Browsing Archives for Grounds

A few weeks ago I noticed that some daisies were emerging on the small hillside behind our house.  I was both surprised and relieved to see them appear.  Last Fall, B.J., a fellow member of my church mentioned that he was digging up a bunch of his daisies to make room for a water feature in his back yard.  He asked me if I wanted them.  ”Hell yes!’  I said, and then I remembered I was in church and said, “I mean Heck yes… Heck!  Heck!  I meant to say Heck!”  B.J. just looked at me the same way a lot of people look at me which is sort of a sideways glance with more than a small glint of concern and fear and said he would bring the daisies over soon.

A few days later, I came home from work to find my driveway filled with daisies.  B.J. had dropped off buckets and buckets and buckets of daisies.  I took one look at all those daisies and collapsed in a broken heap of lost humanity never to rise again.  There was no way I was going to get all those daisies in the ground.

No. Way.

Never.  

NEVER!  

What’s worse is that in just a few days the entire church was scheduled to appear at our house for an annual cook-out and hayride.  I couldn’t just let those daisies die a slow death in my driveway and then toss them in the north forty.  I had to make it look like a natural death… like an act of God… like mother nature had killed all those buckets full of daisies and not me!

I told the Country Doctor about my dilema,  ”Do you have a drug or a serum?” I asked him, “Or maybe you could just back over the daisies with the tractor and I could say that you killed them and not me…. It is no big deal if you kill off a driveway full of daisies… you’re a DOCTOR… people expect you to be heartless and robotic and kill things occasionally!  It fits your character!  But I work at a Garden Center!  I am supposed to bring things to life and fill the world with flowers!”

The Country Doctor just looked at me the way a lot of people look at me which is with a great deal of despair mixed with large dollops of horror.  

It is at this point in the story that I must have suffered a long black-out that lasted approximately twelve months because when I saw those daisies emerging from the hillside behind my house, I ran and found the Country Doctor and said,”Honey!  HONEY!  HONEY!!!  Remember those daisies?  Remember!  The Daisies that B.J. brought over and that I asked you to pretend to accidentally kill?”  

I think you can imagine how he was looking at me at this point.

“Well guess what!”  I continued, ” I planted them and they are all coming up!”

At this point, the Country Doctor’s normal pitying look turned a little icy around the edges.  ”You didn’t plant those daisies,” he said, “I planted those daisies… I broke my back to plant those daisies before the church cookout last year.”

“Oh….” 

“And it was a hundred degrees outside and that dirt on that hillside was as hard as stone.”

“Oh… well I guess daisies do well without any care.” I shakily replied.

“What do you mean without any care?”  he demanded.  ”I planted them, I watered them, I treated them better than I treat my trees!”

“Oh….  I just didn’t remember that… probably because of uh… the heat… and uh… the blackout…” I shakily replied

“What blackout?”

“You know… the blackout.  The blackout!  THE BLACK OUT!!!  

“What are you talking about?” he asked.

The blackouts I have when I feel all weak and shaky and then people dump a boat load of daisies in the driveway!” 

“Oh yeah… those black outs.”

“Oh… don’t those blackouts me!” I hissed.  ”You know very well that I am practically at death’s door at all times and I only struggle on for the sake of you and your children.

“Right.” he replied.

“No one on the face of the earth is more heroic than I am.” I announced.

“I’ll remember that.” he sighed.

“Good!” I exclaimed, “And I’ll try to remember that it was you who planted all those daisies!”

“Okay…”

“And… your daisies… they look nice.”

“Thanks.”

Special note to self…

Please try and remember that someone at work gave the Country Doctor some Canna bulbs and HE planted them… not YOU… HE!!!

I really wanted to plant a pumpkin patch this year.  I have long had a secret fantasy of owning a pumpkin farm, except that in my fantasy, there is no work involved.  In my fantasy, I inherit a pumpkin farm that is planted and ready to harvest.  Someone has already built a very cute farm stand with gingham covered tables and the sweetest wooden bins filled with an abundance of gourds and pumpkins in every shape, color and size.  A friendly neighbor volunteers to operate a horse drawn hay wagon that transports happy families back and forth to the pumpkin fields.  My children work without ceasing and never complaining to make hand pressed cider, pumpkin tarts, and adorable gourd birdhouses.  I myself, operate the cash register with frequent long breaks to sample the fresh baked goodies, wander aimlessly around the corn maze and sit on a sunny hay-bale to read a book.  We make loads of cash and after a few years, we retire in the Italian Riviera where I instantly write a best selling, suspense filled, action packed, heart breaking memoir entitled The Pumpkin Queen.  

Hey!  It’s my fantasy!  I can do whatever I want!

But I did not plant any pumpkins this year.

They planted themselves.

In my compost pile.

I think God is trying to tell me something don’t you?

