Street View of Wazoo Farmhouse; see the red tulips? Also a forsythia hedge will hopefully take root from the cuttings I stuck into the ground. . .Someday: picket fence.
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Wazoo Farmhouse's breezy porch. In the summer, happyhour or supper is out back on the deck (more snaps of that later, after our ugly pool is removed and our potager planted in its place!) looking down the hill; but this is a nice spot for tea.
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Down the front steps, please note the brave jonny jumpups
and the rhodondendron, which I planted last fall. It will someday grow huge.
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So now, trip down the path and you'll find my rose garden, mostly still dormant. Creeping thyme, rosemary, and lots of roses; in the beds in back you see, among other things, the peonies and lilacs almost ready to bloom.
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Down the driveway and gaze at the side yard: a path in construction, lined with a bed filled with soil from the hill and planted with red and yellow floribunda roses as well as lavendar; a strawberry bed (finally planted); and other beds under construction. See also the teeny-tiny little trees: quaking aspens, scarlet maples, and red oaks.
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More of the sideyard as well as the grand maple, strung up with Elspea's swing. The genius of this swing: you can sit on the maple tree bench and push with one hand. Perfect after mowing 1 foot grass with a manual mower with Elspeth strapped on my back!
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Side view of Wazoo Farmhouse.
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Looking down the hill: see the firepit (Martin built last fall), the forsythia with beds in progress, the tire swing hanging from the Locust. What you can't see: the puny but fast-growing hybrid elm; to the right is a huge slope used in winter for sledding and now planted with more trees.
Some day we'll have wild grasses and native plants there, as well as a children's garden and hideaway. Good, rich, moist soil; lots of deer venturing from the hill by the creek.
In the foreground you can see my first attempts at step-terracing. Whew!
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Hoorah for spring!
9 comments:
Grass, grass, look at all that luscious green grass! WOW! Talk about a sight for sore eyes. I wish I could sink my feet into that. You don't need anything else to grow - just your grass is heavenly! (My kids saw a plot of green grass when we were in Southern California. They just stood stock still & stared for a while, then gingerly stepped onto it & stared some more.)
Outside work is HARD, but it helps keep you sane.
When you look back on all of your work, you'll be proud.
You and Martin will also be astounded at how fast the years fly by.....
Auntie P and Uncle A.J.
P.S. It all looks great!
Lovely! I especially like the sit-and-push swing arrangement. So vital for tired gardener's arms! A children's garden - grand idea. I volunteer at a farm/eco-center here with a 'tasting garden' that includes snow peas, sorrel and lots of edible flowers! It's great to have a view of Wazoo - thanks!
What a lovely piece of land--and indeed, the house does look like a farmhouse! The night after seeing these pictures, I dreamed you had a big sign up announcing "Homemade Ketchup for sale"; inside, the few remaining bottles were being scarfed up by visitors, who were also browsing your vast selection of used books for sale.
For now, I guess your gardening is keeping you busy. But look to my dreams for your next venture...
Amy
P.S. been meaning to ask, though this isn't the proper forum: have you/Martin heard Sufjan Stevens? We went to a couple of his concerts here and they were AMAZING. TRANSCENDENT. Right up Martin's alley, probably, though the music "reads" better live than on disc, I think. Please let him know for me.
Oh! I agree with Amy (hello, amy! i'm mary)about Sufjan. Peter got Illinoise for me for my Bday last year. It is captivating. I didn't know he was touring.
I have heard of Sufjan Stevens, Amy and Mary. I have his Michigan album and a number of assorted cuts from other albums on my computer.
Having read a number of interviews with him, I can see that he's a brilliant guy all around as well as a thoughtful Christian who wants to produce music on his own terms. The ambition of his albums, range of his lyrics, and relative complexity of his arrangements (as well as the fact that he plays nearly all the instruments on his recordings), and indie credit mean that I should be wild about him.
But I'm not. I mean, I like him and I listen to his songs. But he's one of those artists I feel I ought to like more than I do--like maybe I'm missing something. Somehow there's a quality of sameness about his songs--maybe it's the consistency of his delivery, which vocally shows very little expression other than a sort of mournful patience with the idiosyncrasies of his subjects. That's a limitation of someone like Sam Beam (Iron and Wine), too, but I suppose I prefer his Christ-haunted South to Sufjan's mid-north.
And with albums that feature 15 to 20 tracks, I need more definition between songs; they all blur together for me, and I've listened to Michigan a number of times. I'm afraid that when I'm alone in the car and have the chance to really listen to music, I don't reach for Stevens, but for Flaming Lips, Supertramp, Broken Social Scene, or Black Keys (to name a few groups I've been listening to lately).
I think we need a whole music thread ...
Martin, start the music column. Seriously. I've been telling you.
Oh, Amy, I can't believe your dream about ketchup!!! Just the week before your dream, we attended the Ramp Festival, which celebrates those WVian onion-like wild plants by making them into everything, including cookies, wine. . .hmm. So there's this fellow there who makes jams & jellies (best is his Whiskey Jams--delicious on scones!) and he takes out a paper cup and squirts something into it out of a Heinz ketchup bottle. "I know you like my ketchup," he says, handing it to Martin, and we sip it. What is it but the best port we've ever had? That he brews but does not sell. So that ketchup dream is spooky in its very perfection.
Martin and Kim and Mary,
Prophetic dreaming! Most often, I wouldn't wish such a thing from my dreams!
Martin: I, too, wasn't wowed by the Sufjan albums we had, maybe to spite Greg and his effusive praise after attending a concert here a year ago. Then, a song came on the radio--the one about a girl dying--and I came home intrigued, wondering who the artist was, and Greg said, "See? See? I told you: it's him!"
So I went to the concert a few weeks ago, and I cannot for the life of me explain how inflatable Santas, inflatable Supermen, and musicians wearing bird kites and boy scout shirts could possibly add up to anything. But I tell you: it was glorious. I don't know that anyone in that packed auditorium was not moved. Something magical happened amidst the cacophony of the many instruments, the haunting lyrics, the bodies filling the room.
Now, I'm a believer.
--Amy
i too have heard that sufjan stevens is a "must-see-live-before-being-able-to-truly-appreciate" type of artist. i, at this point, am in the same camp as martin.
martin, i'd be all for a music column from you as well... i still have itunes birthday money to spend.
let me just say that my most recent must-listens are:
the be good tanyas (hello love)
chip taylor and carrie rodriguez (red dog tracks)
mississippi john hurt (i got his "complete studio recordings" & it is fabulous studying music by my standards)
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