Happy Birthday Don!

Today is my husband Don's birthday. In celebration, I thought I'd post some photos of Don and the garden...wait, Don's not a gardener.

My husband is one of those people who can never sit still, he's always doing something, fixing something, cleaning something and so on. Right now he's playing with the dog :-)

The top photo was a landscape shot of two of my perennial borders, they flank our long driveway. People laugh when I say I have no room left for another plant, as you can see, we have more than 1/2 acre in just lawn out front. My comment on that was to take Don's old golf clubs and use them as a planter. I move them around on the lawn depending on how I feel. It's my little way of saying that this place still looks more like a golf course than a botanical garden.


While Don would never point out a specific plant and say "let's plant that in our garden" he does come up with good ideas on hardscape and placement of my beloved garden "junque". This old wooden ladder came with our house and we finally replaced it with a new fiberglass one. Rather than put the ladder out at the curb Don suggested propping it against one of our largest Oak trees. It was the perfect place to showcase some of my lovely rustic birdhouses I had brought home from Nova Scotia.

The climber planted at the base of the ladder is a Shizophragma hydrangeoides. This spring will be it's third year there and I expect a huge growth spurt. I've also pulled down a branch or two and put a rock on them in hopes of propagating a few more.


I know, only a true gardener would appreciate this shot of the back of my compost heap. When we moved here we didn't know enough to make the previous owner clear all his junk (his is junk, mine is "junque") from the yard. There was a big stack of these concrete retaining blocks.

Don spent a whole weekend clearing the back corner and made me a great compost area. You can see that over the years I outgrew that space and now we have a second holding bin behind the original one where I like to dump huge piles of leaves.


Here you can see my rock garden. It was a quick solution to hide some broken steps but has become a favorite spot of mine. I can't say that Don truly appreciates this artistic attempt as I've caught him stepping over the plants. Still, I chose this photo because behind it you can see our pool and out door eating area and those totally belong to Don.

I barely vacuum the house and the day we moved here I announced I would never vacuum the pool. Luckily that has never been an issue as Don comes home from work every day in the summer and immediately checks out the pool.

And finally, a photo of Don at rest. LOL not really, anybody who knows Don knows that this is obviously posed and I'll also add that Calie the wonder-doodle was quite posed too as she has no desire to be on that wiggly moving thing.

Tomorrow I'll be back to posting plant photos, I'm feeling like I need to share some Hosta photos but for today, Happy Birthday Don!

Love,
Melanie