It’s December in the garden. Time to hang it up.
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Coming Up Roses
It was 9 degrees below zero when I drove to work this morning. I could tell. The crunch of the snow underfoot was deafening. I had to keep blinking to keep my eyelashes from freezing to my face. Though I had all manner of winter gear piled on, my face stung from the cold. The corgis always dawdle in the driveway before they pony up to be loaded into the Suburban. I am ordinarily very patient about this. I like that they have a happy life-and their happy life means a minimum of interference from me. I am ok with hanging out until they are ready to be loaded up for work. Loaded up? Corgis have really short legs. I give the both of them a big leg up. I tell myself that loading and unloading two fifty pound dogs twice every day helps keep me in good shape. I treasure this illusion! This morning, their dawdling annoyed me. It was too cold to be outside.
Over the course of the day I downloaded scads of pictures on my Iphone to my computer. A day when it is really too cold to be outdoors is a really rare day. A day confined to the inside is not my most favorite day, but confining circumstances can make for some unexpected pleasure. Pictures that I took in June of this past year-I was looking at them for the first time. The roses-how beautiful they were.
There are those gardeners who would choose to pass by a planting of roses. Too much trouble to grow. Too much a symbol of the history of gardens. No doubt rose bushes are just about the most ungainly and unattractive shrubs ever to grace the earth. But I would not want my garden to do without them.
I only grow a few roses. Carefree Beauty, and Earthsong, bred by Griffith Buck. Jeannie Le Joie-a miniature climbing rose. Eden-a large flowered climbing rose. And the English bred shrub rose Sally Holmes.
The most of the month of June is a delight to this gardener. The roses play no small part in this. I love the flowers and the fragrance. On a freezing January day that keeps me inside, the memory of the roses comfort me.
the roses in June
Carefree Beauty
The roses in June fuel my love for the garden, year round. On this astonishingly cold and discouraging day, I like the idea that my 2014 gardening season will be coming up roses.
A rose is a rose
Everything will be coming up roses.
Posted on: January 3, 2014 30 Comments
Sunday Opinion: Scale And Proportion
Whenever Buck does a CAD drawing for a project, or an object, he includes a drawing of Man 01. For those of you who do not do design drawings on a computer, CAD stands for computer assisted design. This line drawing of a man who is 6′ tall is stored in his computer as a “block”. Buck has thousands of blocks stored in his computer. Those blocks are stored drawings of shapes and forms he uses over and over again. Pasting a block into a drawing means he does not have to draw that portion from scratch. An entirely new shape will require a drawing from start to finish. A complicated design for an object to be made can take many hours to draw.
I have watched him translate an idea into a precisely rendered drawing. Who knows how long ago it was that he learned the language of this two-dimensional design program. It must be a long time, as his fingers fly over the keyboard of his computer faster than my eyes can follow. I see lines drawn to precise lengths that connect to other lines, which finally, and exactly, describe a form. Down to the last 1/64th of an inch. Given a specific engineering inquiry, he can design to 1000th of an inch. This level of precision isn’t an issue for you and I. What purpose does the man01 block serve? This 6′ tall idea of the height and volume occupied by a man is size that is easy to recognize. 6′ tall isn’t short, but it isn’t tall, either. Man01 is a average size guy. When man01 is standing next to a planter box we are thinking of building, I have more than the dimensions of that box. I have a size and height that is familiar to me. I can compare the size of the man, to the size of the proposed box.
Anything that Buck makes at Branch, requires a drawing. He has the drawings for our stock products stored in his computer. The company that laser cuts our steel, or the company that rolls our steel in multiple dimensions, require those drawings to program their computers to cut or roll to our exact specifications. Building an object successfully that involves a number of different people and operations doesn’t happen via a breakfast meeting or a conference call. What is drawn on the page is an exact template for what will be built.
