Texas Spa Treatment - Shoveling Rock In August

This is load 2 of 3. It's cheaper to have rock delivered in
these bags on their flat bed.  Pain to empty them though.
Ed drags them with the truck to tip them over.

Do you have clogged pores?  If so, I have just the spa treatment for you.  It's called shoveling rock in the middle of August.  You'll have a dewy complexion in no time because every sweat gland on your body - some you didn't even know you had - will blast through your skin like artesian wells.  Our water bill nearly doubled this month due to laundry because you can't leave those grimy, sweaty clothes in the  hamper.

What madness has inspired me to do this?  Gardening of course.  I have two projects in the works for the back yard.  The first is to create wicking vegetable beds with rock pathways and an arbor.  The second is to install a pond.  Both required a lot of rock.  Today I finally wised up and got up at 5 am to shovel the stuff, getting in several hours before the death star rose to slay me.

My "wicking" project is an expansion of the ditch on the uphill side of the house.  This area catches and holds the runoff from my neighbors lawns on my block.  It's a substantial amount of water when we get one of our Texas thunderstorms - almost of inch of water in about 30 minutes.  My idea was to dig it out further, replace the soil with larger rock, then direct the water between some of my vegetable beds and the blackberries.

The concrete pavers function as "gates" to
slow down the water so it can soak in. I got
the idea from how the flood irrigation was
set up on the sheep pasture we used to rent.

The rock I used was 3" crushed limestone.  I was hoping to find something else that wouldn't make my soil even more alkaline, but the price difference was huge. So I'll just count on the compost in the vegetable beds to offset the higher pH.  Good thing I collect coffee grounds from work!

Once a layer of this went down, I topped it with 3/4" crushed granite.  I really like this rock.  It's a pretty shade of pink and I just love the crunchy sound it makes when I walk on it.  (I blame the Masterpiece Theater shows on PBS. All those estates with crushed rock driveways.)  By topping the larger with the smaller rock, it settles in nicely and packs down to make a firmer surface.  This is pretty important since this is a major pathway for the wheelbarrow and hand truck, and I need to have both wheel along without me having to fight it too much.

3" crushed limestone used as the
path bed.  The water should flow through
 here nicely without relocating anything.

The rock will continue down the side of the house until it collides with my vegetable beds.  At that point I will direct the water into a rock-filled water well with a soil center.  The water will soak into the soil and then wick up to the vegetable bed.  I'm hoping this will substantially reduce my irrigation (I'm VERY stingy with my rainwater) and give my neglected blackberries some additional moisture - which will boost yields and make the fruit much sweeter!

All that for sweet berries?  Why not?  I figure all in all it's cheaper than a treatment at Lake Austin Spa and Resort although I could REALLY use a manicure after handling all that stone!

Dumbarton Oaks - A Lesson on Garden Rooms

As part of a recent Colonial Garden Tour, one of the Washington DC area gardens we visited was Dumbarton Oaks.

It is a huge estate garden in Georgetown, one of historic significance as it once was the home of Robert Woods Bliss, a US Diplomat, and host to a "pre" meeting of what was to become the United Nations.  The Bliss' purchased the home in 1920 and did extensive remodeling of both house and gardens.  Bliss was also an avid collector of pre-columbian art, many of the pieces which still reside in the home.    It is now the Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, administered by the Trustees for Harvard University.

The gardens were designed by Beatrix Ferrand who was inspired by the great European gardens.  She was one of the founding members of the American Society of Landscape Architects and had her hand in several prominent gardens, one of which was the National Cathedral.
Dumbarton Oaks is stunning and huge.  It is about 50 acres and it comprises a series of terraces that step down the steep hill.  Within each terrace are several gardens, and for the first time I really started to understand the design concept of "Garden Rooms."  I know now that my idea of garden rooms was really "garden alcove".  Walking through this estate garden was a revelation - as only these big manicured places can be.  It was quite overwhelming at first because I can not even fathom the cost of such an undertaking.  This is truly how the .000001% lived.  We were there for several hours but still were only able to see glimpses as we hurried through the grounds.  I could have lingered in each garden room for an hour or more.

The design is artful.  Each of the rooms is separated visually by a gate, wall, or walkway.  You truly discover each one because your view is blocked until you enter it.  And once there, it as if nothing else exists.  It's an outdoor mansion so vast that one could forget that some of the gardens exist - like a room you haven't been inside of for ages.

