The Garden — Page 4

Cottage perennial garden – 35 plants for $16.95

It would seem that I am meant to garden. Yesterday another Garden Angel appeared. It was actually a gift from one of my oldest and dearest friends. In a beautiful card covered with sunflowers she enclosed a check for $64 saying that it was an early birthday present “for my garden fund.” I will be 64 on April 30. I was so delighted I was beside myself and I spent last night and this morning over coffee trying to decide how best to make use of the money. I wanted to share it with you all because I love to share garden resources and because in an amazing turn of events I will now be able to plant my entire pot garden on my deck with plants and bulbs so I will have lots of flowers much sooner than having had to grow everything from seed. The seeds I purchased will go in the raised garden beds and random pots to fill in. The order I placed, for quite a lot of plants and bulbs, came to $55 which leaves me almost $10 to buy soil. This order was placed at Bulbs Direct which has wholesale prices, free shipping, and a 100% money back guarantee. Amazing! I will show you what I got with links to the items so you can see all of the details and the wonderful things they have there. (All of the plants included in the above Cottage Garden are listed on that page under “Contents.”)

In addition to the Cottage Perennial Garden I ordered…

The Serenity Garden, 100 Bulbs, for $8.95

Gladiolus ‘Mon Amour’, 10 Bulbs, Buy 2, Get 1 Free=30 bulbs for $10.98

Anemone Coronaria De Caen mix — 20 bulbs, Buy 2 get 1 free=60 bulbs for $9.90

Dicentra Spectabilis “Bleeding Heart” red — Buy one get one 1/2 off= $8.92

GRAND TOTAL: $55.70

… which, as I said, leaves enough for a bag or 2 of potting soil! Birthday money well spent! This is positively thrilling and I am so appreciative. There is nothing anyone could give me for my birthday that would make me happier than money for my garden fund. The transformation here, after 4 years of not gardening, is going to be startling! With each step forward I am filled with so much hope and joy I cannot rightly express what is happening to me, but it is positively grand.

This morning I went around to every bookshelf — there are bookshelves in every room in the house filled with books, even though many are blackened from the fire — and pulled off a number of favorite garden books with which to plan and dream and draw. They were going to destroy them but I said I wanted them back, blackened covers and all! In this way I got quite a number of my garden books back. I smiled as I opened dear Elizabeth Lawrence’s book Through The Garden Gate which is a collection of her writings from The Charlotte Observer from 1957 to 1971. My copy is dog-earred and marked up and deeply treasured. As I opened to the first page I smiled because there was one of my favorite garden quotes. I share it with you here in closing…

“This is the gate of my garden. I invite you to enter in: not only into my garden but into the world of gardens — a world as old as the history of man, and as new as the latest contribution of science, a world of mystery, adventure and romance; a world of poetry and philosophy; a world of beauty; and a world of work.

Never let yourself be deceived about the work…”

I am not, for a moment, deceived about the work. There will be a lot of work to be done here and I need to do it. It is going to bring me back to life. I am on the threshold of a whole new life and it begins in the garden, in my sketchbook (I plan, sometime in the next few months, to boldly step out and begin to sell paintings right out of my sketchbook. The art will support the garden!), and right here on the blog. There’s a book in here somewhere, coming out of all of this, but that’s not even something I’m thinking about now and probably won’t until I’ve finished this blog experiment. For now, I am just creating, inside and out. What happens will be a happy surprise.

Stay tuned, I will be sharing lots of resources. If you’ve never gardened, maybe you can begin, even in a pot or two. If you are a regular gardener you might enjoy some of the books and resources I will be sharing and I’d love for you to write to me in the comments and share yours with me. And if any of you have big bountiful gardens and need to divide or pare down your plants and would like to share some with me for the rebuilding of the garden here I would be just delighted. One day in the future when my own garden matures a bit I will be delighted to share too!