I think I am supposed to move to the Italian Riviera.

The Harvest Moon Cone-flower is absolutely my favorite perennial.  

Yup.

That’s the one.

No doubt about it.

Now what should we talk about?

Did I say the Harvest Moon Cone-flower?  

What I meant to say was the Purple Cone-flower.  

The same one that Hal used to make his tincture.

Oh!

Wait! 

It’s Russian sage!  

It’s Russian Sage!  

Gosh I’m spacey today!

Russian Sage is my absolute favorite perennial.

Except for the Purple Cone-flower.

Did I say this one before?

What I meant to say was Purple Gay Feather.

Clearly…

Because of the name and also…

The way it seems to glow when the sun catches the spiky leaves.  

Can you see the glow?

Can you see it?

You are just going to have to trust me… 

It glows.

And it’s my favorite…

Except!

How can lavender not be my favorite?!?

I love lavender!

With all my heart!

But what about the humble Valerian?

Such a sweet flower.

And if you know what you are doing, you can turn this plant into a sleep aid.

Maybe I can get Hal to teach me how sometime…

Be still my heart.

I do love Bee Balm.  

I do.

It might really be my very favorite of all the perennials.

That funky bright red bloom just really gets to me.

Did I mention the Purple Cone-flower yet?   

It is certainly winning the ‘most photogenic’ award today.

I love coneflowers.

And they really are my favorite.

They are all my favorites.

Perrenials take time… they take patience… they tend to come on slowly… but once they are established, they thrive under benign neglect.

Maybe that’s why perennials are my favorite of all the plants…

I raise them the same way I raise my kids.

Our town is nestled in at the northern edge of the Flint Hills, one of the last places on earth where Native Tallgrass can still be found covering the prairie in huge quantities.  There are several Tallgrass preserves in our area, and the Country Doctor and I love to take the kids to the Konza outside of Manhattan and the National Tallgrass Preserve near Cottonwood Falls for hikes.  We both love the wide open, wind swept, ocean of grass that is the Flint Hills.   (For great pictures, click the Flint Hills link.)

We have long wanted plant our own little patch of tallgrass on the further reaches of our yard.  

This Spring, we finally got the seed in the ground.  

Besides finding the time, our only other obstacle was deciding how to best plant the seed.

 The task was somewhat daunting as everyone we talked to gave us a different set of complicated directions.  

“You are going to have to kill all the existing grass with Round-up, before you plant anything…”

“You gotta get yourself a disk, plow up the ground, and then you can plant the seed…”

“First you need to plant a cover crop of milo…. then plow it in and the next year you can plant tall grass…”

“Get a boom truck… spray all the existing grass with Round-Up… plant clover…. wait six years and then spray Round-Up again.”

The suggestions and recommendations went on and on and on.  The Country Doctor almost gave up on the idea as he just doesn’t have time to follow all those steps and he didn’t know which way was the right way to go.   I absolutely insisted that we would not be spraying mass quantities on Round-Up on our land.  We have fish in the pond and plants that I don’t want to die and a neighborhood full of kids… I just don’t like putting poison on the ground for any reason.

Finally, I said, “Honey?… when God planted the tall grass prairie did He use Round-Up?  Did He plant a cover crop of milo first?  Did God get a boom truck?  Good Grief!  Sometimes we just need to have a little faith in the laws of nature!  You put a seed in the ground, cover it with dirt, pray for rain, and usually something will come up.”

And that’s how I ended up sitting on the tractor.

Which the Country Doctor has to start for me because you can’t just turn the key… oh no… you have to pull this knob, flip this switch, push this button, turn around and bow to the East, pump the throttle, jimmy the clutch, jiggle the handle, yank the hydraulic, and then you turn the key…at which point nothing happens… so you start all over … except this time you bow to the West as you aren’t quite sure which benevolent force you have to please before the tractor will start… go through the whole process again… and finally you realize that you are in park… or have the mower engaged… or are out of gas…

It takes about three hours to start the tractor.

And another three hours to get the planter that you borrowed from the USDA to work.

But we did finally get that seed in the ground. My best guess is that some of it will wither in the ground… and some of it will get choked out by the brome and the weeds… but some of it is going to sprout and grow, and thrive.  Just like in the Bible… except back then…

…they got the boom truck first.

This story begins with a nice pile of bricks. A pile of bricks that our family salvaged from an old sidewalk in town which ran in front of my friend Kara’s house. Kara was having a new sidewalk put in and called to let me know that we could take the old bricks out of her sidewalk before the concrete truck arrived –  if we still wanted them.  We did want them and spent the next two weekends digging the bricks out of her old sidewalk, loading them into the back of the pick-up, driving them out to our building site, and unloading them.  

WITH OUR OWN HANDS!!! 

