Sunburst II

Here's the Sunburst in pictures.  Below is our first garden, planted about ten years ago to wrap around this southeast corner of the house.  This garden gets the first sun of the day.  Asian lilac (the super-fragrant Miss Kim) to the right of the door; a hedge of lavender in the foreground, running along the brick walk.

Below, the garden in close-up.  My husband (W.) and I dug the little pond (only about 3-4 feet deep) about four years ago, putting in a liner and small fountain.  The sound of running water attracts birds, making weeding or any quiet activity, just pure delight. 

Below is the garden on the west side of the house.  Only two years old, it's on a rocky slope, which I tried last year unsuccessfully to terrace. We're low-budget gardeners, and not being able to afford  earth-moving machines, we found hand-terracing too time-consuming.

So I deemed this garden a failed experiment.  This spring, I decided to transplant the best plants to the dooryard garden and let the rest go back to meadow. 

Until the lupine and daisies bloomed.  Now I'm weeding in earnest, digging up all the dandelions and quack-grass from around the lupine so they have bare earth to drop their seeds into.  And the daisies, sensing the new space, fill in fast, so that I'm getting closer to the picture of heaven I've carried ever since I saw a hillside across from the yachtclub in Camden, Maine about eight years ago.  It was a billowing sheet of daisies, with a few blue lupine holding down the corners - the most uplifting garden I've ever seen. 

I came home and tried to reproduce it on our north slope, buying out the local nursery's supply of shasta daisies, but failed.  Now, it appears that nature is giving it to me on the west side.  In letting the wild daisies fill in, I see my way to the garden I've always wanted. 

This is the best of gardening, its irony and surprise.      

Further down the west slope (below), the old apple tree with a hard-to-see puddle of stella d'oro lilies that I planted to light up the tree's shadow.  I forgot that the lilies (yellow) "light up" for only short time, and the rest of the time - like this - deepen the shadow.

But luckily, the bones of our garden were here long before we were: the apple tree, the pasture, the trees in the background giving a walled-garden look.  So however our experiments turn out, nature keeps it beautiful.

W. built this little shed for our garden tractor and firewood about seven years ago.  The boards have weathered nicely, and because this side faces south for all-day sun, I've tried to get a whole series of vining plants to grow here.  But roses and earlier clematis all petered out; I didn't know why. 

This clematis ("Presidential," I think) is new, planted the summer before last.  The very rainy spring we've had shows me why our earlier vines failed.  (We're "survival of the fittest" gardeners, not watering regularly). 

But this beauty inspires me to rig up a longer hose, and W. wants to put up a bigger trellis now, picturing a whole wall of blooms.

The dooryard clematis (Nelly Moser) that we're trying to establish on the trellis arching over the back door.  Like the shed, we've tried a whole series of clematis here, and now I know the key: watering, the daily, patient, waiting for it to sink into the roots kind. 

Comments

[Cowtown Pattie]

How lovely! Maine in the summertime seems so serene to our white hot heat. We have a new clematis vine that just isn't getting with the program too well. However, we have had great success with a new passion flower vine, two of 'em, in fact, one blue and white and the other a gorgeous red. Our garden is not styled in any formal design, we plant whatever strikes our fancy and will work with the light at any particular spot. In addition to the passion vines, we have added a bottle brush tree, a Mexican Bird of Paradise tree, a pomegranate shrub, a new deep red crepe myrtle, foxglove, trumpet flower, Texas hibiscus, Mexican oregano, and soft-leaf yuccas to go with our red yuccas. Oh, and two lovely red banana trees.

[Ronni Bennett]

Oh my, ML, it's beautiful. And you've got my favorite, lilac, too. I noticed lilac bushes all over the Portland area. And W. is right - the entire shed covered in blooms is going to be spectacular. The pond is the perfect accompaniment.

[Tabor]

Oh, how pleasant. What rewarding beauty for all your hard work!

[Rayne of Terror]

Beautiful yard. My grandparents had purple clematis covering one end of their porch and it was very pretty.

[Lisa]

I love your little pond--are there fish in it, too?

[Sandy]

What a lovely home and gardens! I've enjoyed the garden tour.

[indoor wall water fountains]

http://www.indoorwallwaterfountains.com>indoor wall water fountains

[Nina Savoretti]

you have the most beautiful surroundings but i bet i'm not the first to say so. your pond is truely lovely. I am looking to recreate some kind of water feature for my nan in her room, she is in a home and was looking for inspiration. she is partially blind too. it is very sad. i have looked on a few sites including http://www.ukwaterfeatures.com/ and they do indoor water features. are there any particular birds who you think have a nice chirp so i can recreate your garden? i would like to take her around the world in sounds. thanks