Bob visited with Joe at work and photographed along the coast while Margie and I headed north to meet Sally and Pam at the Maine Botanical Gardens for this years Garden Hoax. Words don’t do justice. It was misty (as all our garden events seem to be) giving the garden an ethereal feeling. We’ve been to lots of terrific gardens but this was different. It was a Maine Botanical garden. Where elsewhere beautiful flowers are planted to create vistas and swathes of color and texture, here the texture is of Maine. It is a garden in a forest.

Pam and I are in the rain in this pic Margie took
and House in the children’s garden with a cat fence!

Back to Margie and Joe’s for a bowl of home made chowder (what else) and the next day Bob and I headed north to Waldoboro where we stayed at the Blue Skye Inn, visited Pam and David, and ate Ginger Ice Cream in Thomaston (my mother has always raved of the Ginger Ice cream she ate in Thomaston, ME as a child in the 1920′s).

Alpaca

Bought alpaca from an Alpaca farm to card with some wool I have for spinning—this winter’s stress reducing project! and then home driving in one of this summer’s wild rain extravaganzas.

Short and sweet and lots of fun!

Come on Spring!!!

But I’m inside, all cozy.

The birds love the bird feeders and the squirrels are crazy trying to get to them, so I give them bread crusts and they are fat and happy.

I didn’t know Fig trees would grow in Philadelphia!.

Born in 1699, John Bartram became America’s first great botanist and with his son William identified and cultivated over 200 new plant species. In 1765 King George III appointed John as Royal Botanist, a position he held until his death in 1777.

July 2010 storm damage of Historic 1790′s Yellowwood Tree.

Research has shown that this tree planted by John Bartram, has been damaged in previous storms and hopefully will recover.

Many plants are direct descendents of ones he cultivated, including one of his most well known, the Franklinia, (Franklinia alatamaha), he named it after his friend, Benjamin Franklin.

We’re driving down the Delmarva peninsula and it is still cold, but I hear it’s already over 50 degrees in Virginia Beach. So that’s good! Here the ponds are frozen and the fields which will soon have green things growing are all brown and stubbly but the sky is full of birds in “V” formation—I wish flying to Canada but that won’t be until around March. Yeah, I know, in Philadelphia, I still have to deal with Feb. and March but the days ARE getting longer and stuff is starting to grow. Really!

Get’s me making plans for my garden— the catalogs have been coming for almost a month now and we have been having snows that melt slowly watering the ground so I hope there will not be any dry spells this summer to turn my world into a dust bowl.

My back yard has a place that needs seeding but other than that it’s pretty ok—just maintenance and veggies. But the front – under the living room window, is a shady place that is just a mess of pacasandra and a stunted azalea bush that need work. There’s a project to think about.

Or perhaps along the side walk—we could revisit that as well. I like to plant seasonal things along my way from the house to the car. Then, if I’m busy at work and don’t have time to wander my garden, I don’t miss the changes.

My street used to belong to a house on Germantown Ave. which was built in the 1600′s. Properties facing the avenue were long and narrow. Narrow on the street side but long enough to accommodate gardens, orchards and stables. During the Battle of Germantown, revolutionary soldiers had to hop fences as they chased each other through these narrow yards.

Land was subdivided after the Civil War and it is now a neighborhood of Victorian homes where stables or carriage houses have been turned into coveted homes. There has not been any livestock kept here for many years, (although Luke does keep chickens, but that’s another story). So a misplaced deer is a big deal.