Scenes From a Rainy Day

From the Front Porch

Entering the Front Garden

Through the Front Garden

Looking Back to Where We Came

Into the Back Yard

Much Color at Edge of Garden

Looking Along the North Fence

Main Path Into Back Garden

Looking Back at Conifers

Red Maples Fountain and Fern

Acros the Deck to Bench

Close up View

Naturalized Columbines

NW Back Corner of Garden

Across the South Side

Into the Garden From the South

Looking West by North

Across the Whole Back Garden

 

It’s not a great day out to be gardening, but it’s a wonderful one to be out, with a good hat and coat on, just to wander around and see what’s happening while it’s all wet and feels so fecund and fertile. I love being in the garden when it’s raining. It just feels so intensely alive and filled with water, that blood of life that gives our plants their existence, and ours as well of course. Maybe it’s because I’m a Scorpio, a Water Sign, that I feel this so much, but water has always been amazing to me and I treasure it when I hear it on the greenhouse roof or on the leaves around me as I walk thru the plants. So here’s a few pictures from a walk around on a rainy day.

I started out on the front porch and this is what it looks like when we come outside here. It’s immediate and right in your face. I love it that way. You can see over so much of it from here. Next I wandered down into the garden and through it til I came to the end and looked back for a second. Lots of color in these shots. The Ural False Spirea (Sorbaria sorbifolia “Sem”) is lovely with its light pinkish green new growth. And the Waterfall Japanese Maple is just intense with its bright green new leaves. You can just get a touch of the blue spruce in the back corner but it’s just starting to bud out now and will grow a foot and more if we’re lucky .

Next I walked back along the north side of the house and came into the back yard. You can see the north side fence line here as it goes on back to join the garden. I stopped to take a shot of the colors near the entrance. The Globe Blue Spruce and the bright green Bird’s Nest Spruces are lovely next to the dwarf Barberry in between them. The dark green of the Pendula Sequoia is a nice contrast for them all. Looking along the next shot you can see to the back corner of the garden and the Cryptomeria Radicans that is on the left which is just starting to grow, as are the other slower conifers.

The next path takes us into the garden proper and towards the deck. I stopped and shot a few pictures on the way. First I just looked back at those lovely conifers from the opposite direction from before. Then I took a shot of the 3 red Japanese Maples we have in the garden. On the left is a Bloodgood, in the center is a small Red Dragon and on the right is a larger Red Pygmy, all doing well I’m glad to say. The Bloodgood put on over a foot a half this year which amazed me no end. The fern is a Polystichum setiferum, sometimes called an Alaska fern or a Soft Shield fern.

I next looked across the deck towards the back walla and got a nice far shot of the Wards Ruby kurume azalea and the Ukigumo Japanese maple with the Podocarpus macrophyllus in the middle of them. The next shot is a closer view of them. In it you can see how light the Ukigumo maple is now. It’s not grown much for me but it keeps going on so I have faith it’ll take off someday like the Bloodgood just did after a couple 0f years of sitting there. Plants are funny that way aren’t they? Sometimes they just sit there for a long time and other times they take right off. It’s so interesting to me….

I planted some columbine here a few years ago and since then it seems they decided they liked it here a lot. This year I have yellow, blue, pink and red ones and I only planted the blue ones, I think… Maybe I did some of the yellow too, I can’t recall. I love the heck out of them and they look pretty there so I’m leaving them until I see a reason to cut them back. They’re so airy and light I just find them beautiful. I turned to the left for then next shot and got to see back into the corner of the garden to where the Anna Rose Whitney Rhodie is about to begin to bloom. Behind it the Fatsia is putting new leaves on now and you can just see their lighter color if you look hard. This is a wildish area with the redwood sorrel covering the ground in front of the plants and the the Mountain Hemlock to the left a bit. It feels very cool back here I think…

Next I wandered over to the south side of things and took a couple of shots from there to finish off things. The first is actually from the lawn to the east looking west across the yard. Then I looked back to the north and got a nice shot of the fountain with the Bloodgood and the Leucothoe at its base with the native Bleeding Heart in front of them all. I like this view a lot. Next I looked west and could see to the wall again and across the Howard McMinn manzanita, which froze badly this year so I had to cut it back a lot and leave a spare form but I love the red-brown bark so I get to see it more so now. Finally I stand at the front of the Heather garden and look all the way across the garden to the north side. You can see the Ginkgo Jade Butterflies just leafing out in the midst of the heathers and the new growth on the heathers as well.

I suppose I could have taken a few more shots of this but I was starting to get really wet so in spite of my hat and coat I decided it was time to call it a day and start to write this post. So many things are coming out to show us their beauty now it’s hard to pick a lane, so to speak, as far as which plants to feature an show you. They all excite me but then I’m a geek at this so that’s to be expected. I can’t expect everyone to share my extreme love of this artform of gardens that nurtures both our bodies and our spirits as we wander thru them in the rain. I hope you get the chance to be wandering in your special place soon too. It’s time to really get into working at it again, as soon as it quits raining… 🙂

Wet but Happy,

Steve