Buck makes those drawings with the help of a computer program programmed to precisely, and mathematically describe a form. He drives the bus. He tells the computer what he wants to see. The many years he spent as an architect required a working knowledge of how to translate a design into a drawing. Not just any drawing. A drawing that would spell out to a contractor exactly how to build a house, a stadium, a heating system, a plumbing plan, or a fruit cellar. A bell tower, or a topiary form, or a bench. But rest assured, a mathematically precise rendering of an idea of an object does in no way indicate that an object will be beautiful.
Man01 is a gesture in a beautiful direction. The proportion of a planter box for the garden is a key element of its design. How a person would relate to the dimension and proportion of that box, whether standing or sitting, will influence how a gardener eventually views, and reviews, that form. Every person has an idea all their own about what is beautiful and of interest. Each person likewise has an idea of what doesn’t move them. This makes garden ornament very difficult to design. One way we broaden our appeal is by offering different sizes. Comparing a set of possible sizes to the mano1 block helps us to decide what to build and what not to build. The computer is a tool that helps with the decision making process.
Man01 is a symbol on Buck’s drawings for scale and proportion. Woman01 is a scale I sometimes ask for from Buck. 5.5 feet. But no matter the gender, human scale is an element that should inform landscape design. A good feeling for the scale and proportion of a property, the plants, and the people can produce visually interesting relationships.
Friends for dinner in the garden is great fun. Friends comfortable in the garden is an important part of design.
Posted on: January 19, 2014 6 Comments
Thursday Opinion: A Life Of One’s Own
A few days ago, the feature on my blog which sends emails to subscribers to alert them to a new post went haywire. Subscribers were getting emails every few hours, most of which were for posts I had written years ago. I was appalled. People who subscribed to Dirt Simple were getting spammed. The blog had suddenly gotten a life of its own, and was clogging up innocent inboxes all over the place. I apologize for the nuisance-truly. Debbie Saro, from Web Savvy Marketing, keeps a close watch on all of my wordpress websites. She knew there was a problem long before I got the message from Buck, and wrote to her. She deactivated that portion of the blog immediately, and let WordPress know they had a problem that needed fixing. Astonishingly enough, readers responded favorably to all those emails. I had no complaints. I had lots and lots of readers reading those multiple posts.
It happens all the time. Something in one’s life gets a life of its own, and all one can do is bring up the rear. Our past summer was cold and rainy. I had no say in that decision. Coping with the fallout fell to me. My wishes for stellar summer weather-just wishing. Nature, who most definitely has a life of her own, batted last- as usual. In mid November of this past year, Mother Nature decided to get sudden and serious about winter. By late November, we were chopping frozen soil out of pots in order to do the winter arrangements. We had no warning, nor did we have a grace period. One day all was well. The next day, we had trouble. I was irritated, but I wasn’t waving flags, writing letters, or sounding off on the radio. Why not? Every living thing-and this includes nature-is entitled to a life of their own.
Landscape design is work that I do based on the parameters set by the client, the parameters set by the site, and then there is nature. The drawing that I present to a client is not the beginning and the end. It may look like a document, but it is in fact a description of a big fluid situation. It is an invitation to interact. Plenty of times I have visited a site after I have drawn a design, and gotten back talk. I may call it back talk, but I know better. Any client has a life all their own. Any property has a life all its own. If I am confident, I will let anything pertinent to the design have their moment to speak back. Listening to what gets spoken back will greatly inform your design. My advice? Listen. Have you not had plants that let you know they are not happy where they are planted? Plants have a life of their own. On a good day, I am tuned in to what they see as a life of their own. On a worse day, I am moving plants around.
Just like you, I have a life of my own. I may tag along, or I may insist on forging my own way. I like having freedom of expression. If you are a subscriber who was annoyed about WordPress going rogue, I am sorry. Given how many of you subscribers read multiple old posts over the past few days, I may repost some old essays this winter. Who’s to say WordPress cannot have a life of its own now and then. The now and then is over-for now. Whew!
Posted on: January 23, 2014 60 Comments