Balls!

Do not dwell on this picture, just glance by it. Imagine wandering down a little side street and coming upon this pocket garden glittering its fool head off in the sunshine, thanks to strewn Christmas balls in what-have-you colors that might have dropped from the sky in a recent rain, all higgledy piggledy plop.

It's just happy. And, we might add, cheap.

Consider a little later on in the summer when whatever you've bought and planted, that thing that was certain to bloom, instead fizzled in the heat while you were off sailing with Cucumber and Desmond and you can't plant a damn thing because of the heat wave (nevermind that there's scarcely anything left at the garden center). That's when you crawl up into the attic and dig around for the box helpfully marked Xmas Balls and dig about for the glitteriest specimans and cart them off to fill that bare patch.

Happy. Cheap. Done. Drink time!  

In an Apple Blossom Daze

The morning that Monica was born--just about 26 years ago--the pink magnolias were running riot in the Pennsylvania Avenue median strip. It was a most glorious day.

Not many years later the magnolias were fallen, axed down in full bloom, and the community ran riot in protest as I watched from my second floor office window. It was as if every first born child was slain, the wailing, the rending of garments...

As usual this was from lack of attention. Almost every magnolia was ailing and the few that were well enough were being removed to the arboretum. This everyone would have known, should have known, had they just read...

What I wrote.

But nah. As Usual.

So I skipped me downstairs and gathered arms-full of flowers, velvety deep pink fading to near white. And stuffed every possible container and sat drunk with their final flowering. 

Ugly Garden # 1: An Occasional Special Feature

I've selected this as my first ugly garden for no reason other than I was standing on the corner of 10th and Pennsylvania Avenue, SE this morning, waiting for Maggie to grab her camera so we could go look at the virtual apple blossom festival that was happening in the middle of the street.

And as I was standing there I realized that my eyeballs were being assulted with a dirt patch that obviously, at some point, had been attended to and at some point later was not.

Notice the sad red tulip standing singularly in the far left corner. Follow the flagstone walk to where the daffodils, their foliage mingling with some valiant weeds,  have given up blooming. If you've ever raised daffodils you know that's nearly as impossible as eradicating dandilions (though why you'd want to eradicate the latter, I don't know. Cheery harbingers of Spring I say! And then they turn to that fuzzy fairy fluff that you make a wish and blow on. Wow. I suddenly realize, even dandilions don't want to live here).

And that white box thing hovering in the foreground sure is...white. Well dirty white. Such a tastefully subdued shade of white. Yes?

Meanwhile, the black rope coiling snakelike around the border appears to be a vestigial watering system. At least I hope it is. Turn it on and you'd be happy as a pig in shiiiiiiiiiiiiii.

There are lights installed should you wish to have a clear view at night.

Southern Comfort

If you squint you'll see the date on the cover of this issue of Southern Accents Magazine: July-August 1997. You'll also notice (if you squint even harder) the thumb tack holes and blackening in the margins where it has been alternately pinned and taped to walls and cork boards for nearly 13 years.

Throughout the day, the sight of it in the corner of my eye tantalizes. What's out there, I wonder, beyond the arches where the sun light  is so brilliant? It's a garden I think, deeply green, with a circular pool and a fountain. I can hear the gentle splashing from where I'm flopped on the settee, feet up on the flowered hassock with its deep turquoise fringe, eyelids drooping over a book--the only jarring note. It's probably something involving serial killers or clowns in sewers.

We don't want to get too sappy now, do we? An acid splash is always nice; it's like a touch of anchovy in the mozzarella en carozza.

Alpha and Omega Pay a Visit

The Plant Room/Conservatory/Greenhouse/WhatHaveYou....has a new name this week, The Aviary. Alpha and Omega, a pair of parakeets have spent Spring break here -- as their family has winged south to frolic with the manatees and such. The near ceaseless chatter is a welcome distraction from whatever else I'm supposed to be doing at my desk -- If they weren't so damn filthy, I'd get me my own pair.