Work on the new bed continues, during the brief moments between snowstorms. The snow will eventually stop, some time around the first of June, and by then I can start planting.
I’m starting to have doubts about my ability to design anything.
“Landscape with black plastic”
I might leave it this way. Intrepretive garden, with hidden, mysterious object in center. (The desert bird-of-paradise poking up in center.) What does this say to the observer? How does it make them feel? (Aside from superior, that is.)
What I really want, and I mean extra totally super want, is for the new garden to look like this.
This is the cactus garden of Steve Miles in Boulder. Just about the coolest thing I’ve ever seen. The first time I saw this I almost fainted.
this end is protected by a covering of plastic during the winter
Somehow I doubt that my new garden will look like this, but I can dream, can’t I?
the miserable gardener 
Indeed you can dream…I think that is the best first step! (Just a hint though, I think the TV must go)
So ….you’re saying the TV doesn’t make the Statement I hoped for? The clash between Nature (represented by the garden covered in plastic) and Technology (the TV)? No Outsider Art here?
Oh well. Back to the drawing board, I guess.
I would like to get this finished before some person selling windows comes to the door and sees that I have no excuse, now that the tree peony has been moved, not to replace the tacky-looking windows (except that I don’t want to). There’s a bullet hole in that front window that makes my argument for not buying new windows a pretty weak one. It was really made from a pellet gun, but calling it a “bullet hole” really gives it that Wild West flavor. I taped it up so cold air stays out, mostly.
Bob
I was just wondering, do you plan to use the TV as fill? It would be a great archaeological find some day for a poor struggling grad student.
I agree that to use the discriptive term “bullet hole” adds some panache to what ever tale you decide to present to visiters. It can only amplify the telling of the narrative you present. So, I can understand your reluctance to change the window glass.
You could always buy one of those fake bullet hole stickers and place it on the new glass. I’m sure it would still elicit comments from viewers.
Thought about burying the TV, briefly, but that’s a little much even for me. I could build a big berm with all the dead computer stuff I have, too.
Steve Miles in Boulder! Not a good place to faint. I went out to shovel and all I could is think about was how to get my garden to look like SteveMilesGarden…
It’s cool, to be sure. A lot of work and skill went into it.
So, you’ve abandoned the white gravel/blue tire planter/ red petunia idea altogether? Your new bed in mourning with t.v. makes a bold statement! The garden of Mr. Miles is pretty amazing! Have you thought of simply enlarging your photographs and then placing them on stakes around your bed? It would sure save a lot of work!
Brilliant! Maybe a sign saying “This is what might have been ….”
In fact, photographs of plants instead of actual plants, everywhere. What an idea. I guess they’d have to be laminated. The photographs, I mean. Laminated plants would work too. No worries about the weather.
I saw a lovely cactus and succulent garden filling a front yard in a suburb of Glasgow, Scotland. All the other gardens around had flowers and such. My husband and I were visiting friends there and as we were walking to the pub, I stopped to admire this garden but didn’t photograph it because its owner was glaring at me through his front window. A dour Scot, indeed. So I just waved and complemented his yard & hoped that a little Yankee goodwill got through. Then we went to a park & I photographed some stunning old oak trees instead. Then the pub…
I just found your blog and have learned a lot from your descriptions of struggles and triumphs with dry gardening. We live in ABQ now, but lived north of Golden in the early 80’s. Thanks!
The guy I live with says that there was this story that if “things had gone right” his grandmother would have inherited a castle near Stranraer and now he would be living in a castle in Scotland and growing tree ferns and wearing a kilt and have a lot of border collies. That last part I might not like so much.
Maybe the guy in Scotland was used to people saying things about cactus in Glasgow. They say things about them here. Cactus in Denver, I mean, not cactus in Glasgow.