And this makes us much better than most people on earth. Because WE ARE SALVAGERS…and EVERYONE in AMERICA knows that re-using old building materials is what makes you closest to God these days. 

This is what our sidewalk looked like back when I was having a delirious visit from Beverley Nichols, my favorite garden author.

Over the course of the summer, the only thing that changed in this path was that the weeds got taller and taller and taller.  I am very glad Beverley was not around to see that happen.  

One of the reasons for the delay, was that we needed to pick a pattern in which to lay the bricks.  While on the UC Berkeley campus – we found our inspiration.

In the shadow of a tall clock tower were bricks in a herringbone pattern.   We thought if it was good enough for Berkeley, it was good enough for us.

Back home, the Country Doctor, tilled up the dirt in the sidewalk.

Mixed in some cement.

And then we had to move the pile of bricks from behind the house to beside the pathway.   

I did not help with this step as I had seen a black snake crawl out of this pile of bricks earlier that summer and had no interest whatsoever in seeing him again.

I was further vindicated when the Country Doctor found a snake skin.

The bricks were unloaded in various piles around the pathway.  You can see here the sand and the screed that the Country Doctor built to smooth out the surface evenly before setting the bricks in place.

Here’s the screed again… 

At least I think it is called a screed.

And here is a live snake they found in the brick pile.  

The Country Doctor lined both edges of the pathway with bricks placed end to end, and then he started working on the herringbone pattern.

It was about here that we realized how many bricks we were going to have to cut to make this pattern work.  

And right about here, we realized that we would be cutting bricks to fill in the holes in this pathway for the rest of our lives.

And when I say “we would be cutting bricks” ….

I actually mean “the Country Doctor” would be cutting bricks.

Because my hands started to sweat buckets every time I watched my husband slice one of those bricks in half.  I eventually had to retreat to the porch and sit there helplessly, fanning myself with a wide brimmed straw hat, saying things like “I do declare!” and “Glory be!”  and “Heavens to Betsy!”

Besides, why exactly did I have all these boys, if not to help their father build a brick pathway?

Here is Drew marking chalk lines on the bricks to show their dad where to make a cut.

The thousands and thousands…..

And millions and trillions of precise brick cuts…

Eventually, the Country Doctor wore out the blade on the big saw and for the last twenty odd cuts he used a hand saw.

This is the last brick!

This is the last cut!

But it isn’t over yet.  

I was able to help the Country Doctor spread a fine layer of sand over the sidewalk as there were no snakes and no saw involved.  But I did have to take frequent breaks to drink my coffee, admire my roses, practice some modern dance steps on the sweeping front lawn and oh yeah… take some pictures…. 

HEY!  SOMEONE HAS TO TAKE THE PICTURES!

The final step involves sweeping the sand into all the cracks and crevices in between the bricks…

And using one of these thingys to… to… Heck I have no idea what that machine does.

Jack gave the new/old sidewalk a test drive.

Here is the Country Doctor standing on his new brick pathway.

Nice job Honey!

Now honey… we have to get that other sidewalk done.

Honey?

Dear?

Honey?

Is there a way to make a post on grass interesting? Because that is how I have been occupying myself these last few weeks. Growing grass. An acre of it. All around the house and the barn. And I’ll be darned if it ain’t coming up! All over the place! I feel like a freakin’ farmer!

I can’t take credit for all of it. The Country Doctor planted it and spread the fertilizer. He also did all the worrying. He knew that watering was going to be my job… and well, I don’t think he had much faith in me. But if there is one thing I can do, it is move hoses.

Some kids grow up raising pigs and cows, some kids grow up memorizing bus and subway routes, and some kids move hoses. I moved hoses… trying to keep trees and grass alive on the barren windswept high plains.

You may wonder why we did not install an underground sprinkler system. Uh yeah…uh …er…um…that would be because the because the budget for this house is busted. Wayyyyy busted. Busted on things like um electric wiring and um stone, and uh treads and risers for the uh staircase not to mention a last minute loft.

Besides, what else have I got to do? Moving the hoses has given my life meaning and purpose. Since my youngest has gone off and betrayed his mother by going to kindergarten, at least I have something to do to keep my mind off how much I miss him. And look – we have grass – everywhere! And it keeps coming up – more and more everyday!

All my shoes are muddy from moving sprinklers and hoses around on muddy ground. I had to run an errand a few days ago and could not find a single pair of shoes that were not caked with hardened clay. I saw my twelve year old son’s tennis shoes and slipped them on. They fit perfectly. Great! My baby is in kindergarten and my oldest son is so big now that we wear the same size of shoes! What is going to happen next? Are the two middle boys going to run off and join the merchant marines?

I bought the last two tractor sprinklers on the shelves at our local hardware store. One is a John Deere and One is an Ace True Value. The John Deere was ten bucks more than the Ace. Can you guess which one works about a jillion times better?

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