Bestest Friend and I are doing a blog project. Each day we will write a blog post on a pre-determined theme chosen by a random noun generator. The theme for the sixteenth day of the month is "Instruction."
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There's a delightful house in our neighborhood where the occupants clearly have the opposite ethos in home ownership that we do. The inside of our house is delightful, but we basically spend as little time outside on the landscaping as possible. This house looks terribly derelict, but the gardens are superb. This couple is known for creating hybrids of a particular sort of flower (these flowers are sold at your local nursery and I'm deliberately being vague so I don't out them) and their yard is a maze of their experiments with labels like Betty x Charlotte and White Bronx x Three Leaves in a language that must make sense to them, but utterly befuddles me.
They recently had to take down two big ash trees in their yard and I know it was a terrible blow to them because they relied on the shade from those trees for their flowers. They've been spending a lot of time this summer trying to figure out how to replicate that shade - I've seen tarpaulins and a jerry-rigged shade sail. Because of this focus on the front of the house, they haven't been quite as on top of the backyard as they usually are. (Theirs is a corner lot, if you're wondering how we can see into their backyard.)
I have never seen that gnome in anything but a standing guard position until today.
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Do you have any lawn art in your yard?
I'm exactly like you - I take care of the inside of my house and could care less about the outside. I really admire people who have the capacity and interest to develop the outside.
ReplyDeleteFor sure. I had to mow the lawn a handful to times when my husband broke his collarbone and NEVER AGAIN. I'm just not a girl who likes to deal with landscaping.
DeleteWe have a couple of nuzzling cranes in our backyard (it was a present from the spouse) and some tall candelabra, and Scout's memorial.
ReplyDeleteBut I really want Nicole to see this post!!!
I wrote this thinking about Nicole, too!
DeleteWe have nice landscaping, but I am not into Yard Art. UNLESS it is a four-foot velociraptor that is currently available at our local greenhouse. I really, really want it, but it is $2500, and that is way out of my price range. I had a place for it in the back yard and everything, but then I saw the price. Devastating.
ReplyDeleteOh, Nance. Surely you can work out a deal so you can get that velociraptor. It sounds perfect!
DeleteGnomes! I love them so much. As you know I have a number of gnomes, who have yet to have homes because I don't have my new gardens yet, and I also have a garden Buddha. We also brought from Calgary my rock inukshuk, but originally the rocks came from Kelowna so I like to think of the inukshuk as coming home. I love gardening and yard work but I also love keeping the inside of the house lovely, so I guess I split my home time equally, when it comes to work on the house.
ReplyDeleteThis is probably a better way of living than mine. I try to just ignore everything happening outside of my front door!
DeleteIf you drove by the outside of my house right now, you might not think anyone lives here. But that's because my husband hasn't mowed in two weeks....
ReplyDeleteMy husband mowed yesterday for the first time in quite some time. It was good timing, too, because it rained all night, so if he hadn't done it, it would probably be at least another week before he could have gotten to it.
DeleteI thought of Nicole immediately! We're like you, although I can't describe the inside of our house as "delightful" (we're trying!) We barely manage to keep up with the outside.
ReplyDeleteOH, we don't even try to keep up with the outside. It's a jungle out there.
DeleteI guess the outside and inside of my house are the same mish-mash of mediocrity and delightfulness. The hybrid-flower-makers sound really cool. There's a tree on our street that is clearly grafted, and the completely different bark on the two parts of the trunk look super weird.
ReplyDeleteWe have a gargoyle and a sort of house on a stick thing from the craft show and a couple of other things I weirdly can't remember.
The flower breeders (pollinators? makers?) are very lovely. They don't even care when Hannah goes tromping through their blooms to smell things - "that's going to happen in everyone's garden, dear, we are trying to get hardy blooms." Great neighbors!
DeleteThe work clearly fatigued the gnome.
ReplyDeleteOr...something more sinister defeated it?
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