Photo's through the years

Being January, there's not much I can do about gardening right now. One of my new years resolutions is to rejoin the gardening world, plant a new garden and hopefully see some gardening friends again. Over the last four years I've continued to grow some things, visit gardens and take photos. My mind though is rusty, plant names that used to trip across my tongue are hard to remember. I've been reading my old posts and going through thousands of photos to loosen things up in my brain. 

Thousands of photos? Absolutely! Today I added up a few photos and found that in 2008 I took 1,656 garden related photos. 2009 was a banner year with 2,498 photos. 2010 was the last year I had my big garden, I was working at that time but I still managed to take 799 photos. Today's post will take you back through those years with a focus on what I want now for our new garden.

We have more shade than sun in our little cottage garden. This opening shot of variegated Lamium taken in 2008 shows the type of plant that will grow well here.

In 2009 this pink Symphytum combined with a very tall Thalictrum caught my eye. I won't have the luxury of many large plants but I think I can fit both of these in our back shade corner.

There will definitely be room for a few Pulmonaria. I like this variety without spots on the leaves.

Succulents were already a passion of mine. The first time Andy brought me to his home I was thrilled to find he grew cacti in his kitchen window. We will both have a nice little succulent garden out front.

Hosta "Liberty" was a show stopper. I'll be on the lookout to see if I can find it again. 

One small garden we haven't begun clearing yet will be the perfect spot for some cottage flowers. I'll be looking for handouts, hope somebody has an Iris or two to share with me. This was taken in 2010, the hot pink plant behind it is an annual that self sows, "Silene armeria".

Stokesia is another cottage garden plant that will do well for us. I remember being disappointed at first when growing it as it sprawled all over. Once I learned to take advantage of that trait, it became a favorite.

My life has been full of changes since 2010. For three years I rented a darling cottage in Centerport, just two blocks away from here. Early 2013 I met the love of my life, Andy. We spent many an evening that summer sipping a drink in my little patio garden. 

Andy loves the outdoors as much as I do if not more. We both love to travel, in 2013 we rode bicycles on Block Island, walked the Brooklyn Bridge, swam in Florida, rode a motorcycle all over Long Island and so much more. 

While visiting Andy's family I got my first glimpse of Green Lakes State Park outside of Syracuse NY

2014 brought a new change, Andy surprised me with an awesome new camera, a Nikon D5300. to tell the truth, it was so advanced from anything I ever used that it's taken me a year to begin to become comfortable with it. We love to visit all the wonderful parks and gardens around us, this was taken in September at SUNY Farmingdale. I have so many amazing photos from that day that I'll have to post them on their own.

The Peconic River Herb Farm was a delightful afternoon ride for us with the reward of visiting some delicious vineyards before heading home. The trips only escalated in 2014, Florida and Block Island again plus a trip of a lifetime through California.

Long Island isn't the only draw, we go in to Manhattan often. A fall walk on the HiLine was a mind blowing trip. Hopefully we'll go back there again around Mother's Day.

I can't tell you all how much I am enjoying sharing these photos and words with all of you, it feels good to be back.

melanie

In a nutshell - 2014

With the year coming to a close I find myself looking through the photos I've taken this past year. Although I haven't been posting, it doesn't mean I haven't been gardening. Those of you who know me will recognize that the location of my garden has changed again. This time I think I'm really home.

The gardens here are quite different than anything I've worked with before. It's by far the smallest property I've worked with which actually turns out to be quite difficult. In the past I had a large empty piece of property to develop. The yards here were overgrown and quite shady. Luckily Andy
encourages me to make changes.

The existing beds still need quite a bit of work, this one is filled with the common ditch daylily. I've learned not to rip anything out until I'm ready to replant the area.

My first focal point was this small garden along the front porch. It gets afternoon sun, just enough to support most perennials. I'm trying hard to stick with a cottage garden theme.

This small area was already planted with a few perennials and bulbs. Although I thinned them out I tried to keep what I liked. I'm not sure but I think these are scilla, if you know better please let me know.

By June the plants filled in well enough. Maybe it's silly but I have the hardest time buying plants that I used to give away. These all grew in such abundance in my other gardens, I'm looking forward to having enough plants that I can trade some for other varieties. The Ladies Mantle (Alchemilla Mollis) was a must have for me.

The next bed was the one inside the front fence. This is another key location as we see it when we sit on the front porch and walk out the door. It's also visible to the many walkers that fill this neighborhood. It will take another year before I have this filled the way I like. Andy replaced the globe light with a nice lantern just last week, it makes a huge difference.

