Abbey-Roads2

What are you doing the rest of your life?

People have asked me what am I doing now that I’m retired.  After soon growing tired of blog-slapping my former employer, I got to work gardening.  (I had a very funny post up the other day that I took down because it had been troublesome to some people.  I never imagined I could make people cry.  I felt really bad and realized I had to stop.  Sometimes what I think is funny just ends up being mean.  I’m not a good person.)

My garden.

The layout of the back yard is formal, with a lilac woods beyond the back hedge-wall.  I once had an English style perennial floral border, but I took it out and replaced it with hostas because the rabbits ate the flowers.  I love the rabbits and preferred them to foxglove, lilies, salvia, and sage, among other florals.  The rabbits actually leave the hostas alone, although other gardeners say they eat their hostas.

Anyway - my gardens are pretty much green gardens, walled by hedges, which I love trimming and forming.  The back hedges, which form an architectural wall, separates the shade garden, (St. Joseph’s Wood, as I call the lilac woods - the lilacs are trimmed into trees) from the formal room.  The hedge is cottoneaster, which is a good northern substitute for privet or boxwood.  I have to get back there to re-stake and trim however.

In the front of the house I have yews, which are a delight to trim.  I’m changing the yews from a ball-ed effect into a continuous serpentine hedge, it’s been two or three years of training, and they are not quite solid yet, hence it looks a little wavy.

The rest of my gardening is done in Provence-styled, stone and terra-cotta pots, with lots of topiary; a 15 year old myrtle tree, a 6 year old rosemary tree, along with boxwood twists.  They winter in the basement with silver mylar walls and lots of grow lights.  (I got the idea from seeing marijuana growers and their set up in their basements.  No, I do not grow that stuff, nor do I use it.)  Other pots will be lavendar and geraniums.  I grow tomatoes and other vegetables in pots as well.

I may be putting in some clematis this year where two arborvitae topiaries winter killed last year - I have to find two nice towers for them to climb.  I don’t want clunky wood, but so little is available in my area.  I think I want wire obelisks, so I’ll hunt at some of the better garden centers - not the big guys, but the smaller ’boutique’ centers.  The smaller guys usually have more interesting landscape material, and often have more European inspired garden accesories one can usually only find on the coasts.

So that’s what I’ve been doing, when I get the gardens set, I want to paint the trim on the house, but I also will start working on my art again - soon! - I miss my painting.  There is a commission on the horizon, thanks to a friend in Rome.

Maybe gardening and painting will make me a better person.