Top Ten Most Annoying Garden Buzzwords and Catchphrases of 2011

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Time to reflect back on the year and make a list!  Most of these annoying phrases have been around for longer than one year, of course, but since this is my first list it’s all fair game!

“Blurring the Lines Between Indoors and Out” 

Did P. Allen Smith coin this phrase?  Because he must say it at least six times per show.  But it seems like I can’t get through any gardening magazine or show without encountering this gem at least once (or its variations — see #2 and #3).  I don’t know about you, but unless I’ve been drinking heavily, I would find it highly disturbing to discover that the boundary between the inside and outside of my home had been blurred in any way.  When I leave a room, I really need to know whether or not to bring my keys with me.  I don’t want to feel like I’m in a house designed by MC Escher.   

 

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The New American Meadow Garden

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I haven’t had much time for blogging over the holiday break, but I’ve gotten plenty of reading done.   One of the highlights was The New American Landscape, published earlier this year by Timber Press.  

I found out about this book first at Garden Rant in their review and giveaway  – once again, I didn’t win! – and then was reminded of it in the latest issue of Landscape Architecture, who gave it a short but favorable write up in their book review section. Given my free-spending ways when it comes to books, and my bad luck at contests, I went ahead and purchased a copy from Amazon. 

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Fun With Holga

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For Christmas I received a set of Holga lenses and filters that I played with today down on the Mall.  The Holga camera was a cheap plastic camera developed in China in the early 1980’s.  Many photographers grew fond of the grainy, imperfect images that the Holgas took and started creating a whole bunch of Holga accessories.  Today you can buy Holga lens kits for DSLR cameras to achieve that signature grainy, halo-y look.  This was my first experiment with the Holga lens.

Wisteria on wall near American History Museum:

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Stopping (and Staying) By Woods on a Snowy Evening

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My li’l play on Frost’s awesome poem.  I’ve always wanted the narrator to stay in the woods.

Stopping (and Staying) by Woods on a Snowy Evening

Whose woods these are I do not know
they whisper sweet seductions though
of frosted limb and moon of white
the forest tells me not to go.

My little horse nods at the sight
of pines bathed in the palest light
he looks at me, there’s no mistake
he won’t move on without a fight.

The lesson learned to not forsake
the one you love is now at stake
and miles away he lies asleep
while in these woods I finally wake

to find that those who didn’t keep
a promise made must never weep.
In snowy woods our souls can reap
redemption when we’re in too deep.

Decorating Your Decapitated Crape Myrtle This Holiday Season: An Illustrated Guide

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‘Tis the season for making boxwood wreaths, garlands of fresh pine, and of course donning the mangled remains of your professionally landscaped front yard with holiday fairy lights and other whimsical decor.

Are you a traditionalist?  Why not adorn the hacked-off stubs of your once majestic crape myrtle with strings of white lights?  Really put a lot of them on there and wrap them tightly (think: binding severed limbs with tournequets) then sit back and enjoy the show.  Once the sun sets, those twinkly lights will really set off the freakishly stubby quality of your tree, and admiring neighbors will understand that you are a homeowner who is definitely in charge of his landscape, by god!  Why, you have the power to transform a beautiful vase-shaped tree into a ridiculous parody of itself!

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National Christmas Tree Mysteriously Disfigured!

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The 2011 National Christmas Tree needs a prune. http://www.wjla.com

I saw this posted on a local news blog last week and was kind of intrigued.  The picture clearly shows an odd bump at the top of the tree, but I couldn’t find any explanation for it, nor could I find out if the bump is still there. 

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Junk on the Trunk

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Here’s a few pics I’ve taken recently of some cool-looking tree trunks.  The first was taken at Green Spring Gardens in Annandale, VA, one of my favorite garden haunts.  They have a few mature crape myrtles in front of the visitor center there with the prettiest cinnamon-brown bark you’ve ever seen.  It helps that the folks there know how to prune crape myrtles; it really makes a difference in showing off the smooth bark.   With its coloring and muscle-like texture, the tree trunk reminds me of the flank of a thoroughbred racehorse.  I believe this is cultivar ‘Biloxi’.

Crape Myrtle 'Biloxi'

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Literature’s Gardeners: Friar Lawrence

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Okay, bear with me here.  As you may have gathered, my geekiness extends to the world of literature as well as to gardening;  so when the two are combined – when gardens are featured in great literature or when gardeners write great essays – I am immersed in a perfect storm of horticultural-literary geekiness.  I go weak in the knees.  My geekiness knows no bounds.

So this is the first in what I hope will be a series of profiles of LITERATURE’S GARDENERS – featuring green-thumbed characters from famous novels, plays, short stories, and poems, along with some witty and insightful commentary, of course.

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