Garden Update

There are fewer than two weeks left for the wedding preparations.  The yard is looking about as good as it's going to get.  Well, there will be more weeding and some plugging of visual "holes" with a little color or something green or a bit of "garden art" moved from somewhere else in the yard.  The equivalent of last minute clean-up and moving the accessories around in your house to get ready for guests.  "Hmmm....Let's put that picture frame on the mantle in the living room and while we're at it, those throw pillows from the other room have the same color in them, let's put them in here, too."  That kind of thing.  But in the yard.

The work has been fun.  Some of it is what we have been talking about for a long time, but hadn't done.  The fountain on the patio, the arbor next to the garage (EE is calling it a grapery ever since we ran across the word in the dictionary!), the completion of the wine bottle border, and the development of a new planting bed with a retaining wall.  All have been in the plans for some time and the wedding gave them a jump start!  Other preparations have involved a different kind of planting than I am used to, and a different plant palette.  That has been fun.  There is something creatively stimulating about using materials you don't normally choose.  I have joked that I am planting like I am a gas station (masses of plants by color), but it has jolted me out of planting habits and given me a new tool to use in the garden.  For example, I normally think in terms of longer lived plants and so I have to think more about where I will put them. Is this a good spot?  What is the future plan for this area? I have been reminded that I don't have to be stuck that way.  I can sometimes plant for NOW and not worry about how it fits into the future plans. I can see why art classes sometimes make you do a work with only one color, or using a material that is not the norm.  It makes you think differently and then you carry that with you into the future work.

I have a fresh eye for what we are trying to accomplish in the yard, nevertheless, the big plan still exists.  We are providing as much habitat as we can in the middle of a residential neighborhood.  This year our yard has had more birds than ever before and abundant pollinators even though it is late in the year.  We have also spotted a big fat western fence lizard.  That tells me that the insect life is there, providing them with enough food.  The fox is still around.  I'd like to think of him as keeping the squirrel and other rodent population down.  It also eats grubs, etc. from the lawn.  Perhaps the fox is an urban freeloader, like the racoons, but I haven't seen that description in what I have read.  I don't think the racoons say anything about our habitat since they stroll down the sidewalk to the neighbors' in the evening and probably feast on someone's dog or cat food.