Review: The Invisible Garden by Dorthy Sucher

I received this book as a Christmas gift off of my ever-growing Amazon wish list. (That probably means it was recommended from another blog at some time, but I have no idea where.) It made a great diversion during a busy few weeks moving into a new place.

This isn’t a how-to at all, but a reflection on some of the author’s memories associated with her garden in Vermont. In some ways it made me a little envious…I would love a garden that I could work in for years. Right now, I have no garden and more moves in my future. This book made me look forward to that day when I will actually have a garden and be able to work on it for many years.

Because I have not had the experience of owning my own land, this book was a great look at what goes into changing a property into a garden. Many of the sketches were humorous, others more serious (I was devastated when a horrid wind storm came along later in the book), and all carried a great sense of connection between the gardener and her garden. I enjoyed every page, and read it almost as quickly as a novel. No free copy with this posted, but you can get it for a penny plus shipping off of Amazon. (And it is worth reading.)

Outside

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The weather is warmer than Utah. Of course the weather everywhere has been warmer so I’m sure about that, but even the cold days here aren’t like the cold days in Utah. We’ve enjoyed the parks around here. Peter also got a bike from goodwill that he’s been enjoying. It’s nice to be able to go outside a lot, even in January. I will post pictures of the new place, but I’m working on decorations for the walls. Which has been fun, but also a little time consuming so I’m not done yet.

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Ornamental Grasses

DON’T cut them back before winter. This was a demonstration garden in New Mexico. Everything was dormant, but not boring. The ornamental grasses were spectacular.

I mentioned a house earlier that I enjoyed the landscape of. It had lots of ornamental grasses. I drove by one day and was horrified to find they chopped all the grasses down. They lost a whole season of potential beauty from doing so.

Some grasses can flop because of wind and snow load, etc. But what’s the harm in waiting until they actually look bad to cut them back? It might actually push some gardening into winter, which I don’t think is a bad thing.

New Home

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We have a new home now. We drove in, looked at the apartment and signed all the paperwork that now means we will be here for the next year. The apartment is nice and spacious. We came with very little furniture, but by Friday night it was entirely furnished. That meant a lot of time spent at the store lately. I found good deals at Goodwill, Ikea and Walmart. The walls still need decoration, but its nice to have a comfy bed to sleep on and a couch to use.

My only reservation with the place is the thought that maybe I don’t need quite as much space, etc. and could have been paying less. But it is nice to have room for visitors (we already housed Joe’s classmate for a while) and there isn’t anything I don’t like either. My favorite is the pond (with fish) and walking path that’s right outside. We took a walk on Sunday and it was all misty and quite lovely with all the moss and trees around. Very different than Utah.

I’m enjoying the area as well. Everything is very close. Within about a mile we can go to a park or library, shop, and Joe can go to work. There are way more trees here, with lots of woody areas. Trees are a much better backdrop than sagebrush for everything. The weather has been warm–we’ve been out without any sort of jacket on. It’s almost been warm enough to actually run the AC. The GPS has been incredibly useful in finding our way through all the windy roads around here, but I’m starting to at least know my way to the grocery store, park, and library (we’ve been there a lot because we are still waiting for internet.)

Traveling

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Two days after Christmas, we crammed too much stuff into our van and headed off to Georgia. Luckily, this photo does not reflect all of our travels, but some moments were like it. And you can see how packed the van was.

We drove seven to eight hours a day, and tried to do one fun thing each day. In New Mexico we took a walk in a nature park, where Peter had fun chasing geese and I enjoyed a demonstration garden.

In Albuquerque we toured the Balloon Museum. I discovered hot air balloons are quite boring to fly. They only go up and down, and then you have to wait for wind currents to take you anywhere. (They had a few simulators up.)

I enjoyed the humid, swampy air in Arkansas where we took a little walk and went disk golfing. We lost two disks in the first two holes on the disk golf course. The course was by a river, and on the first hole there was water on either side. I threw mine into the water on the left, and Joe threw his into the water on the right. We kept going anyway and enjoyed the rest of the course.

We spent the weekend at Aunt Becki’s house. Peter had lots of toys and cousins to play with, and it was a great break from lots of driving and Cars 2 (we watched that many times to get Peter through the trip). I’ve wanted to go visit for a while, and enjoyed spending lots of time with them. The weather has been incredible, so we went out to the park one day. Becki’s a great photographer to, and posted photos of us here that are very cute.

One week after leaving, we arrived at our final destination: Duluth GA, just northeast of Atlanta.

