… on discovering the gardens

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Today’s Daylily… yesterday.

When I’m in Maine, it is easy (and, c’mon, natural) to be drawn to the water.

Because, here’s why:

  • The boats (Maine’s summer ‘traffic’), the folks in and on the water (mostly ‘on’, vs. ‘in’… until at least mid-August, when the water goes from ‘polar’ to a balmy ‘frigid’)
  • plentiful seagulls & cormorants (the loons of the ocean)
  • osprey
  • herons
  • eagles (two nest at the pond two houses down the street)
  • the shunned seal who appears every few years (we think he maybe tells off-color jokes and is banished from the colony for a few days as penance)… anyway, he appears on the ledge near our dock and hangs out until the tide rises and floats him off… only to return when the tip of the rock becomes visible again as the tide recedes.
  • the lobsters and crabs scuttling all around beneath our dock, which at low tide floats only a couple of feet above the silty bottom, so we can see all their comings and goings
  • lobster boats
  • Get it?

But I have read that, in life, one must take time to smell the roses.

Or dead head them.

I’m pretty sure either one works, but the former kicks the latter’s arse.

Except when meditative, mindless activity is called for. Then deadheading rocks.

So today I need to turn my attention from the water to the gardens, which are incredible here if I do say so myself… which I do and can…mainly because I do not live here full-time and so cannot take credit, as I worked with some very cool people who made them happen (hence I am not tooting my own horn (or green (not) thumb)).

So I thought I should introduce you to the gardens in the coming days, and I got all excited because this means I should name them and that could be a very cool thing because I can never decide what to name my house – in the chic European-ish and Australian-y way that gives houses such personality – but I might be able to start with the gardens.

Baby steps!

Seriously. I mean, I call the house “The Inn” which it was once, so that’s not all that creative or personal.

I was gonna call it ‘The Maine House’ and even get a sign that said that, but someone else on the island already has a big sign that says “The Maine House” hung, you know, on their house, so now that feels so not what my house’s name should be.

Then I thought of my flying pigs and maybe I should name it something to do with them… Zombie Pig Farm? But then I thought, ‘Nah.’ (Mainly because it is not a farm, not because of the Zombie Pig thing. I don’t care if people worry that I am harboring undead porcine beings at my house here).

But that won’t happen now because someone else right around the corner has a flying pig sign at the end of their driveway.

Nope. Not kidding.

Someday I will meet them and we will become great friends bonding over winged pigs… this is, of course, in my fantasy life of many friends and summer gatherings involving Great Gatsby-esque parties that I don’t really have any interest in attending in my non-fantasy life.

So, no flying pigs will be in the name of the house.

But anyway, you are getting the picture that naming the house becomes quite involved and then people get all advice-y and I get frustrated because I am in no hurry but this should be easier than it is and I will not be bullied into a name before it is time. As with porn identification, I will know it when I see it (or hear it or stumble across it).

House names and porn are like that.

But in the mean time, I can dip my big toe in the house-naming pond by naming my gardens. So this evening and maybe tomorrow morning I will head out and take some photos of the garden areas. Some won’t have flowers now (which is why I need to, you know, deadhead roses… because apparently to encourage them to grow you have to lop off their heads).

Seems, somehow, counter intuitive.

Must be a flora vs. fauna thing.

Biology was hard.

So I have come up with official names for my gardens here, and will introduce you to them as I take their photos in the coming days. In full disclosure, I will not be telling you all about each garden and its flowers because I don’t know anything about any of them because along with biology, botany is hard (and requires focus, which I do not have).

Seriously. I will probably end up posting a photo of the garden, captioning it with the garden’s official name, and then telling you about some dog that pooped on my lawn that morning or the time I found a frog in my bed… which was pretty awesome because…

Wait.

Focus.

Here are the new and awesome official names for my gardens:

  • The Secret Garden
  • The Water Beach Rose Garden
  • The Single Daffodil That Gets Mowed Down at the Beginning of Every Season Garden
  • The Stop Parking Your Car on My Freakin’ Lawn Garden(s)
  • The Daylily Garden With Flowers That I Never Get to Know Well Because They Only Last A Day and What’s the Point Garden
  • The Make The Fence Look Homey With Climb-y Things and Color Garden
  • Rose Central
  • Hydrangea Row
  • Bee and Hummingbird Way
  • The Keep It Coming, Late in the Season Garden Near the Door
  • The Little Gardens Near Rose Central and Hydrangea Row That Bloom Right After the Roses and Hydrangeas So I don’t Feel Too Sad When the Roses and Hydrangeas, You Know, Die.
  • The New But Still Sparse Beach Row Hill in the Back Yard
  • The Labyrinth With Rejuvenated Rock Paths (that just happened yesterday).

Oh I am sure you cannot wait because all of those names are spect-awsome-lar, as well as totally proper and Euro-Australian in their naming (seriously, the Queen will probably steal a few of those names as soon as she reads this post… as a matter of fact…Hey Yer Majesty, this is copyrighted as soon as I hit ‘post’ and that includes the names of my gardens, yo.)

That should do it.

Freakin’ royalty.

Thanks for readin’.

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