Garden Ornaments

With today's blog entry, I would love to inspire my readers to add a touch of interest to their gardens by incorporating objects'd arte (or otherwise!). For many years, Mrs. B. has gathered unusual objects to add interest to her gardens. Well read, with a keen sense of humor, and an appreciation of the written word, she likes to put these things together in ways that offer the visitor to the garden some pithy content. While the plants are the stars of the show, sculptural elements are the supporting cast. They add little comments that make you think.

The greatest concentration of sculptural elements at LQ may be found in the "Funky Shui Garden", located in what might normally be called the back yard. Here a collection of pieces which derive from many of the world's religions may be found. Together they form an "Ecumenical Garden" which offers homage to the spiritual yearnings of humanity.

If you click on the above picture, you can get an idea of how many oddments are shown off in this area. Everything from gazing balls to a mock Egyptian sarcophagus, from a bas relief Madonna and Child to a carved wooden bear. But it all ties together into the overall theme. In the enlarged view, incidently, youcan also see what looks like flying snow, but is actually petals falling from the enormous chokecherry tree behind the wall in the next garden. This is the same tree shown in full bloom on the front piece of my blog.

Although we try to arrange these objects in some kind of logical order each spring, when we bring them out of winter storage, they sometimes mingle inappropriately. Here the Indigenous American area rubs elbows with a Catholic church. Well, those two religions actually did rub elbows, and in fact still do, so maybe it isn't that inappropriate.

The Funky (Junky) Shui Garden is so full of interesting objects that it really deserves its own blog! That will come at a later date.

Each garden at LQ is expected to carry some meaning or significance, or at least a joke. Here an astrolabe offers a grace note to the Knot garden. But if it's not a garden, what is it?

In the center of the Funky Shui garden stands one of my favorite pieces: a moon dial that no one knows how to interpret. This delightful folly rests in the midst of a bed of catanache (perennial candytuft) in full bloom. We sheer this promptly once the flowers fade to stimulate a second flush later.

Four ladies (goddesses, perhaps?) converse in the garden of one of Mrs. B's daughters. The tendency to add interesting ornaments may be genetic! Metal objects, unlike ceramics, can remain in the garden all winter, and are an important addition while the plants are dormant during the winter months.

This little shrine was set up by one of the renters on the property, so maybe that decorative tendency is just something we learn. By creating a shelter to keep off the rain and snow, this clay sculpture can probably remain outside for the winter without breaking. It's the repeated freezing and thawing that wreaks havoc on ceramic pieces.

The quintessential Santa Fe icon, a kiva-style ladder to nowhere, rests against an adobe wall beside a bed full of hollyhocks. Ladders like this were used by the Anasazis in their multi-storied pueblos, and you can climb them if you visit the cliff dwellings at Bandelier, about an hour NW of Santa Fe. (I'll be posting a blog soon about these remarkable ruins soon on my other site: www.exploringaroundsantafe.blogspot.com)

The vegetable garden wouldn't be complete without a scarecrow or two. Their faces were carved years back from wood by one of the workers at LQ. They used to both be male, but the closer one is a transexual. They are quite happy together, but really don't help much with crows. The owl is actually much more useful in that department.

Our scarecrow couple sometimes like a change of scene. This covered wagon is one of many left in Santa Fe from the days when this was the end of the Old Santa Fe Trail. It is in better shape than most, and can still be rolled.

LQ fronts on Canyon Road at one end, where a particularly nice gallery rounds out the property. There the garden features an ever-changing display of sculpture pieces. Note the stone retaining wall holding the slope behind the children; it was beautifully constructed by skilled Mexican stone masons by dry stacking carefully fitted rough cut rocks.

In another garden in town, I spotted this emblematic sheep's skull. I relate this thematically to the ladder pictured above. Georgia O'Keefe deserves credit for popularizing both of these icons.

Elsewhere in Santa Fe, someone got creative with...what? Barrel hoops? And whatever that central object is. But it looks nice and probable was not expensive. Found objects are great! Here's a unique statement full of imagination and whimsy.

At my own home, I needed a place to display a small collection of glass insulators and antique bottles, some of which were found at TP while we were digging the garden. A rustic fence, made of Siberian elm branches (those weed trees aren't completely useless!), which provides a modicum of privacy while lending support to two roses and a clematis, offered a place to show them off in the sunlight.

Ornamenting your garden space is a great way to express yourself and use some of those odd-ball things gathering dust in the garage. If you liked it enough to keep it, put it out there! My rock collection is also displayed in the garden, as are interesting pieces of driftwood, a whole earth flag, and a license plate which offers the name Pan. It's all shown off in the tiny area behind the elm fence, and it is all showing who we are. Get creative and above all, have fun!

