High Holy Mass of Contradictions

I walked to Zackie's for a veggie dog at lunch, and although it was drizzling and although I am miserably sick, I was safely under an umbrella, so I took it slow and snapped a few glistening pictures of the neighborhood. I'd like to show some to you.

High on our list of criteria for a livable neighborhood when Karsten and I were house-hunting was that it had to have sidewalks. Some cities take this attribute for granted, but many of Nashville's neighborhoods don't have extensive sidewalks, so this truly was a limiting factor in selecting a location. In moving to Germantown, not only did we get sidewalks, we got charming brick sidewalks:



One of the best things about this neighborhood (and maybe it's to do with the culture of the South in general) is just how much gardening goes on. There are some beautiful gardens just on the blocks we walk the most, and we never take them for granted.

Here, the lilies seem to be peeking up over the hedges. If you could only take a picture of scent, I could have let you smell how deliciously wonderful these smell.


Even a simple decorative purple border of petunias looks better when it's drizzling:


And this? This is the best garden in Germantown, if you ask me. A whole side lot dedicated to a lush, gorgeous garden, filled with what must be hundreds of varieties of flowers and other plants.


I love living here.

Gardens Gone Wild!

Originally uploaded by Kate O’

Our garden has gone almost all summer without maintenance (darn my
pesky thyroid), and it really shows. We haven’t been too concerned
about it, figuring my health us more important than a perfectly
manicured front yard, and anyway perfectly manicured was never our
style, so it’s been sort of a Darwinian exercise in garden tough love.
But next Saturday our house will be on the neighborhood homes tour, so
it was high time to give the garden a quick cleanup.

Karsten’s up on an extension ladder cleaning the top windows (he won’t
let me take a picture of him, though), so I tried to muster the
stamina to do the yard work myself, but I only got as far as weeding
(LOTS of weeding, actually), pruning, and trimming the established
plants, and loosely digging around to position the new plants.
Tomorrow, if my energy is right for it, I may do some mulching. But
just at this moment, I think the rest of the planting is up to
Karsten, and all I have any energy left for is, well, posting this
here picture. Enjoy.

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Originally published at The Bee Hive. You can comment here or there.

Detail of front walkway at gate,
originally uploaded by Kate O’.

One of the interesting things about getting deep into any major project, like renovating a house and yard, is that new metaphors sometimes emerge throughout the process. For me, one of the best new metaphors to come out of the work we’ve been doing in the front yard is the idea of replacing the paved sidewalk around the house with a fieldstone walkway: the paved sidewalk, not only visually incongruent with such an old and charming house, encourages brisk walking, whereas the fieldstone walkway with all its inconsistencies in level and varied surfaces nearly forces the walker to slow down and look around at the garden and the house.

It’s not uncommon for Karsten or me to make references now to the “fieldstone” effect in our lives, of something having a welcoming slowing-down effect. I really love that about this house, and I’m also happy that Karsten and I can both appreciate what that does for our quality of life.

See? As much work and expense as this house has been, it’s actually rewarding us in unexpected and deeply meaningful ways. I wouldn’t trade a moment or a penny of what we’ve invested in it.

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Originally published at The Bee Hive. You can comment here or there.

One of the things that intrigues me about magazines is that, taken as a set, the magazines you bother to subscribe to have an awful lot to say about who you are and what you're passionate about. Of course, not all of our passions have publications dedicated to them, but you might be surprised how many do.

For example, I just stumbled across two magazines I didn't know existed and now I'm really psyched about: Birds & Blooms, which "celebrates the joys of attracting birds and tending to beautiful backyard flower gardens" and Wild Bird, which provides "fascinating information about birds and birding from your own backyard to touring hotspots in the field."

Did I subscribe? Oh heck yes, I most definitely subscribed. OK, I don't know that I'm quite enough of a bird lover to get into the whole "touring hotspots in the field" thing, but I'm definitely excited about bird-attracting gardens. And yes, I already have subscriptions to a bunch of gardening-related magazines, and occasionally they have articles about attracting birds and butterflies, but these! These are dedicated to attracting and admiring birds. Hee! I'm actually giddy about it. (Don't tell Karsten, though. He'll roll his eyes about me signing up for yet more magazines.)

Now the trick is to actually find the time to read the magazines. Because see, that's the other interesting thing about magazines. They seem to represent our best selves: what we, in an ideal world, would be paying attention to. Instead of leaving to pile up in a corner.

I kid! I really do read my magazines. Most of them. Most of the time. OK, sometimes. But I mean to read them! What kind of obsessive nut would sign up for a whole bunch of stuff she knows she isn't going to have time to read? What? Why are you looking at me like that?

I didn't think I was in the mood to do it, but I did it. I got outside right after breakfast (which, by the way, was a waffle with diced mango and kiwi along with my absolute favorite coffee, Bongo Java Kaldi's Dog -- but I digress) and got my gardening stuff all set up.

And then went squeeing back inside to tell Karsten that the resurrection lilies had finally emerged. They grow incredibly fast -- they're already over two feet high -- but I didn't even notice them emerging before this morning.

