5:04 pm – News and name to follow!
His name is Fletcher Calhoun Emmott; he’s 8.5 lb, 21 inches with sandy brown hair and blue eyes.
Archive for May, 2005
Humid and buggy!
Even though it was not a hot weekend it was very humid and buggy. Thank goodness for “cutter”. I think a storm was trying to come our way and we do need the rain but it didn’t seem to get here. We planted things we purchased on a trip this week to Lancaster with Jane and Drew.
Tomatoes, and Basel, peppers – hot and banana, Yarrow, Pennyroyal and some Sage for me.
My Broom plants are blooming as are the flax plants I planted last week.
Working
This weekend we did weed—and weed and weed! We also drove to Primex and bought salt hay. I like salt hay in my herb garden—it looks more casual. We do need to mulch as it:
1. helps keep the weeds down and,
2. holds the moisture during our hot dry summers.
We use regular mulch in the rest of the yard but I like the salt hay here.
I bought two flax plants. The blue flowers are so wonderful and having a garden with dye plants and other textile plants I need flax. I had some before but they died out. One year I bought some and another I planted from seed. (The bought ones were wonderful but the seed ones were wimpy.)
Bob also bought a Spanish Jasmine and an metal obelisk for it to grow on. We plan to put it in a planter so we can take it inside in the winter.
Jasmine reminds us of the Hotel San Giorgio in Lenno on Lake Como in Italy. Sitting in their garden; being served white wine, prosciutto with melon; looking across the lake; smelling the jasmine growing up the walls… we’re asking a lot from this little plant and its new obelisk!
Weeds
Today is cold and windy. It is almost a month since I took the image in the heading of the Bloodroot blossom. The Blossoms are gone and the leaves are large and wonderful. The same with my Wild Ginger. Unfortunately the weeds are growing also – perhaps I’ll get a chance this weekend.
Like a Dance
Being new to this blogging thing I wondered how these pages could be archived. Not just the archiving within the site but for all time or as long as technology would allow.
As I thought about this I thought of a friend and client who is a dancer/choreographer, Jeanne Ruddy. She is currently creating her latest dance, Breathless. Hours and hours, days and days, weeks and weeks – even months and months go into the creation and practice of a new dance – by many, many people. And the result is over in a short period of time. It may be repeated and it may be recorded. But the actual act of the dance it’s self is a moment in time.
It seems to me that a web experience is like that. One may plan what they wish to say or it may be off the top of their head but the experience and interaction with others is in the moment – fleeting and not meant to be captured.
spring 2005
My back garden is to be the main subject of this journal. It is mostly a sample dye plant garden with a few herbs, some lettuce and tomatoes, a small deck area for our two blue chairs and a bird bath. The deck area is about 8′ X 8′ and can be moved each year to rotate our “crops”. I figured if we came home from work tired at the end of a long day, took a drink into the garden with our chairs and saw weeds we might pull some. It works—sort of!
This spring I have moved the Bedstraw to the other side of my bird bath to give my Madder plants more space. Both plants give a red dye. According to my books Madder likes compost, manure, lime and potash. It likes to be 18-20 inches apart well weeded and mulched.
I also weeded around my Wild Ginger and Bloodroot. The Bloodroot was just flowering and the flowers were opening as the day went along. I kept stopping to sketch and photograph them—one of the images appears at the top of this site. (I bought the Bloodroot and Madder several years ago from Well Sweep Herb Farm.)