Moved

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I haven’t written from a while because my little family has been driving across the country to move from the familiar Utah to brand new Atlanta. We took four and a half days and drove a mini van packed full with our belongings across the varied landscapes of Utah, New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama and finally into Georgia.

I moved from snow-capped mountains, to deserts, than boring flatlands that turned into red-soiled hills. Than came more and more trees (“woods” don’t really exist in the west without mountains involved). My favorite part of the drive was the Ozarks/River bottoms in Arkansas where we spent a night, a small walk, and an interesting game of disk golf.

At every landscape change I thought about gardening there. I wonder if the red clay soil would be as difficult to work with as it looks, how it would be to garden in a swamp, and the advantage of actually having natural growing trees in an area rather than having to plant them all.

I can no longer identify all the common landscape plants. The trees aren’t leaved out and herbaceous plants are dormant, but even ignoring them there is a lot I don’t know. There’s actually broad leaf evergreen trees out here. No such thing grows in Utah.

It’s the start of a new year and it will be a different one. Right now I’m excited for it all.

Christmas

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I’m catching up, now that we have internet in our new place. I wrote the next three posts some time ago, but now you actually get to read them. 

Christmas this years wasn’t that grand. Peter was out of sorts with continued interruption to routine and a lack of sleep. He did enjoy opening and playing with presents. He received a couple of new car toys and a couple of bored games which are some of his favorite toys.  It was also fun to visit with all of our family before we left.

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Christmas Presents

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So this year, I ended up making a few hand-made gifts. My favorite are these:

(see tutorial here) They went to my sister and her family. Plus Peter got a practice one. I made this board for my brother’s wedding:

It was a lot of fun to do. I went on a walk and took all the pictures of the letters, and then found house numbers for the date. It then went together with a lot of photo-editing and mod podge.  Finally was this grocery bag holder for my mom:

(see tutorial here) That project plus sewing lots of skirts for my brother’s wedding was too much on my poor sewing machine. Now the sewing machine not only has the previous problem of a mis-aligned needle, but the tension is very off. I need a machine repair–but it’ll wait until Georgia.

2011 in Review

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We started this year in Springville which we enjoyed. In the summer, we moved in with Liz’s grandparents in Pleasant Grove. As a family, we were able to hike 100 miles, camped at Zion’s, and took a trip to visit Joe’s brother in California. We are expecting another boy in March. Right after Christmas, we are moving to Atlanta for a year, where Joe will finish up his last year of school.

Joe–Joe worked hard in his second year of physical therapy school. He worked the first half of the year at Vivant, and later quit to make more time for school and family. In the fall, he worked an eight week clinical at Aspen Ridge Rehabilitation Center that he enjoyed.

Liz–Liz spent most of he time running after a growing toddler. At the beginning of the year, she took an online irrigation design class. She also progressed on her gardening buisness, doing mainly design and consulting but also installing several landscapes, and did maintenance for the condo HOA where we lived in Springville. Liz also ran he first ever 5K, but then pregnancy progressed and she gave up running.

Peter–Peter turned two. He is growing, running, and talking tons. His favortie things this year included playing outside, toddler gym at the local rec center, storytime, and learning to navigate on the computer.

Merry Christmas!

Zinnias and Dahlias

I have to admit some confusion with identifying dahlias and zinnias and I hope I’m not alone. With seemingly hundreds of varieties of each, they can look extremly similar. I was recently reading a book and came across a picture with two zinnia varieites and one dahlia. I could not tell which is which without a bit of further research. I tend to second guess my first reaction over some plants–Was that really a dahila, or could it actually be a dahila-flowered zinnia?

Both dahlias and zinnias are generally planted every spring, and showcase a long display of colorful blooms. They both have a plethora of varieties that vary in size, color, flower form, etc.

They are very different plants, even if at first glance they appear similar. Dahlias develop tubers, and are actually tender perennials. The tubers can be lifted and stored for succeeding years in colder climates. Zinnias are annuals grown from seed. Dahlia varieties can be larger than zinnias (although both come in a huge variety of sizes). Zinnias are more tolerant of heat and drought.

So how can you tell them apart? Zinnia flowers are supposedly more two-dimensional, but I think your best bet is to look at the leaves. Zinnia leaves are attached directly to the stem, with little visible petiole. Dahlia leaves have a petiole and are generally more serrated. (For non-botanist readers, there’s some botanical terms to look up. And they are good to know so go ahead a google away.) With that said, the picture at the beginning is definitely a zinnia.