But we like Mr. Riley (aka Puppy) anyway.
Wordless Wednesday: the wages of dogsitting
But we like Mr. Riley (aka Puppy) anyway.
Category: plants
Plant supports
I just wanted to show off the plant supports that a local craftsperson recently made for the garden from my “design.” They’re cut and bent from lightweight rebar, and he gave me two sizes — about 30″ and 5′.
I can tie plants directly on to them, or I can slip bamboo poles through the loops to make a supporting grid. They’re much easier to push into the ground than bamboo or wooden poles, and they should last pretty much forever.
Painted reddish-brown (more brown than they look in the photos), they’re unobtrusive in the flower beds. But I think they would also be fun in really bright colors.
Pinned . . .
I like these plant labels — photographed by Stacey Shintani at a community garden in Chicago.
Both photos are via flickr under CC license (and spotted on Pinterest).
More grows in the garden than the gardener sows.
— old Spanish proverb
Garden Bloggers’ Bloom Day: zinnias
The zinnias in our cutting garden (in Rwanda) have begun to bloom this week.
Garden Bloggers’ Bloom Day is the 15th day of each month. To see what’s blooming in other garden bloggers’ gardens, check out May Dreams Gardens.
. . . So unguardedly, unthriftily
do they open up and show themselves that subtlety,
rarity, nuance are almost put to shame. . .
— Mona Van Duyn, from “A Bouquet of Zinnias”
Nice things and Nyungwe Forest Lodge
I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, “If this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is.”
— Kurt Vonnegut
Our oldest daughter has been visiting us — which is very nice — so this weekend, we took her to see the Nyungwe Forest in the south of Rwanda and to stay at the beautiful Nyungwe Forest Lodge.
The Lodge is located on the western edge of the Nyungwe National Park in a tea plantation picked by a local cooperative. The cabins front to the tea fields and their back windows look out on the forest.
The area is currently having clear blue mornings and rainy afternoons. On Saturday, our one full day there, we hiked the canopy walk before lunch (more on that later this week). Then we actually talked about going on another hike that afternoon.
However, with the first raindrops, we gave in to the luxury of just parking ourselves in front of the many picture windows looking out on the gorgeous view and napping and reading until the 5:00 p.m. tea, cookies, and cocktails in front of a fire.
Just before tea time, we were rewarded for our indolence by finding about a dozen blue monkeys in the trees right outside our cabin’s back patios.
I wanted to show you these side tables in the main lounge, which I loved.
Unfortunately, I forgot to ask if they were locally made or imported — next time.
The big chandelier was appropriately made of tea strainers.
Camellia sinensis leaves have little or no smell (only if you crush them hard) until they are processed as tea. But the hotel smelled very lightly of green tea fragrance from the soap and hand lotion in the bathrooms and gift shop. So, sitting on the terrace or in the main lounge looking out, I could smell what I thought the fields should smell like (but really don’t). I thought this was an interesting little manipulation of experience in a landscape.
My daughter brought me a Kindle Fire e-reader, another really nice thing, which allowed me to spend the afternoon switching from Vogue, to the third book of the Game of Thrones series, to Hilary Mantel’s Bring Up the Bodies.
I’ve written about Nyungwe Forest Lodge previously here.
enclos*ure 