Last week was just goregous in Paris: sunshine, blue skies, lovely cool breezes. Made me impatient to see my (would-be) garden again. A friend gave me some Dahlia bulbs for my birthday and I couldn't wait to clear a little space in the yard to plant them.
We arrived at the house late on Friday evening. Even though it was 9pm, the sky was still light and the air held the sweetness and warmth of late May. Went to bed full of anticipation. Woke up to a grey, lightless bedroom and the splatter of rain on the windows. Correction: the splatter of rain on the plastic on the windows. We're in the final stages of having work done on our house's facade, and so every window of the house is covered with heavy plastic.
To confirm the bad weather, I had to open the front door and was nearly knocked over by a freezing wind. Suddenly it was winter again. The rain came down fast, cold and sloppy all weekend. We huddled inside and built fires. Sounds cozy, except that we couldn't see out of any of our beautiful 6-foot windows -- all we could see was dirty plastic. I was bummed that not only could I not plant my bulbs, I couldn't even see the yard. A weird, claustrophobic sensation.
On the bright side, my husband Dawg did buy me a lovely wooden compost bin. It's huge (3x3x3 ft, I think) and will take awhile to fill, but I'm excited about it. (My freestanding heap will soon be taken over by weeds.) Poor Dawg spent quite a long time putting it together in the pouring rain and couldn't even finish because we had to head back to Paris. I wanted to take a picture of it but our camera battery wasn't charged and we didn't have the charger with us. Honestly...thwarted at every turn!
We have a theory (superstition?) that everytime we have a mediocre visit to the house the next one will be great. Our next trip out there looks promising!
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Propagating A Dwarf Hydrangea
3 months ago
All you need to do is get Dawg to build you a modest bio-dome, only slightly more complicated to assemble than a compost bin - but think of the possibilities. You control the weather! But frankly, we're probably all better off thoughtlessly submitting ourselves to the vagaries of nature.
ReplyDeleteHi Barb, Your camera not charged? Btw, when I was at the Hibiscus Garden the other day, my camera used up the battery when I was only half way of my visit ;-( Ok, keep to your supertition, next visit would be promising!
ReplyDeleteThe dimension of your window (6') amazes me. Must be a big house that you were in. And the a 3x3x3' compost bin... huge!
I hope that you will be able to find a way to plant the dahlia bulbs soon. Have a great day!