Tuesday, July 12, 2005

The Big Picture

I'm trying to remember, amongst my fascination with the detail of each individual blossom, that "context is everything". Without the broader picture, my pics might well seem just nice catalog shots. So with that in mind, this morning I mowed the paths around the garden beds, and then dragged a ladder back to a tall pine near the garden, for a few overhead shots. Here's the first view, from around 10 a.m.

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This next bed is a section of rehabilitated old garden, and one of my first experiments in mixed plantings. In the foreground is one of the smaller hearty stands of oregano, and a pair of cherry tomato plants, who are coexisting with some pink monarda, two young agastache plants, a host of cleome and the recently featured lupine. It's a well spaced jumble, with an assortment of zinnia, allyssum and bachelor button seedlings underplanted.

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Here's the Three Sisters garden. In the lower foreground are the tops of assorted grasses and such from the adjacent wild meadow. Corn, beans, squash and pumpkins are planted together here, on either side of the shell path. Behind and to the left is another wild patch featuring something I know (perhaps erroneously) as "iron weed" and a large yucca. In the center is red valerian and a cardinal flower plant. To the right is another ubiquitous oregano mound.

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I guess we could call this the Tomato Path. It's a combination of oyster and clam shells, with some broken patio blocks I got (at a nice deep discount) at one of our local garden centers. Center in this photo (beyond the path)is another cloud of oregano, a red limerick coreopsis at it's feet to the left, and a trio of staked tomatos to the right. Foreground center is a tall milkweed plant, flanked by young tomato plants. There's the big yucca from the earlier shot, with marguerite daisies ringing the close side. On either side of the path are the latest groups of thriving allyssum seedlings.

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This part of the garden is like the rest, quite the amalgam. There's still more oregano. In this "open section" between oregano clumps, there are also a host of wild things, including what look to be asters, goldenrod and evening primrose. Also, you'll find some of the African marigolds, a dahlia plant, red monarda, rudbeckia, sunflowers, milkweed, cosmos and foxglove, underplanted with more allyssum and some gazanias.

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This picture ought to have been taken a little earlier in the day, as the bed to the left of the image is clearly washed out from too-bright sunlight (oh, well...quite a complaint for July, eh?). Anyway, this shot shows the gardens, looking from the woods end of the garden, toward the garden shed. The house is lost in the woods behind the shed, only barely visible.

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And here's another overshot, taken around 5:00 p.m.

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