Thursday, October 10, 2013

Rosie's October Garden.


 My new Gardening Friend, Titania,
invited me on a trip to the Elizabethan Gardens
last Saturday for a plant sale.

After perusing the "For Sale" items
and buying a bunch of stuff
and executing a bit of trimming and pruning
on certain variegated coleuses, 
which we deemed a bit too gangly for our tastes,
we left the Gardens,
and I directed Titania to another area of Manteo.

There was a garden I wanted her to see.
Mr. Hawthorne and I had found this glorious garden
last Friday when we went to the Dare County Health Department
to get our annual blood tests 
so we can get pills to prolong our lives.
Routine blood work is much cheaper at the Health Department
than anywhere else on the Outer Banks.

Anyhoos, there is a Remarkable Garden on Roanoke Island
that Mr. Hawthorne and I happened upon.

 There are topiaries inside a well-tended scalloping hedge
which runs wavelike along the frontage.

 There's a desert cactus area.

MORE TOPIARY!

 Huge agave plants.

 Beautiful driftwood.
All sorts of little garden areas that I wanted to explore.
This place is amazing.

I wish someone had been outside
so Titania and I could've stopped and chatted with them
and perhaps gotten a guided tour through the Garden.

And that happens to be how Titania and I met.
A few years back when all the Little Hawthornelets
and their respective critters were living at home,
I would take an early morning daily walk/jog/run
through the neighborhood with Giada and Junior on leashes
and Dixie on hand-command.
Dixie was quite the disciplinarian with those two.
If Giada and Junior started misbehaving,
Dixie would get right on top of them, barking,
until they broke up what they were doing.
 Ahhh.  Good times.

But I digest...
Where was I?
Oh yes.
How Titania and I met.

There was a Garden on our route
that I would always stop and admire from roadside.
The Garden invited you in
with beckoning paths leading to ???

One morning, luck was with me.
Titania was working in her Garden.
She is quite an Artist and I am fortunate
to have made her acquaintance.
As a Gardener, she is more than happy
to share her plants with others,
meaning ME!

It's all kismet.

EDITED TO ADD:
Don't you love it when KARMA kicks in?
I just got an email from Titania
and in going about her business,
she actually MET the owner of the Amazing Garden.
She's trying to wrangle us an invite!
Stay tuned!

 Back home to my water barrel
 with a grasshopper.

He's going to let me get a bit closer.


 Water hyacinth.

 Brutus, my bull frog.

 My succulent chair.

 Beautiful Beautyberry Bush.
Callicarpa americana.



 Now, do you want to hear a funny story?
About a month ago, we heard a noise coming from some kind of junction box in the front corner of our yard. Called NC Dominion Power. They were here in about 45 minutes and went through my yard and neighbors' yards and found a "problem" three houses over. They put temporary cables with a protective cover over top going across two neighbors' lawns and driveways to the third house. They left and we haven't seen them since.
Last night, a crew showed up, outsourced by DomPow. After 5. Two guys, big truck,  ditch witch. They start digging in the bed I keep up at the front between my neighbor and her mailbox and my fence and me.

Good Neighbor Bobby calls me. His Century Link phone/internet is out. He's the only one here with Century Link. So's I go out to chitchat and document and find out that the one Century Link line had been accidentally cut by these guys. Century Link is on the way out. But the CL guy only stands there and yaks it up with the other two guys who are actually working, sorta. They're all happy because they're getting time and a half.

This problem started a MONTH ago. 

And they wait until now for time and a half?


I had a nicely planted and mulched area here.
Now I have a three-foot deep trench.









And they left it like this.

If you notice closely where the neighbor's
 driveway turns to gravel,
there's still the orange plastic cover over the wire
which runs from the junction box on my property,
to three houses over.
So now I wait to see whomever is outsourced
come by and run that cable underground.
Should be fun.

Rosie is easily amused.