Bringing In Potted Plants For The Winter

When the leaves start to turn gold in the fall, we keep a sharp eye on the weather reports. Of course there are tomatoes and other tender veggies to harvest, but at LQ there are also many potted plants which have spent the warm months outside, and now must go back inside before the first hard frost.

Every pot must be dealt with in one way or another. Indoor space is limited. Some plants are destined to be treated as annuals (some are!), others are separated into individual pots to be re-grouped in the spring. The plant stand in the foreground is a temporary washing station.

Note the blue post-it on this pot. It has my detailed instructions to the gardening crew on how to deal with this pot. It will let them know if they need to wash the plant, spray it with neem oil and/or BT (bacillus thuringiensis), and put it in the cool alcove, the greenhouse, the laundry room, or the sun room. Each space has its own winter "climate", and it makes a big difference where the plants go.

It is important to wash and spray the plants before bringing them in, to ensure that we aren't introducing any pests or disease organisms which tend to proliferate indoors. Note tiny insects on underside of this leaf. Washing and spraying must be thorough, and prune to reduce size, remove any dead or damaged leaves at this point. Wait until spring to fertilize.

A pot like this will have its plants potted up separately. By spring they will all need larger containers.

Some plants never make it outside. These orchids aren't particularly happy in our dry climate, but a daily misting and setting them on top of a grate over standing water helps.

When the plants come inside the sunroom becomes a wonderful tropical paradise. In this picture you can see fuschias, pelargoniums (commonly called geraniums), begonias, amaryllis, hibiscus, and thunbergia (black-eyed susan vine). Other plants are added specifically for fragrance. Besides local nurseries, a favorite source for potted plants is Loggee's Nursery, which has a wonderfully enticing list of tropicals.

This geranium (pelargonium) has absolutely delicious bicolored blossoms!

An unusual fuschia with orange flowers which contrast fetchingly with its burgundy stems and foliage.

This hanging streptocarpus is one of Mrs. B's favorite pass-along plants. It is almost always in bloom, and its velvety leaves hang down on stems at least three feet long...a real show-stopper!

Here's an amaryllis I missed in the last blog. This is one of the shorties I said I felt were out of proportion, but now that I look at it, it's kind of cute!

This delicate begonia looks as good out of bloom as it does while blooming. A gift from some visitors, it always gets pride of place.

Plants which don't attain the show place of the sunroom may be relegated to the greenhouse. This building was retrofitted from the old duck house, and has a low ceiling fitted with skylights and large windows on the south side. I call it "the cave", as it is rather dark for a real production greenhouse. Nevertheless, plants love it, as you can see! It is really ideal for overwintering, as it never freezes and stays cool and moist. A fan helps circulate the air to reduce insect and disease problems, and when it gets really cold we turn on an oil-filled space heater. On sunny days we open the door so it doesn't overheat. Simple.

A gorgeous salvia, which is tender in our zone 5b, is well worth keeping in the greenhouse for another year.

Geranium bud about to burst. Plants are rotated into and out of the house as they go in and out of bloom. Geraniums (pelargoniums) are one of the plants pestered by cabbage loopers, and it is important to spray them with BT.

At my home the prize for fragrance goes to the sansevieria (sword plant, mother-in-law's tounge) a plant which blooms rarely but when it does, it perfumes the entire house! It sits on my bathroom counter year round, and was propagated from my mother's plant. I have it planted in the old green glass steamer I used to hang over when I was congested as a child, so the whole thing is really very nostalgic!

I bring in tender perennials as well, but really don't have much room for them. They crowd my studio all winter. Someday we plan to add a greenhouse outside these doors, and then, watch out! Plant heaven!

Animals at TP

Here's our dog Cassidy, thwarted by the Cadillac of Compost Bins. The old compost pile was still there when the bins were first made. A pile needs to be at least four or five feet tall in the center when it is first built in order to have enough mass to hear up properly. It can be any length, and is always tuned in one direction: towards the garden. New material is added at the end away from the garden and finished material is removed at the end closest to the garden. Handy that way. But the dogs tended to dig up tasty scraps and made a mess of things, so the new bins were built.

About ten years ago a Mennonite family moved to TP and brought milk goats and chickens. Although they have since moved on, the goats and chooks remain.

There are now separate co-ops for each. A few families take care of the chickens and gather eggs. We like to let the chickens run in the goat pen, as we get a lot fewer flies when they can scratch around and eat the larvae.

