was beautiful; perfect, for all the imperfections that in the end, mattered not at all.

My oldest child married his Beloved in our backyard, on a perfect July day, under the arbor that my husband Shane had built for me. Surrounded by friends and family, rings and promises where exchanged, people laughed and danced and celebrated our joy with us.

Shane's Arbor, Flowers by Philip Rotter

And on that day of love and laughter and happily ever after, my heart was not broken in two—I did not feel Shane’s absence, but rather his presence. To be able to have Jordan & Elise’s wedding in the backyard, exactly where Shane and Elise had talked about “maybe, someday, this would be a great spot for a wedding” years before—before Jordan and Elise were even “Facebook Official” as a couple---having the wedding at home was the perfect choice.

 It takes a village, the saying goes, to raise a child. It may also take a village to marry one off. We had our village surrounding us, lifting us up, helping hands and helping hearts.

It was a beautiful day, in every way imaginable. A day of promises made, and promises kept. 

I love you Shane, thank you. We kept the promise.

Rain Rain Go AWAY

Things at the Sume House were very busy last weekend---doing all the final prep things; mowing grass, spreading the mountain of beauty bark, hiding all the objects we normally manage to ignore (I can’t tell you WHERE we hid them, but trust me we still have a secret stash of what Shane lovingly referred to as “our white trash pile”. We’re just pretending that we don’t... have a secret stash. And as a side note: who knew they made camo tarps that big?)

All was proceeding according to plan. Then on Sunday afternoon the heavens opened up and the rains began. Rains of biblical proportions, frog strangling rains, rains that could only be adequately described as a deluge. Rains that seemed to be centered directly over my location. I ran around, moving pots of flowers under shelter, propping umbrellas over the flowers in my gardens that needed shelter from the storm-- while rain might not hurt the rhubarb it sure won’t help the petunias. At one point during the down pour I had a near drowning experience, holding a golf umbrella over a pot of pale pink petunias while trying to brace a slightly smaller umbrella over another pot of matching petunias eight feet away. I thankfully managed to keep the flowers dry but I looked like a drowned rat.

Rain is good for the grass, I tell myself, rain is a good dust suppression system. But the truth is, rain is really harshing my mellow. Every day, the first thing I do upon waking is check my phone for the weather and every day the weather app assures me that Saturday, AKA Wedding Day, will be sunny. It might be 79*, or maybe 84*, the app isn’t really sure. But sunny—no rain. 

PROMISE? 

The Wedding Draws Ever Nigh

The wedding is a little over a week away...Crunch time, if you will. And the weather? Well, the weather is not following the rules for July. Mainly the number two rule, which is that it STOPS raining after July 4^th---unless July 5^th falls on a weekend, then it will stop raining on the first Monday following July 4^th. Summer officially arrives then, feel free to plan your BBQs, garage sales and backyard weddings after that with absolutely no fear of getting rained on...

Statistically speaking, this is a FACT. A warm, dry, beautiful, sunny fact...But you might recall what Mark Twain said about that: There are lies, damn lies and then there are statistics.

Annie Cat doesn't like rain either...

So I run around with my umbrellas and my stinky spray and climb on the lawn mower every time the sun peeks its head out for more than five minutes and then remember that, under the shelter of umbrellas, my plants aren’t getting any of Nature’s water. So I drag out my garden hoses and water my pots. And now it’s raining again. Park the mower, head back in the house and get back to painting my French doors---stuck inside the house.

It seemed like a good idea at the time... a little white paint just to freshen the French doors up...because earlier I had painted the new door trim white, which made the doors themselves suddenly look dingy---oh look! The sun is out!! SQUIRREL!!!

The rain is also putting a kink in my plan to foil the elk with stinky spray---I’m using “Invisible Fence” and I swear by it—but every time I’m spraying---once a week, instead of once a month, just to be extra insured---I can feel raindrops before I’m even finished, let alone before the spray has had time to dry for full efficacy.

SIGH.

The flowers are ready....

Thrill Spill Chill

When it comes time to actually plant your garden pots I have three words of advice for you---and for those of you who put your money on “Buy More Plants,” I appreciate your thinking but for now I’m going to assume we have a sufficient amount of plants to get started with—and those three words are: Thrill. Spill. Chill.

Every pretty pot deserves all three of these elements working together. 

Thrill: Chose a plant that will grow taller than its companions—rocket snapdragons are good, as are varieties of upright grasses or anything that is going to add the WOW factor to your container.

Spill: your pot will look all the prettier with some flowers trailing over the edge, vines are a good choice---I like the bright lime pop of a sweet potato vine—as are any trailing variety of  the plant. Million bells planted at the edge of a container will not only mound up but spill over as well.

Chill: now you can fill the rest of your pot with little beauties that will just hang out and look pretty—just chillin’, so to speak. Or you could think of it as “Fill” but “Chill” seems a much hipper way to describe it, don’t-cha think? 

Thrill Chill Spill in action

Marigolds, Petunias, Sweet Williams are all surefire, low fuss plants. I also like lobelia, nemesia, and alyssum. One of my all-time favorites is Lantana “Sunrise Rose”. Lantana is a pom-pom of smaller blooms, and it blooms in multiple colors at once— Sunrise Rose rainbows from yellow to orange to pink and is a non-stop bloomer. It’s an excellent choice if you want a variety of color but only have a little space. Be forewarned though---you’ll most likely fall in love with it and have to plant more. 

Every. 

Single. 

Year.