You may recall that these are a gift from my dad. A while before he died, they were in bloom in my parents back yard and my mom cut some and put them in a vase for him to admire from his bed. I complimented him on his beautiful flowers when I came to see him that day, and he told me that he wanted me to dig some up to remember him by.

So I did. The day he died, after the day had quieted down a bit, I went out back to where the bulbs were planted. It was early November in the Chicago area and the ground was pretty hard but the digging felt good and cathartic, and eventually I managed to dug up three good bulbs. I put them in a plastic bag in my parents' refrigerator to bring home with me a few days later. It was cold when I got back to Nashville, so I worried about putting them right into the ground, which meant that they stayed in our refrigerator until the next spring, when one day I happened to notice a little bit of green emerging from the bulbs right inside the baggie in the fridge.

So I got outside and placed them in a line of three and planted a semicircle of daylilies around them to accent them. And they continued to sprout leaves, which died back as they're supposed to, but no flowers ever emerged that summer.

I was a little worried they weren't very healthy after their difficult transition, but this past spring the leaves came up again and I got hopeful that they'd actually flower this year.

And there they are, beautiful as can be.



I can't tell you how happy it makes me to have these flowers. I really can't tell you; there are no adequate words. But perhaps you can imagine.



I did get my other gardening done, too, by the way -- planting, weeding, transplanting, mulching, watering, oh my! -- and took a bunch of pictures, which produced some of the better results I've gotten with this newish camera. Here's one of the new dianthus firewitch plants, all up close and personal:



And then I wanted to sit back and admire it all, but first Karsten thought I should show you all how dirty I got and how "cute" (I say "dorky") I look in my shade hat.



Here's

Fence dude says it'll be six weeks before he can get started. Bleah. Anybody want to place bets on what'll be the next plant to disappear? Daylilies? Wintercreeper? Lavender?

I tell you what: it better not be the resurrection lilies I dug up from my parents' yard the day my dad died. I'll personally hunt down the creep who takes those.

Of course anyone who wants to come pull up weeds is more than welcome. There are always about 20,000 hackberry seedlings scattered around the yard from all the trees. I can spot those things from across the yard now. I find myself absentmindedly plucking hackberry seedlings out of neighbors' yards as we chat, just out of force of habit.

All this garden drama reminds me I was going to mention here that one of our next-door neighbor's friends referred to our yard as "Cheekwood Jr." I really liked that.

I backed out of the backyard into the alley this morning -- naturally, we're parking out back these days -- and was detoured when I got to the end of the alley by Morgan Park Place construction blocking my normal route out to I-65. So I didn't drive by the front of our house, as I like to do each morning.

Ten minutes later, I got a call from Karsten asking if I'd driven by the front of the house this morning. Strange that he should ask, I thought. No, why?

Well, apparently, someone nicked seven boxwoods from our front yard garden.

Let me just repeat that. Some clever burglar determined it worth his or her while to yank boxwood shrubs out of our garden. Small ones! I mean, have you seen our garden? I'm definitely not claiming it's the most splendorous garden in all of the South or anything, but it's got some pretty nice plants in it. The underwhelming hedge we've been attempting to grow with a bunch of young boxwood plants is pretty much the least appealing thing in the yard. And this wasn't just a random act of boredom -- someone took the time to grab seven of these things.

Now of course after explaining all of that, I'll admit that I'm now dreading the disappearance of nicer plants in the garden -- they're sure to be the next to go.

Karsten and I have been told by folks who've lived in the neighborhood for a while that plant thefts used to be more common when some vendors at the Farmer's Market used to buy plants from folks off the street to resell them, no questions asked. We've heard that this practice has been discontinued, so I have no idea what the boxwood thief is planning to do with the young shrubs. By ripping them out of the ground as he or she apparently did, the thief probably shocked them enough that they won't do well when replanted (especially since pretty much all vegetation is still in recovery mode from the Great Easter Freeze), so if the idea was to plant the boxwoods, it's not likely to be a happy outcome. Maybe I'm mean-spirited, but somehow that makes me feel a little better.

Also worth noting is that, a few weeks ago, someone apparently stole a young but still pretty large tree from the front yard of the house next door (which is for sale -- the missing tree was noticed about an hour before they were having an open house). Earlier that day, I'd seen a guy riding by on a bike carrying a shovel. Not to say that's related, but it could be. Apparently it wouldn't be the first plant theft in the neighborhood involving a getaway bike, believe it or not.

We were already planning to install a period-appropriate iron hoop-and-spear fence, but all this makes me want to get right on it. (We already have enough motivation because of the bird feeders that keep getting stolen.) Karsten's calling the guy today to see when we could get started.

This is the moment Karsten and I have been waiting for: the daylilies have started to bloom!



Thought I'd show a picture or two of the stars, as well as a few pics of some of the other sections of the yard garden, like the herb garden:



Also a pic of our new bikes!

After a second long week of working hard at the new job, I got a paycheck covering week 1, and woo-hooed all the way to Midtown Wine and Spirits where I bought a bottle of Taittinger Brut to celebrate. You'd think we'd feel obligated to drink such an elegant bottle of Champagne with an equally elegant meal, but no, we ate one of our favorite staples: pasta with hot sauce. Yum.

