Garden Djinn

Here and There

Happy Spring, Everyone

I have crocus blooming outside, while fushia, cyclamen, pelargoniums and forced daffodils are blooming inside.  The rosemary has a bumper crop of flowers out on the sunporch.  The algae in the fish bowl is blooming too, but that's a different sort of bloom!

The sun is shining and the day is Michigan springtime mild (36^F, 2^C).  It's a good beginning.  Yay, spring!

March Book Review

The Garden Blogger's Book Club

The Gardener's Year, by Karel Capek

A balm and a tonic is this book. 

Capek takes the toils and the joys of the garden and holds them up woven in a fabric that reflects all life.  His love of words and language are revealed even in translation; the rhythm of the sentences and the flow of the year wind in this book like a mobius strip - spring on the underside, always emerging. 

Because of his sensuous prose and lifting optimism, I will forgive him his architype of the gardener as male. 

Highly recommended to all who read, gardeners or no.

Scottsdale, Arizona

This is the veiw from my buddy's balcony.  I think that's the McDowell range.  Or maybe it's the Camelback.  No, it's the McDowell range - Google Maps shows Fort McDonald off on the far side.  It's gorgeous, anyway. {Edit:  It's the Camelback.  My geography skills are notably bad.  Case in point.}

I don't have any such ease for the eyes in my new place, but that's what garden's are for, right?

The new place. It'll be nice to not live in a tin can for a while.

Currently I am in Arizona --

-- working on a contract job.   Boy, are they busy buildling out here.  Lots of work. 

It looks like we are going to move.  How's that for gardening contrast?  Zone five Michigan to zone eight Arizona dessert.   I'm already looking at the learning curve. 

Makes me think of those pioneers that have gone before me.  Hey Annie, how are ya doing?

So this is notice of a bit of an hiatus.  If you don't hear from me for a while, likely I'm busy packing, unpacking, and surviving the summer heat.  And come next winter growing season, I should have the bones of my next garden started.   I'm already picking up seeds and pods.  There is even a vine that looks like it might be clematis that grows down here.  I haven't got a solid ID on it, but I have hopes that it will be a future resident in my garden space. 

The current garden will be left to its own devices.  We aren't planning on trying to sell the house/wreck, not after the last attempt.  Rather we hope to pay it off and have a 'vacation' home for a while.  If/when we get enough chump change to tear it down, we will then decide whether we will build/ place another home, or sell it off as lot and garage. 

Arizona has an arresting beauty.  It's pretty odd driving around right now, because a lot of the plantings used in the residential and business areas have masses of foliage that was frost blasted in that deep freeze that blew through down here last year.  Many of the larger trees look dead, and may actually be dead.  Won't know, I suppose, until the next green season. 

The light down here is incredible.