Some of the gardens feature a partial overlook into the other,

but for the most part, each must be entered to be viewed.  One that particularly caught my imagination was this fanciful chicken wire "cloud" with chandelier crystals hanging from it. I'm going to try to reproduce this in my yard - on a MUCH smaller  - more alcove style - scale.

Another amazing garden was the old tennis court.  It is now a gigantic pebble garden featuring the Bliss family crest.  Our docent didn't have any details on how many workers or how long it took to complete this. I imagined myself going shopping for the rock.

 "The Orangery" is an enclosure off the main house that is covered within by a huge creeping fig (Ficus pumila).  The fig is impressive - even more so when you discover that it was planted in 1860.    One of my relatives was just establishing the homestead in Talent, Oregon about the same time.  I thought about Frank Kerby out there clearing trees in the wilderness while someone in Georgetown planted this ficus.

Certainly a lot to think about and some good inspiration to take home.  While building separate rooms in my garden is completely impractical - I can still use some of the visual cues to give my visitors a sense of discovery.  A well placed arbor, shrub or fence can suffice.  I'd really like to do a pebble garden but I just don't think I have the patience - and I fear I'd have to resort to chemicals to kill the tree seedlings that will invariably bully their way into it.  That chicken wire cloud is definitely a go though, as long as I can find a cheap source for the crystals.  Might be fun with plastic tear-drops in all sorts of wild colors.  Anyone have an old beaded curtain they want to get rid of?

That's interesting.  I swear I just heard Beatrix Ferrand gasp and Frank Kerby laughing "that's my girl."

Inside Jefferson's Head - A Visit to Monticello

I was lucky to visit Monticello on our recent Colonial Garden Tour.  It was raining that day but the view was still magnificent and we were able to go through the house and gardens.

Thomas Jefferson has always fascinated me.  How can one guy be so talented?  Land owner, architect, scholar, inventor of the United States of America, founder of a university, President - a complete over achiever.  What kind of person was he?  I was sure that the key to him must lie at his home in Monticello.

And so it did.  I came away from Jefferson's home with an impression of a fussy, animated, brilliant, exacting, tour de force of a person.  From the books to the clocks, the wall paper, the design of the windows, to the exact measurements for his cubby hole bed and his thousand foot vegetable garden, I started to understand - and relate to this man.

That Jefferson was an intellect, it was plain for anyone to see.  His house reflected his fascination with design and gadgets, and if he were alive today he would have more twitter followers than Lady Gaga.  His gardens had the same sort of obsessive approach.  Everything was laid out to specific plan and placed just so.  The thousand foot restored vegetable garden and orchard had the same sort of precision - and if it had a sound track it would be the mechanical sounds of a Bach concerto.

The views are stunning.  The house sits on top a fairly good sized hill and you can see the Virginia landscape stretch away before you.  I have never seen such huge hardwood trees - so big that they rival my beloved Pacific Northwest Douglas Firs in enormity. This place will steal your heart for sure and I can understand why he loved it so much.

But as a gardener - I find Jefferson lacking.  And I think the reason is that he was too much into the scholarship and not enough into the real production of a garden.  This is a weakness that I share with Mr Jefferson - and rather than be inspired, like I was at Mount Vernon, I came away duly chastised with what could have done better.

Jefferson kept very detailed records - which is why the restoration of his garden was done so well by Peter Hatch and the large extended team of plantsmen and historians. (Please pick up " A Rich Spot of Earth" by Peter - excellent book.)  The garden today reflects Jefferson's zeal with trying out new plants and the newer types of vegetables his African slaves grew (okra, gherkins, squash, and even tomatoes.)  This was pretty revolutionary during his time since European vegetables dominated the dinner plate.  It is laid out in a long terrace with the parade of vegetables dutifully marching and never straying out of line.  There is nothing interesting about how the plants were cultivated and no hint of soil improvement or irrigation techniques.  I was so uninspired that I didn't take a single photograph of it.

Of course, this might say more about me than Thomas Jefferson's vegetable garden.

What I do greatly appreciate about him is his pursuit of plant varieties and zone pushing.  I love that he cultivated a community of gardeners and enthusiastically traded seed and plants with just about everyone he met.  He kept a garden journal and his garden calendar got published in the local agriculture magazine.  In a way, he was acting like a Agricultural College Extension agent - with Monticello functioning very much as an Agricultural Experiment station.  Quite fitting considering the garden tour I was on included Doug Welsh from Texas A&M and a bunch more Master Gardeners.  Another achievement for Mr. Jefferson - America's first Horticulture Extension agent.  I like that.

