My Happy Place - Surrounded by Love - Friday, August 11, 2017

My Icelandic Sheepdog family resting after their morning bark and run around the yard. I have two connected yards/gardens/dog runs surrounded by cyclone fencing to keep the dogs in and the deer and rabbits out. The fence virtually disappears this time of the year smothered by Clematis vines and tall perennials. My lovelies are below in order from youngest to oldest - ahem, most experienced.

Kit

Totty

Pila

Bear (and best bud Korpur)

Kria

Korpur

Kata

Granddaughter, Daughters, Mom

Nights here in the North away from the light pollution of cities are amazing. The stars are clearly visible and the moon phases are dramatic. I understand how our ancestors fantasized and speculated about the pull of the night sky. City life removes us from the miracle of the cosmos.

Same Moon, Two Different Consecutive Nights

Same Moon, Two Different Consecutive Nights

I leave dead trees (with branches removed) standing to provide food for tree dwelling insects as food and nesting sites for cavity producing birds like woodpeckers, flickers, nuthatches, chickadees, et cetera. I don't care that the tree guys don't understand "why" I don't take them down to the ground and then grind out the stumps. Flickers feed almost exclusively on ants, those who live in trees as well as those who live in the soil. I have plenty of both for them and they reward me with songs and trunk-tapping calls.

Camouflaged Flicker

Camouflaged Flicker

Most of you know that I love art, it enriches my life. I consider myself an artist but I work with a living perennial palette of colors, textures, patterns, sizes. My art changes continually. Each morning when I step out with my family the garden, my art, is different.

Daylily

I deal almost exclusively with perennials which often, but not always, live for several years increasing in size and beauty as they age. Some think that because each perennial plant flowers only once in the course of the summer that the garden lacks the flash of summer-long-blooming annuals.

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Daylily

Each morning when we step out for the morning ablutions, the painting is different. I often think that the garden will never be more lovely than it is right at that moment.

Porch Geraniums - Garage-Wintered

I live in the north and annuals, as their name suggests, live but one summer and are soon gone. They are beautiful, colorful from the moment they are planted after the last spring frost until the first fall frost. Alas, they must be replanted each year.

Geraniums & Fence-Screening Clematis

Although I plant a few annuals, I think of them as "high maintenance" plants. I think of annuals like I think of the Kardashians - beautiful but not long lasting. Was it Judy who said, "Beauty fades, dumb is forever."

Gorgeous Scented Phlox

Ventricosa Flowers - beautiful even when "old"

The truth is that the garden is always, always changing. What is wonderful now will fade and be replaced, smoothly replaced, by coming beauties. Next year the drama will continue and the plants will be larger and, it seems improbable, even more beautiful.

Second Year (Creep Year) Hosta

I've often mentioned the "Sleep, Creep, Leap" progression that perennials experience in the garden. That seems to imply a three year cycle which is accurate but after the third year, which is honestly the year that the plant comes into its own, comes even more years during which the plant becomes still more amazing.

Sumac

Fence Hiding Rudbeckia, Clematis, and Silphium