Back Up Plan for the Back Up Plan

I am thinking about my next weeks to come and all that needs doing. Between the weekend trips we have had and the ones that are coming our weekends at home won’t be very romantic. We will have to get down and dirty to get it all done so we can be ready for the fall season. Last weekend we hauled to Nashville to spend the weekend with some our closest friends. Mia and Cody drove over from South Carolina to be with all of us. We had a blast spending time with everyone and the trip was very educational. Adam and Christina's yard was like stepping into a seed catalogue. They do their own seeding which greatly widens the range of cut flowers and vegetables that one can use. Most nurseries are a bit limited in those categories. For instance we saw 5 colors of Gomphrena blooming their heads off. They had different varieties of Castor beans growing 10- 12 feet tall with their gorgeous maroon foliage. Some sunflowers still in bloom and some “let go” for the birds. They are very purposeful with their planting layout and very conscientious about using pollinators and plants that attract and allow as much biodiversity as I’ve seen.

They plant and use herbs for teas and tinctures for their three wonderful boys who are home learning about all this as if its reading, writing and arithmetic. That kind of education comes along with some nicks and cuts and bites. They know which tincture to get or ask for to reduce swelling or pain. Watching them being so comfortable in their knowledge of plant based medicines, listening to them picking their proteins for every meal is not the norm coming from kids aging from 5 to 11 years old. They were each involved with playing a musical instrument and each had other physical activities that they are involved in. It will be so interesting to see where all this leads, I feel very sure that each one will be outstanding in whatever direction they head.

Adam has developed a grape orchard like I’ve never seen. The orchard is perfectly lined out for what looks like a cool future. The orchard is young and already he is selling gallons of grapes to a wonderful winery up his way. We helped them plant Broccoli, Cauliflower and cabbage in their giant garden. We ate their home produced veggies all weekend, we went away feeling healthy and inspired. This weekend we will spend most of our time in our own garden cutting back our Limelight Hydrangeas . These Hydrangeas are known as Paniculata. Some hydrangeas like Oakleaf and some of the big leaf varieties have different pruning times so be sure to check on the best pruning dates for whichever Hydrangeas you might have. With the Paniculata types I like to cut off the brown blooms now just because we have so many in our yard the brown is showing up just as much as their green/white blooms did for the last few months. I don’t like the brown, it keeps catching my eye as I walk past them. We will do a heavier pruning during the late winter- early spring months to promote new growth which is where the blooms come from. We have shrub form hydrangeas that are 8 - 10 feet tall and 10 feet wide. We also have 30 tree form Limelight’s that are more like 12 feet tall and 10 feet wide. I love these tree form ones. They have a single trunk with a nice girth on them in a living wall courtyard that is coming along beautifully.

We planted some nice, columnar Japanese Yews close together to form what I hope one day will be an impenetrable hedge for the outer wall of the courtyard right outside our bedroom window view. I expect them to get 20 feet tall, they are getting there pretty quickly. On the inside of that are the tree form Hydrangeas that are beginning to touch each other with a 10 foot spread between each one. Inside that in the center of our courtyard is a zoysia grass path that follows the square design, inside the grass walkway is a square that is edged with 8” core tin steel edging filled with pea gravel. Inside the pea gravel square is a giant copper pot with nothing in it yet. We are waiting for just the right specimen tree to put in there for a very simple and clean look. I imagine we will find an interesting Japanese Maple to put in there for pot but it will have to be just the right one. I plan to uplight the copper pant and tree when we get finished. We are considering using a boulder with lots of character if it doesn’t unsimplify the look we are shooting for. My other first choice for this pot would be a giant Blue Agave, it would be stunning in that copper pot.

The reason we feel like we have to hustle this weekend at home is that next weekend we will be spending with a whole bunch of Martinsons in New Orleans to celebrate my mothers birthday, I’m sure she would pinch me if I said which birthday it is but it rhymes with Latey Late. I’m going to get in trouble for that one. The following weekends will be super busy at Garden Works until the week of October 13 when we will be leaving for South Carolina to help and attend our daughters wedding. I cant wait to get up there for this most magical of moments. We love Cody, her fiancé and we love his family. We will have a great gathering to celebrate their marriage. They have managed to put the entire wedding together themselves and have invited mostly family to keep the day as simple and meaningful as it can be. I love the wedding day that they have put together, I believe it’s turning out to be just what they have wished for.

The next weekend Friday October 24th we will be conducting our 5th annual Plants, Pumpkins and Pinot celebrating fall. We throw a lot of shindigs throughout the year but this is our big one. This year we will have Bill Ellison Trio playing bluegrass on the “porch” along with a food truck and beverages for all who love to celebrate fall with us. The next weekend our great friends have a son getting married close by that we are excited about. That will be the same weekend as Halloween and knowing them they will somehow tie that in to the weekend festivities, should be a blast. From there it will only be 2 weeks until Christmas trees arrive.

Now that I am looking at all of this we had better wake up extra early tomorrow to get as much done as we can to get ready for a tour in our yard for a group that I have the utmost respect for. Emily Grohovsky plans and installs gardens for people in the Southeast. She and her husband are incredibly masterful in their work creating gorgeous planting spaces for their clients. They not only leave their clients with a plan that works but they offer educational time so they can eventually ween off when the client is comfortable with the trials and tribulations that come along with produce gardening. If the client chooses to join her group on a regular basis Emily will provide some kind of educational opportunity . Some is classroom learning and sometimes it will be in the form of a field trip. Mimi and I were honored to be asked if our yard could be one of their field trips. That group will be coming November 3rd. I believe we will plant up the yard as we normally do but a little heavier than normal. I want this group to see our newly planted Foxgloves, Snapdragons, Delphiniums, Hollyhocks, Poppies, Larkspur, Parsley, Sweet Peas and all the other winter hardy plants that we plant in the fall for early spring blooms. My goal is to keep everything healthy throughout the winter so next spring our yard will explode for our next big event.

We, along with my sister Karen, have been asked to be on next springs MRA Garden Tour. We have always told each other that if one of us will be on the tour that the other would also. Well, it finally has happened, we were both asked on the same year so we are going for it. Any who know Karen know that they will be in for a huge surprise. You never know what Karen and Maur will do but it will be big and show stopping. She is not even going to

tell me what giant thing they are planning for the community that they love so much. Hold on to your hats for their yard tour. I am hoping for a perfect weather spring so that all we plant in the fall will be peaking on the weekend in May when our yard will be open to the public for the first time.

We will add some summer stuff when the weather gets right but none of those will be as well established as those plants that will be 6 months old by that time. We went back in the dates from our years-gone-by

photos and it looks like all that should be hanging in there. The only thing that can mess up this plan is if the weather begins to heat up too early causing some of the winter stuff to finish early. In that case we will back up the plan with summer annuals and perennials. That will have to happen eventually anyway but I like to take a little risk from time to time, otherwise what would I have to worry about? Last year those plants were absolutely gorgeous for those dates, only Mother Nature knows. We are very honored to be asked to be a part of the MRA Garden Tour because it is one of the best garden tours of the Northside but also because me and all of my siblings graduated from there. Mimi taught English Literature and was their cross country coach during her time there. We feel vey connected to MRA and are happy to be a part of this wonderful occasion. Yep, its going to be a nutty fall and we are going to get it done. We know there will be challenges, we just don’t know what they will yet. My guess is that one of the big ones will be about the weather. We will have a back up plan to the back up plan. It never fails.