Garden Djinn

In garden arrangement, as in all other kinds of decorative work, one has not only to acquire a knowledge of what to do, but also to gain some wisdom in perceiving what it is well to let alone.

Gertrude Jekyll   *

Sustainable Design

If we think about the tree as a design, it's something that makes oxygen, sequesters carbon, fixes nitrogen, distills water, provides a habitat for hundreds of species, accrues solar energy, makes complex sugars and food, creates micro-climates, self-replicates. So, what would it be like to design a building like a tree? What would it be like to design a city like a forest? So what would a building be like if it were photosynthetic? What if it took solar energy and converted it to productive and delightful use?

—William McDonough

The Gardening Bug...

Sung to "My Favorite Things"

Catalogs breeding and seedlings are sprouting
Weeds have arisen and beds are a-calling
Spring has erupted and bitten us all
There's so much to do here - Hope I'm done by this fall!

Veggies and flowers are begging attention
grass isn't growing - but it's worth a mention
planning and plotting a new summer scene
there's so much to do here - I'm ready to scream!

Pansies to dead head and crocus to divide
shrubs that need trimming and mulches to provide
bugs to be vanquished and compost to turn
there's so much to do here - must avoid a sun burn!

When the bugs bite
When the weeds thrive
When I'm feeling sad
I simply remember my gardening things
And then I don't feel so bad!

Filk by Tamena

Found via LJ's Gardening community

I love Paghat's quote bag:

She pulls from all sorts of places to find bits of verse and text to illustrate her posts. 

This bit of verse I especially like:

"Only on some mounded heaps
Cinquefoil creeps,
By whose line you still may pace
Out the place
Where a great house, bravely planned,
Used to stand."

-Cicely Fox Smith
(1882-1954)

She uses it for an entry on cinquefoil of course.

The Nemesis Tree

The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only a green thing that stands in the way. Some see nature all ridicule and deformity... and some scarce see nature at all. But to the eyes of the man of imagination, nature is imagination itself.

-William Blake, poet, engraver, and painter (1757-1827)

This tree stands in the back corner of my yard. I fear and loathe it.  It's a huge poplar/cottonwood, probably around 70-80' tall, at least. The top third is all dead and there is a snagged deadfall up at around 45'  that is about as big around as my leg (unfortunately, you can't really see it from this angle.)

The birds love it.  It's the highest thing around, and various and sundry feathered ones use it to check out the neighborhood, post their territory calls, or in the case of the blackbird families - just generally hang out.  The wood peckers are regular visitors, knocking their hollow 'tocks' that announce they are in for a meal.  The robins nested in the poison ivy one year.

Mark has the ivy problem under control, but the tree itself?  It's starting to drop things.

We've had a couple of those upper limbs crack free in high winds and come down. There is that snag waiting for a good wind to fall.   I wouldn't care if it were out amongst a wood lot, or somewhere isolated where those dead limbs wouldn't be a problem.  It's a good habitat tree.  We've probably got birds and bats nesting in it.  But my neighbors behind?  They have little kids.  And little kids should be able to play in their yard without fear of the sky falling. 

The tree needs to come down, and I've got enough respect for what can go wrong with this job that I don't want to touch it.    There is a reason the lumberjacks call a snag like ours a 'widowmaker.'  Plus, if the tree falls wrong, we could take out one neighbor's garage, the other neighbor's boat and shed, a play structure, and the electrical/cable nodes for this row of houses... sigh.