Following George's Footsteps - a visit to Mt Vernon

Recently I was on a Colonial Garden tour with several other gardeners including Doug Welsh from Texas Texas A&M.  We spent a week in the Washington DC area visiting several locations and meeting with the head horticulturalist at each site.

Our first garden was Mount Vernon, George Washington's Virginia estate, where Dean Horton, director of Horticulture gave us a tour of the grounds.

It was my second visit, but this time I was able to see it as more than a grand house of our first President.  Thanks to Dean, I could really appreciate the gardens and get a feel for what Washington was trying to do, and once the tour ended, my favorite of all that we visited.

It was the vegetable gardens that inspired me here.  Great walled gardens near the house provided suitable microclimates to grow many fruits and vegetables that were not common at the time.  As Dean explained, Washington was a zone pusher - something many of us totally relate to.  (What?  Can't grow that here?  Just watch me.)  Washington firmly believed that agriculture was going to make America a great nation.  He vigorously put forth to the other founding fathers that it was their duty (as the .00001%) to experiment and test crops because the common farmer could not afford to do so.  He even had a greenhouse.  Of course it was heated by a slave-attended wood fireplace.   

Fruit trees were a big part of the garden and most were espaliered.  The stone fruit was next to the wall since they were more susceptible to frost, with the apples and pears used as divisions between vegetable beds.   My own yard is ringed with fruit trees but I think I will add some more and train them similar to what was done here.  I think a few more pomegranate, peach and fig varieties might do the trick.

Manure figured very prominently in the science of agriculture during Washington's time and great volumes were written about it.  In the garden next to the great house, tasteful outhouses were perched on the brick wall and fitted with hatches near the ground from which someone could retrieve the contents.

These were just delightful and made me think of how wasteful my grandfather's family was.  He used to boast about his outhouse back on the farm in Arkansas.  It was self-cleaning he always told me.  It had a similar hatch but it was the hound that cleaned up after everyone.  Pity Grandpa didn't know the Washington's.

Another big takeaway for me was how every vegetable patch was bordered with flowers.  This attracted pollinators as well as supplied fresh herbs and bouquets for the house.  Some of them were four feet deep and sported a variety of plants.  I use flowers too but usually interplant them with the vegetables.  
 I like this idea of a border and it gives me another chance to add some color.  I'm thinking a riot of salvias, lantanas and a liberal dose of wildflowers will do the trick in my yard.

I like thinking that George Washington was an active gardener.  Was he one of those landowners that did more than prowl his estate barking orders to people?  It's hard to know but I imagine that a soldier like Washington had no problem getting dirty.  What better way to retire from creating a new nation than puttering amongst the cabbages, artichokes, apricots and of course, cherries.  When you look at the letters he wrote during the time they are filled with references to plants.  I like that he, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams exchanged news on what they were growing, new crops they were trying, and other gardens they visited.  Think of it, not only were they the founding fathers but the first garden bloggers!  

Next up, my impressions from Jefferson's little mountain - Monticello.   

Primary Colors

I like my flower colors hot.  Screaming hot.  Blindingly hot.  Maybe that's why I moved to Texas.

Oh sure, I've got some nice pink roses, but for the most part I want my flowers to punch me in the face when I look at them.  No soothing pastels for me.

I tried, really I did.  I went through quite the english cottage-style gardening phase 15 years ago.  But somehow some screaming red or a gaudy orange always crept it's way back in amongst the lovely blues, pinks and lavenders.

In my newest yard I have planted color with abandon - and I blame Georgetown Texas.  One of the first places I visited after moving here was the poppy festival in Georgetown.  Lovely red poppies were sprinkled liberally between the beautiful craftsman homes.  I buy bags of poppy seed at the Wildseed Farms in Fredericksburg and plant every fall. These growing in front of the firecracker fern are particularly eye catching.

Subtlety has never been a word used to describe me. I seem to crash from one extreme to the other, never lingering in the middle for more than a nanosecond.  This trait certainly comes through in my plant selections.

Near the red poppies, sages and roses, a yellow yarrow has just started blooming.  It will go nicely with the yellow four o'clocks and lantana that will be lighting up in a few weeks.

Now that I have a garden full of bright colors, I find that I'm sneaking some blues in.  Bluebonnets, day flowers, salvias and agave complete the primary color wheel.  So let's see, that's three colors - maybe I am finding some middle ground after all!

Wordless Wednesday: Garden Bouquet

Wordless Wednesday - Blushing