In the Garden

This summer, I've been working my brains out... OK, my hands and hip off, trying to get the garden in great shape. First, I had to bring it back after going to Connecticut because the weeds had taken a strong hold.

Then, after telling me she wasn't going to have her senior pictures taken in the garden, my daughter decided she would after all. Put the weed pullers in overdrive mom...


Part of the challenge was that August in a south west Ohio garden during a hot summer with 2" less rain than normal, does not for a great garden vista make. My garden looks great in spring, June and early July. By August, the annuals are often petering out but the mums, grasses, asters and dahlias (largely because I got a late start) haven't kicked in.

In addition, I don't do well in the blazing sun and heat, so I have about 4 hours I can do in the morning, provided I feel good enough and am not distracted by other things, and 2 - 4 hours in the evening as long as I can get dinner around and am not distracted again.

I'm not sure I am completely happy with the goldfish pond. When I initially built it 5 years ago, I didn't know where to get stone. So, I used the concrete retaining wall blocks. I don't much like the looks of them and since I can't cut them, I don't have the close fitting stones at the top, and even if I got coping pieces, I still need to cut them.

Now I know where to get stone. And, I got a bunch of cut limestone from a Freecycle exchange. So, I've redone most of the waterfall and the area around the settling pond. I still need to do more on the waterfall, but the raised edge still gives me problems. I supposed I could reshape the pond so that it is rectangular...but I prefer rounded shapes because I'm just not that formal of a person and I'm trying to off-set the boxy-ness of the house.

After all that...the great photo shoot was yesterday. I was out early in the morning deadheading and making sure everything was good.

When Ty Fischer of FischInk arrived at 9 a.m., he commented "looks like you're ready for gardening." Do you suppose the dirt spattered Komen t-shirt and shorts with dirty tennis shoes gave him a hint? Or maybe it was my hair which was all skeejawed because I washed it and went to bed with it wet the night before?

Here's Ty showing my daughter one of the shots on his camera.

We went to Bruckner nature center and took a lot of shots....and after all the work which I had done in my garden....only one "set up" was done here. Harumph.

I guess the only answer is to have a party to make sure that all the hard work pays off. Of course, in the spring is graduation and what I can do now will make it all the easier in spring because....she wants a pool party for her graduation party.

Hopefully, when Ty does his shot of this, she won't have a shoot growing up out of the middle of her head.