Will It Ever Stop Raining????

One thing every gardener can rely on is that there will always be weather to complain about. An early heat wave cut short the daffodil season. This May we had barely a drop of rain, so we could moan about the drought. Of course the drought was broken in June in time for storms to beat the peonies and iris to the ground.

And July has brought endless storms and rain. I weeded the front garden during a brief interlude but a week later, with the lush tropical conditions, they are bigger and better than ever. I suppose they appreciated my giving them elbow room.
As Henry Mitchell says, "When we complain of weather we are always on firm ground. It is not imagination or idle dreaming; there is excellent reason for complaint....The first time a storm rips all the peonies to pieces-the gardener has waited two years and done a good bit of scratching about with wood ashes and has chopped out tree roots and has set up stakes-the pain is severe. Within a few years, however, the gardener begins to realize there has never yet been a single year in which everything did well. And (usually after forty years or so) he notices that no year is without some special splender. Most of us can remember years when the irises were unearthly in their perfection, day after day after day of flawless flowers. I have seen two such years myself in the past forty-three." The Essential Earthman p.9-10.



Garden Resource

Henry Mitchell is my favorite garden writer, if you have not read his books you are in for a treat. Mr. Mitchell wrote a gardening column for the Washington Post for many years and his books are compilations of these columns. They are full of grace and wit, wisdom and great information about gardening and plants. And many are laugh out loud funny. There is no garden snobbery here just love of gardens, gardeners and the natural world as seen in a little garden in Washington D.C.

The Essential Earthman

One Man's Garden

Henry Mitchell on Gardening

All are readily available on Amazon and at most local bookstores.



The Bracelet

This is how I spend my time on these endless rainy days, crocheting very thin Artists wire and beautiful beads together into sparkly bracelets. This one uses two colors of wire, dark plum with an edging of bright magental and Swarovski crystals, Czech fire polished crystals, and seed beads in a variety of colors and sizes. The bracelet and many of the photographs here are available from my shop on Etsy, http://www.judystalus.etsy.com/.