In front of the picket fence along the street is a stretch that is just covered with pebbles. In a moment of genius I realized I had a spot to grow my succulents. While they'd like a little more light, they did quite well in this location. I was thrilled that nobody tried to help themselves to anything here.

The last garden which was the only one we planted in 2013 too is the small vegetable bed. We had tomatoes, eggplants and peppers here. The peppers did the best but we loved the eggplant so much that we want to plant more next year. The fence won't make it through another year so there'll be a new one before we plant our next crop.

Over the next few months I'll break these gardens down a bit. It looks like Melanie's Old Country Garden has become a cottage garden. Hope you don't mind!

melanie

A New Blog For Me

Hi there!

It's been an awful long time since I've posted to this blog. As some of you know, there have been many changes to my life in the past four years. 

The good news is I'm in a wonderful place now and finally back on track for some writing and photography. While my gardens now are a small cottage garden and not yet ready for photos, I get to visit lots and lots of other gardens like the one photographed above, The Peconic River Herb Farm.

My partner Andy and I travel quite a bit, even if sometimes its just to one of the stunning locations right here on Long Island. I've started a new blog, it's at The Island Walkabout and I hope you'll come visit me and say "hi"!

I've missed so many of you so I will try to post here too, there's always lots of gardening ideas to share like this hanging bottle tree. 

Glad to be back!

melanie

Love at Sagamore Hill

In March Andy bought a brand new Harley Davidson Road Glide. It was chilly out for riding but we bundled up and went for some rides here on Long Island.

 Last Saturday he suggested we visit some places on the north shore, near us. The first was the Vanderbilt estate in Centerport, then we decided to visit Teddy Roosevelt's home, Sagamore Hill. The flowering trees were in all their glory and as we drove into the parking lot we drove right past a female turkey.

It's courting season and soon we saw the male turkey, trying his best to gain the female's interest. I took a photo even though the light was too harsh. Off we went then to sip mimosa's on the front lawn.

On our return walk to the parking area I wondered out loud if we'd see the turkeys again.

As we got close to the parking area, my wish came true. Not only were the turkeys there, they were circling Andy's Harley! The female turkey seemed to be quite taken with this large beast and the male turkey was working very hard to get her attention once again.

 For quite some time the female continued to circle the motorcycle. People had gathered and were all taking photos of this amazing scene.

 Then the female turkey saw something else that interested her and off she went...

 It was Andy! Now she began to circle around him, the male still trying to gain her admiration with his feathers all puffed out.

 Back they went to the Harley where finally the male turkey won out. The female allowed the male to stand on her back, his feet stomping back and forth for a number of minutes.

 It was the most magical moment, a once in a life time opportunity. If you scroll up and down and look at the photos you'll see something Andy pointed out to me. The male turkey's neck turned red as his excitement grew.

When they finished, they walked a few feet away. I thought the sound of the Rinehart racing pipes would make them run away but instead the male puffed up larger than ever and started approaching us while making aggressive gobbling sounds.

VROOOOOOMMMMM Hurry up Andy, I don't want to get pecked by an angry turkey!

Somehow I think this is only the beginning of some amazing adventures on Andy's Harley-Davidson

melanie

In retrospect

The end of January, bitter cold winds and temperatures but suddenly one notices the days getting longer. Winter still has it's icy grip on us but Spring is just around the corner.

Beauty can still be found in the ice formations along the water front but brrrr, how much nicer to look at something green.

I thought I'd choose a few old photos from the past to get our imaginations flowing...

From the smallest frond unfurling to color in all it's glory, I love ferns!

Fuzzy drumstick heads...

Fat prickly fronds...

Airy and delicate lady ferns...

None of them are here in my new home but oh to dream that they will once again grace my garden...

Such are heavenly dreams made of.

Raised beds & Edging materials

Raised garden beds...  There's a million and one reasons why, where and how, here's a few of my ideas. It was many years into my gardening craze before we built the raised beds I longed for. Rock and stone hold a fascination for me, I remember many walks with my Dad where he'd find a cool stone and put it in his pocket (I still have a few!).

Stone walls last longer than wood and many other materials. If built well they are also much sturdier. My new neighborhood here in Centerport is chock full of amazing rock walls I'll be photographing in the spring. This opening shot was in my old garden, one of my favorite spots, built with Pennsylvania wall stone. (Hey, there's one of Dad's stones right on the top ledge!)

