An Ode to fathers

  Dads are a lot of fun.  A pictorial.

                                                   A rollicking rollover in 2009

A fun chase in 1948

A Garden of Surprises

Grrr, I was thinking as I looked down from my 2nd floor window to see the jungle that had overtaken my yard.  My townhouse has a relatively large backyard.  The ubiquitous WestSeattle townhouse usually has a fairly small patio  but I actually have a patch of land!   I don't enjoy it much though so I tend to forget of going to it.  Picture yourself in a fishbowl -  towering windows from 2 neighboring places looking directly in to what should be a little sanctuary.  I can imagine the tsk,tsk of neighbors seeing my Hydrangeas being strangled by creeping Morning Glorys.   But then I remind myself, if I can only see my yard by getting up to the window and peering down to get a glimpse, why should they be in the business of seeing what is going on in my yard.  Pretty unlikely.  And when I get myself roused to go out there, I get so into the pulling of weeds and pruning bushes that I'm happy to be there.    So thorough has been my forgetting of the place, that when I got in to the thick of the pulling of weeds, I discovered these beauties that I had transplanted from Matt&Erika's yard.  I didn't remember that I had put them in the ground last summer. 

Continuing in to the thick of the brush,  to my great surprise this spring here was the lovely Bleeding Heart plant thriving and bigger than ever.  I have given up this plant for dead at least 3 times.  The first and most egregious lack of care was leaving it in a pail of water and forgetting to even plant it for a year.  But when it wouldn't give up, I felt I owed it a place in the soil where it was left to its own devices through drought and cold and still hung on.  Last year it was almost completely destroyed by some hired help who couldn't distinguish the weeds from the flowers.  We had a bleeding heart plant next to our front porch where I grew up so I'm very fond of this little hanger on.

I have always admired hydrangeas but had never had one.  It was never the right place or time or enviroment to have one. So a few years ago, I lovingly planted two  hydrangeas and did all the right things.  I hovered, I watered and fed my prized little plants.   They produced such big beautiful blooms.  And then last winter happened.  It was such a bitter cold that there was nothing left of these evergreen hydrangeas  but a few pitiful brown stems sticking up from the ground.  That is it I thought - I'm not destined to grow my favorite plant.  Imagine my surprise and joy to see this leafing and budding in the midst of my overgrown garden. 

These plants have pretty much taken care of themselves.  If they work that hard to live in my garden, I am happy to have them.