Our goats are sable Saanens, the largest dairy goat and heaviest producer. These are our second generation, born here, and around seven years old. We love the milk! The co-op for the goats is made up of a mixture of TP residents and neighbors. These goats happen, by an odd coincidence, to be descendants from the herd we used to get milk from in the Santa Cruz mountains when we lived there! This is Becca, looking expectantly for a treat.

Here is Kat with the three kids she had this spring. As you can see, they love tree leaves and bark more than anything, making them useful in controlling the very invasive Siberian elms that were introduced to Santa Fe before they knew better. More on these elms later. Anyway, I have to give the goats credit. We have a nicely self-contained system thanks to them. We get loads of milk and cheese and yogurt, and a handy source of manure for the garden to boot!

Composting

A good compost pile is the backbone of a good garden. I like to have a hot compost, above 140 degrees Farenheit, preferably. The hot temperature is the result of microbes digesting the organic matter in the pile. Hot compost kills weed seeds and pathogens. However, some people prefer cold compost, which is easier to make, but takes longer. Anytime you put together a large pile of organic matter and water it will eventually decay. Don't feel daunted if you can't put up a Cadillac Compost Bin like we have. Just a pile will work, as long as it is big enough. Compost happens!

We used to just have a compost pile, which worked but was messy, especially after some of the community dogs developed a taste for rotted kitchen scraps. So the community agreed to invest in some really fine bins. I based the design on the ones we had been using at LQ, which Alec, the compost king, had built. But these bins are even better. There are four bins, each four feet wide and six feet deep by five feet high. The front is made of 1" X 10"s which slide into place between grooves. Between the bins there's a similar system in the front half of the dividing separation. The back half and the outside are reinforced wire mesh.

My husband Steve, the reigning regent of the veggie garden at TP, has taken on the composting duties as well. He likes seeing the magical transformation of waste into black gold. Finished compost is black and crumbly, with no smell. It is essential for organic gardening.

There are four bins in all. We use the left bin, Bin A, to accumulate chopped organic material. Kitchen scraps not fed to the goats and chickens, like onions, coffee grounds, and citrus peels go into the small tin trash can so he can properly integrate them into the pile. Bin B is the newest pile, made from a mixture of the goat and chicken pen mucked out material, the chopped weeds and prunings from bin A, and kitchen scraps all. These materials are layered like lasagna, watered as they go in. The whole pile is topped with a layer of straw or dry leaves.

The compost gets turned twice a year. It's a big job and does take some muscle. Definitely better with a few folks taking turns...that's one of the advantages of cohousing. Before the biannual mucking, we turn the piles to empty Bin B so it's ready to receive the new compost. Bin D, on the far right, is the oldest, and has been emptied by then. So the pile in C goes into D, then B is turned into C, leaving B empty for the new pile. The compost goes mostly to the veggie garden, which is close at hand. Some makes its way to the ornamental gardens as well, adding valuable nitrogen and organic matter to our sandy soil.

Here Steve turns the pile from one bin to the next. You can see how useful the removable slats between the bins are. The turning speeds up the process, as material that had been squashed on the bottom winds up on the top, and everything is mixed up, making material more accessible to the tiny organisms that are working on it.

I often liken building a compost pile to making bread. Both depend on biological activity to work, and require a familiarity with getting the right balance of ingredients. As Steve turns the material, he fluffs it with a practiced toss of the pitch fork. This adds air into the pile, which is necessary for biological activity. Meanwhile I add water with a hose. I use a brass shut-off valve to control the spray and am careful not to overwater, which would cause the pile to go anaerobic. It should feel like a damp sponge. Without any water, there would be no decomposition.

Because our manure comes from the goat pen, it is often trampled into hard layers. Here he breaks up the clods with a Japanese farmer's hoe, which we got from Seeds of Change. "Get the right tool for the job!" sez Mr. Natural.

On one of our Community Days, we see another cohousing resident cutting sunflower stalks into short lengths before they are put into the bin. This is an important step; chopped material breaks down much more quickly, and doesn't cause problems when turning the pile.

The finished product enriches the veggie garden in the early spring before planting. We love our compost bins; now we have a neat pile and no more sick dogs! The soil here is very low in organic matter and the sunlight is so intense that it burns it up quickly. If we didn't make compost we'd have to buy it to be able to do a vegetable garden. But since we have the animals and lots of organic waste at hand, it makes sense to nourish the land, and ultimately ourselves, this way.

Old Reliable

Tired of flat tires, broken handles, and cheap fittings that don't hold up? Just get one of these! My husband's grandfather's wheelbarrow, with its metal wheel, has never failed us. It sits outside year-round and gets zero maintenance. Good luck finding one, though...it has to be almost 90 years old! They just don't make 'em like they used to!