Friday, September 25, 2009

Accepting Help in the Garden




Remember this wish list?

After years of doing battle with our ornery landscape, I finally, finally, finally asked for some help. I took a break from hours with the mattock to get a hand from someone twice my size - to plant some shrubs and create flower beds. I always felt as if I needed to do everything myself, but my back has started to rebel. Turns out, being stubborn is rarely a good thing.

So now, two years after the original wish list, there are four shrubs in our ever-evolving front yard garden room - two glossy abelia, one 'Endless Wonder' hydrangea and a Virginia sweetspire. I'm still lobbying for that Fringe Tree and am on the hunt for native azaleas.

Having these garden bones in place and new beds at-the-ready has me poised for final September plantings. More daylilies, maybe some funky echinacea varieties in yellows and greenish pinks. And whatever impulse buys I make at fall nursery sales over the next week or so.

The blue bench even hit its stride among some Japanese maples that are rusty red and pale green and played host to a few container begonias, impatiens and nicotianas. That color I was waffling over worked out beautifully. Who knew? Some call things like that 'happy mistakes'. I'd say it is more like 'clueless floundering'. But it turns out that's my gardening process and I'll take it.

5 comments:

Adrienne said...

I am in some kind of love with that bench - color and all.

Beautiful.

House things I like said...

Love that blue bench. What's its history?

lotta said...

does that someone twice your size have a name? and is he/she looking for more work? I love the bench too...

Colleen Wms said...

That blue is fantastic. It reminds me of my blue bird bath and of course, the blue pool water.

Tracey said...

Ah, the blue bench's history. It was an old cedar bench that I painted 'lupine' (I'm pretty sure that was the name of the paint color).

It is so nice to hear that each of you love the blue bench!

Lotta - I will email you thoughts on the garden guy!