Thursday, September 6
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Pictures are garden inspirations from the internet I have been collecting since January. This week I played the role of the self proclaimed botanist. It was incredibly fun and took me back to the days that Michelle and I used to pretend we were galloping horses during third grade recess hour. Had I physically embraced my image of the botanist archetype, I would have had a long, golden braid running down my back, a large brimmed hat, and some kind of khaki shorts. None of which I own or can do. I did, however, wind up with dirt on my face and thirty mosquito bites. I guess that's close enough.
As usual, when I get the learning bug, I skip to the library where I check out tons of books on the subject. It is unusual that I get through all of them. Ben eyed me suspiciously from behind the stacks of gardening literature on Saturday morning when I was already sketching and jotting notes for our backyard that will one day be beautiful. Let me set up the vision of our yard now: I ripped just about everything out to start from scratch. Ben and I work on our small house differently. Ben uses measuring tape, protractors, special computer programs, and lots of brain power. I impulsively try whatever pops in my head. I started gardening blue prints in attempt to meet Ben half way. He nodded with approval as I spent five hours sitting, standing, loitering in the yard trying to figure out what to do.
The best part (after sketching and submitting latin names to memory) was lingering in a ton of northshore nurseries. Dear Lilian, visiting from Minneapolis, joined me in Chicago's urban gardening nursery where I melted for plants as though they were adorable puppies. Two days later, with three books worth of new information, blue prints changed and revisited, after interrogating the Foley's for their gardening tricks, and a two hour cruise around the Evanston for inspiration, I caved and purchased a set of blue hydrangeas.
posted by Jenny Thursday, September 06, 2007
