The Green Room at the back of my house has now grown to about 20 feet by 30 feet. And my exhaustion is considerable since I had to remove almost everything that was growing there before I could make any headway or even make a plan.
To my surprise, the tin can sculpture just took off, despite the fact that I've been ready to do it for several years but just never got around to drilling holes in all those cans. It looks here a little like a small war memorial, I suspect, but it's actually more of a monument to canned tomatoes,. Some of the cans are actually rusted, but some are still shiny and the contrast between the two is nice. I had thought the 'stalks' might move slightly in a breeze, but they are way too heavy (the tallest 'stalk' is about 4 feet or so).
I've surrounded the sculpture with saltillo tiles (neither they nor the marble slabs are leveled or set in; they are just sitting on whatever uneven surface was there when I got them to the site). I have no idea what the future of a saltillo tile is since they are now outdoors and they were made to be indoors. But I guess we'll just see how that works. There's a little sun in this area around noon, so the lettuce (on the right in the photo above) appreciates a little but not too much summer warmth.
Here is the view from the east. A couple of years ago, I found a? some? bedsprings at the side of Gulf Road down by the Grange Hall. It appeared to have been doubled back on itself and then run over repeatedly by a sizable truck. I dragged it home because it was so interesting, and it has now found itself a spot on the fence (center). The small hydrangea I transplanted has kept its blooms (it was a very quick transplant) and is now just to the left of the sculpture.
The white marble tiles provide a walkway somewhat to the left of center of the entire space. Just at the left edge of the photo are a bunch of lunaria, evening primrose, and candytuft plants...just things i happened to have around that could be easily moved. And feverfew in pots at the back. When I sit in that chair, looking east, this is what I see to the south/to my right.
A bunch of alpine iris and some foxgloves on the left side of the metal wall and the rock, which needs some companion rocks, but that will take some more time to gather. I started some needle-point ivy cuttings to root today and hope to train them on to the metal wall. So far, I've spent about $8 on all this, which went for three 1/4"-rods for the sculpture. Such a pleasant way to entertain one's self, "lazing on a Sunday [sunny] afternoon..In the summertime" as the Loving Spoonful said or sang, or at least I think it was them. [Of course, it wasn't the Loving Spoonful: it was The Kinks.]
Showing posts with label green rooms. Show all posts
Showing posts with label green rooms. Show all posts
Monday, August 2, 2010
Sunday, July 25, 2010
Something New
Point Roberts is really just a disorganized (as opposed to organized) retirement community, with a lot of people who have a lot of time on their hands. Some of that time gets used for projects that benefit some or all of the community (e.g., the lovely concerts that are offered virtually every other week featuring excellent musicians--often from Vancouver--at the Lutheran Church here). Some of that time gets used on the ordinary bits and pieces of daily living. But it is the other pieces of that time that fall prey to a tendency toward suggestibility.
I have such a tendency. Thus, this week we are in the midst of several weeks of spectacular July weather. It might be that there are a bunch of things that need to be done indoors, but it does not feel like indoors is the place you ought to be in a place where so often the weather is a tad on the dour side; beautiful, but damp, grey, etc. Right now, though, the world is glowing and it seems, at the very least, best to be out there watching it glow and maybe even glowing with it.
Also, in the summer, people come to visit and bring you round to activities you might not engage in at all or at least not so much as when they have not come to visit you. This past ten days, we have had a daughter visiting who comes with the skills of an engineer and the enthusiasm for projects of, well, I don't know...of a project enthusiast? In this case, she has joined in with her father to restore great swaths of order to our somewhat disorderly doings: outbuildings and porches are cleaned and organized; tools and lumber are made orderly and accessible; things that should go to the dump are identified and transported. So much work goes on every day that not working very hard seems a very slacker way to be living.
And, finally, another daughter sends a book about shade gardens. In the first few chapters, which I idly read about 6 days ago, the author explained how he came upon the need for creating a shade garden adjacent to his house, a 'green room,' as he called it. If this book had arrived in my life in May, I would have read it and enjoyed it and put it away. But this past week, what with the weather and the project mood, the book forced me to follow its lead. That's what I mean by suggestibility.