Of course there's many different building materials to edge a bed with besides wall stone. Brick was popular at one time and if you have free bricks laying around, they still will work. A word of caution here, bricks will move easily and slowly sink in to the ground so you need to dig them up every few years. 

(Now how many of you were looking at the planted shopping cart instead?)

Here's another side of that Pennsylvania field stone wall in my old garden. We had some old local boulders that were found when digging a nearby foundation and I was so happy to be able to incorporate them in the design. 

Raised beds like these are easier to weed as there is much less bending but there are also negatives. Chipmunks delighted in tunneling throughout these beds and the soil also dried out much faster than nearby beds at ground level so required extra watering.

There will always be extra stone left over from a wall installation. In my case I simply laid them out in a wandering line near the back of my property. As a weed barrier I put newspaper under them. It worked well for years and had a nice rustic, tumbled look in my shade bed.

 From this angle you can see how haphazard they were. A tap by the lawn mower and they were soon in a slightly different formation but that's the exact look I wanted.

The front entrance of our driveway had been edged with boulders that came out of the hole for the foundation of our house. They had been there for about 35 years when we moved in. As a shade bed filled with tree roots it was a challenging spot but once I figured it out it was incredibly rewarding.

The most creative edging I've ever used was old pier pilings being ripped out of a neighbors garden. We simply put them in a curvy "S" pattern on their end and they were wonderful. If I was building a garden today here on Long Island I'd be combing all the curbsides taking the 2' log rounds that everybody has lined up from Hurricane Sandy. What a perfect building material!

 Across from my old house were these beautiful newly built beds at my friend Cynthia's house. A simple design and I was oh so jealous. How silly of me :-) but there's nothing like seeing all that naked soil and dreaming of what can be planted there.

Down in the Carolina's I managed to take a picture of simple block edging. Here on Long Island we call these Belgium blocks. The soil isn't raised very high at the front but gets higher in the back.

I tried the same thing with a few blocks I had beside my garage. One problem I had here was grass growing up between these blocks so I had to go out and find a top of the line weed digger...

As you can see, she worked very hard at digging up those weeds. Nothing would get in her way!

 Today if I was going to go wild and crazy I'd try something totally different. Looking through my photos for these edging materials I stumbled across this on and thought to myself that it would be so cool to edge a bed with a few rows of clay pots in graduating sizes. Just fill in behind them, fill the pots with all kinds of cool succulents and Voila!

Ah well, this is the time of year to dream!

This post is a milestone for me. Number 400 here on Melanie's Old Country Gardens. You can scroll and click along the sidelines under "labels" and find all kinds of different things. Hope you enjoy reading as much as I love writing.

Full of thanks, (and Thanksgiving leftovers)
melanie

Hurricane Sandy...the day after

As the world knows, the north eastern region of the USA was struck by Hurricane Sandy on October 29, 2012. These photos were taken as the storm subsided, October 30th. I've continued taking photos and will share them in a timely fashion.

This first shot was taken right in front of my house, facing the corner of Garfield and Jackson Crescent.
Power was out here by early afternoon.

This was the first time I have ever been alone during a storm and frankly, I was scared. Dinner though was an adventure. I took some left overs from the fridge, cooked ravioli, pulled pork, homemade tomato sauce and put it all in a frying pan with shredded mozzarella on top. YUM! Thank goodness the top of my gas stove was still working.

As I walked the neighborhood Tuesday morning this was the first house I saw with a tree upon it. Only 3 houses away from me, reality struck home and the tears began to flow. Tears of sadness for my lovely new neighborhood, tears of sadness for the unknown world (no contact via phone/internet/tv/radio) and yes tears of relief that my little cottage was still whole.

By the time I saw this house I had seen many others in similar distress. For some reason though I thought this house was occupied by a family with children and I didn't want to imagine a child's fear if this monstrosity came crashing upon one's bedroom.

The root systems in some cases were enormous, almost more to deal with than the trees themselves. These were large healthy trees.

We had little rain with the storm, it was a blessing for us. We would have lost so many more trees if the grounds were saturated. Look close and you'll see how dry the soil under this root mass is just as the storm was leaving our area.

It was hard to venture far from home on October 30th. The winds were still strong, squalls blew through and there was an underlying sense of "what might yet come".

A few blocks down the road the aftermath on Coolidge stopped me in my tracks. I only had my phone with me on that trip but had to snap another photo.

We were lucky to have power at my bank in Islandia so I had to be there the next few days. In the next post you'll see photos I took a few days after the storm.

melanie