Woke up early yesterday wanting to cheer on the runners in the Country Music Marathon, but I was outside long before the Ethiopians and Kenyans were due to be in the neighborhood, so I got right to gardening. Weeded about 10,000 hackberry seedlings (I swear, hackberries must be the trashiest trees EVER) and a bunch of seedlings from the birdseed. Noted the overabundance of aphids on my tomato plants (waiting for my shipment of ladybugs to arrive!), and then it was time to go cheer on runners.

Walked by a neighbor's house on the way back home (amidst the long lines of angry, detoured drivers trying to find their way through our quaint neighborhood to wherever) and she gave us a box full of cuttings from her yard, including some phlox and some tiger lilies, the latter I'm really excited about! I think I'm going to do a whole lily section of the garden at some point, what with the three resurrection lilies I got from my parents' yard as a memorial to my dad the day he died, the hundreds of daylilies around our house, these tiger lilies, and maybe some stargazers and other lilies. It's a happy-making thought. Maybe an iris garden, too. Lovely!

For lunch, Karsten and I ate veggie burgers with baby greens from our very own garden (the seedlings needed thinning anyway!), his mostly spinach and various lettuces, mine heavy with broccoli sprouts and basil. It was so amazingly delicious, we both kept moaning with pleasure.

After lunch, we thought it might start raining, so we quickly drove to Gardens of Babylon at the Farmers Market to pick up two more boxwoods (we're gradually replacing the ones in the would-be hedge that didn't make it through last winter) and find some little blue and yellow flowering plants to perk up my blue and yellow office. And then over to Bongo Java Roasting Company to pick up some organic / fair trade / shade grown / locally-roasted / locally-sold coffee, and to the Turnip Truck for some soy yogurt and other groceries.

And then my energy was all used up. So the rest of the day was just lazing around, reading, relaxing, playing with cats... you know. Normal stuff. And then pizza for dinner, garnished with fresh oregano -- you guessed it -- from the garden.

So anyway, that was the gist of yesterday, and now today, since it's raining, I'm just relaxing indoors and thinking about giving myself a pedicure and maybe taking in a matinee of "Thank You For Smoking" or "American Dreamz," the latter looking a bit fluffy, but I think the filmmakers deserve my money for coming up with that tagline: "Imagine a country where more people vote for their next pop idol than for their next president." Ooh, snap!

Hope everyone else is having a relaxing weekend!

All our hard work last year in the garden is starting to pay off in bright, beautiful color across the yard. The only disappointment so far is that the boxwoods we planted as a beginning hedge are looking pretty sad.

I'm sitting on the front steps looking out over the garden, writing songs. This is a pretty nice life.

I'm becoming a gardener! Or at least you'd think so by the number of gardening books I have out from the library and the staggering amount of time I'm spending with my hands in the dirt.

For example, I spent about 10 hours on Saturday in our front yard, mostly ripping out weeds and transplanting. We're about to have some major plumbing work done on the north corner of the front of the house, where apparently the house has partly settled onto the service line and has been causing minor flooding when I run the clothes washer. In order to do that plumbing work, the plumbers have to bring in a backhoe and dig up the yard near the house.

So I wanted to transplant as many of the plants in that side of the yard as possible before they do it. We had four tufty patches of monkey grass that we wanted to use along the front of the yard sort of like a hedge, so I dug the holes, and, with Karsten's help, dug up the monkey grass for transplanting, carried each one to its new location (they're HEAVY!), planted them, spread mulch around them (thanks to my neighbor who offered his mulch), and watered them.

Now all we have left on that side of the yard are one gold-and-green euonymus shrub and two dark green shrubs I haven't identified yet. (You can see them toward the back center of this photo, to the right of and slightly behind the euonymus shrub. I may try to get some better pictures in the next few days and see if anyone can help me identify them.)

Karsten and I also went to the farmers market and picked out two 6" pots of echinacea purpurea, which I planted just behind the newly-transplanted tufts of monkey grass.

I really need a picture of all this.

Anyway, while I was weeding, Karsten took the metal bars down from all the windows on the front and south sides of the house (we had our security system turned on last week). Talk about an eyesore! We're so relieved to see those go.

After the plumbing is done, we're looking at having an electrician see if he can relocate or rework the wiring on the outside of the north-front downstairs window. After that, we're going to have the front of the house painted (it'll be a wash of red paint mixed 50/50 with water), and then Karsten will work on the lintels (the "eyebrows") above the front windows. We wanted to replace the wood with stone, but we've been told it would be very expensive and very risky to the brick. A guy from the historical commission suggested cutting fiberboard to fit over the lintels and painting the fiberboard a light gray to look as much like stone as possible. It looks like that will be do-able, so that'll happen after the painting is done.

And we're hoping this will all be done by October, when the Historic Germantown neighborhood has its Oktoberfest celebration, and we want to have it looking good for that.

toastytuft just spent, like, 40 minutes watering all the flowers and shit at this house.

And now it's raining.

The gods have a very pesky sense of humor.