My husband and I love our flower garden especially this year when Don is not feeling like fishing. Hopefully he will recover in time to go for limited fishing the middle of August. He is getting his gall bladder out this Friday. He will be restricted to lifting no more than 10 pounds for 6 weeks. The surgeon says he can go fishing but I have to reel the fish into the boat and carry it. Not my thing. Rather be painting. Luckily, Don has a good many fishing partners and his 18 year old grandson to accompany him.
Gardening is more fun when we do it together usually. When one of us is first to see another flower opening it is special news between us. I love how the flowers have evolved the past 34 years that we lived here. Mostly they are volunteers surprising me where they pop up like the sunflowers, California poppies, glads, lobeilia and many more. If the previous owner visited, they would see many of the same plants they had. The dahlias and lilies we collected over the years. We are making plans for adding chrysanthemums this Fall. And wondering how to make it better for hotter drier conditions in the future.
My vision of an inspiring garden is a jungle like in Henri Rousseau's 1910 painting, " The Dream". Don is not comfortable with any weeds. Even plants that have some weed-like character like California poppy and cosmos after their prime. Lilies still look great after they are done. He prefers seeing dirt paths between the plants where he can rototill. The robins and blue birds like his dirt.
Don likes clean color areas with strict borders without any plants falling over the border. His aesthetic is more like a Mondrian.
Is it possible to bring these two aesthetics together?
My good man allows me to be the boss of most of the decision making. He pulls out the rototiller and I run to guide his way. At the end of the day the resulting arrangement flowers in front of our house is the best we have ever had.
 |
| Last year with a carpet of weeds. |
My husband's clean vision for our front yard that is completely clean of weeds still has enough variety of forms and color to be a catalysis for paintings I hope to paint next week. My hope is making a painting like Rouseau's "The Dream".
4 comments:
I lean toward Don's neat and orderly aesthetic in a garden. More French and less English, though there is a place for both in this big world.
Lovely flowers and gardening. So hot here, everything is going dormant until better weather.
Paul and Tabor,
Neat and orderly is winning in our forecast of hot summers in the future planting dry land plants.
Beautiful gardens and nice that you and he can compromise to get a joint vision.
Post a Comment