Thus, over the past four days, I have taken to renovating a 20x20 foot space adjacent to the back of our tiny house and turned it, or begun to turn it into a 'green room.' This area has never been cultivated in any organized way; it was covered with bushes and vines and grasses and buttercups and whatever. The project required, of course, that all that be removed. For two days, I simply dug up everything. Then I began to find things to give it more shape (e.g., an elderly 8x4.5 foot metal roof that was lying around was pressed into service as a wall to create a corner with the existing wooden fence). Half a dozen marble slabs that came from some other project that belonged to somebody who lived here before we did were lying around and were moved in to provide some paving. Various stacks of rotting wood were moved out and other pieces of more useful wood were moved in. Now there is a little deck where a chair can sit in case I want to sit in my shady green room. And there is a rock.
And, said the book's author, don't buy plants; just transplant them from somewhere else in your garden. Thus have I moved a hydrangea and a bunch of foxglove and lunaria plants, as well many little ground cover plants cuttings with roots or rootlets (creeping jenny and ajuga and lilies of the valley) into a concentrated area. And some potted parsley and feverfew. And a driftwood 'gate' that was providing no good in the back of the garden is now supported by a big alder and is being used to shelter my driftwood collection.
This has been a strange and frenetic piece of work. Today, I began work on a long-time projected sculpture which involved initially saving about a thousand tin cans, which will eventually be stacked on five thin steel rods. I had all the cans, mostly rusted, and now I have to drill holes in them all. But that is underway. It will take, of course, a number of years for this actually to become a shade garden or even a green room, but it has certainly been an astonishing beginning, and all because of a chance coming together of several factors and my propensity to drift into things with a sudden enthusiasm.
I have such a tendency. Thus, this week we are in the midst of several weeks of spectacular July weather. It might be that there are a bunch of things that need to be done indoors, but it does not feel like indoors is the place you ought to be in a place where so often the weather is a tad on the dour side; beautiful, but damp, grey, etc. Right now, though, the world is glowing and it seems, at the very least, best to be out there watching it glow and maybe even glowing with it.
Also, in the summer, people come to visit and bring you round to activities you might not engage in at all or at least not so much as when they have not come to visit you. This past ten days, we have had a daughter visiting who comes with the skills of an engineer and the enthusiasm for projects of, well, I don't know...of a project enthusiast? In this case, she has joined in with her father to restore great swaths of order to our somewhat disorderly doings: outbuildings and porches are cleaned and organized; tools and lumber are made orderly and accessible; things that should go to the dump are identified and transported. So much work goes on every day that not working very hard seems a very slacker way to be living.
And, finally, another daughter sends a book about shade gardens. In the first few chapters, which I idly read about 6 days ago, the author explained how he came upon the need for creating a shade garden adjacent to his house, a 'green room,' as he called it. If this book had arrived in my life in May, I would have read it and enjoyed it and put it away. But this past week, what with the weather and the project mood, the book forced me to follow its lead. That's what I mean by suggestibility.
Thus, over the past four days, I have taken to renovating a 20x20 foot space adjacent to the back of our tiny house and turned it, or begun to turn it into a 'green room.' This area has never been cultivated in any organized way; it was covered with bushes and vines and grasses and buttercups and whatever. The project required, of course, that all that be removed. For two days, I simply dug up everything. Then I began to find things to give it more shape (e.g., an elderly 8x4.5 foot metal roof that was lying around was pressed into service as a wall to create a corner with the existing wooden fence). Half a dozen marble slabs that came from some other project that belonged to somebody who lived here before we did were lying around and were moved in to provide some paving. Various stacks of rotting wood were moved out and other pieces of more useful wood were moved in. Now there is a little deck where a chair can sit in case I want to sit in my shady green room. And there is a rock.
And, said the book's author, don't buy plants; just transplant them from somewhere else in your garden. Thus have I moved a hydrangea and a bunch of foxglove and lunaria plants, as well many little ground cover plants cuttings with roots or rootlets (creeping jenny and ajuga and lilies of the valley) into a concentrated area. And some potted parsley and feverfew. And a driftwood 'gate' that was providing no good in the back of the garden is now supported by a big alder and is being used to shelter my driftwood collection.
This has been a strange and frenetic piece of work. Today, I began work on a long-time projected sculpture which involved initially saving about a thousand tin cans, which will eventually be stacked on five thin steel rods. I had all the cans, mostly rusted, and now I have to drill holes in them all. But that is underway. It will take, of course, a number of years for this actually to become a shade garden or even a green room, but it has certainly been an astonishing beginning, and all because of a chance coming together of several factors and my propensity to drift into things with a sudden enthusiasm.
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