Just zinnias — from the Stuttgart Saturday flower market.
To see what other garden bloggers have put in vases today, please visit Cathy at Rambling in the Garden.
The Sunday porch: Bon Echo
Rustic birch lattice on the porch of the North Cottage of the Bon Echo Inn, near Cloyne, Ontario, 1935, via Cloyne and District Historical Society Commons on flickr (both photos).
The Bon Echo Inn was established in 1889 on Mazinaw Lake. It attracted wealthy guests who were also tea-totalers, as the religious owners did not serve alcohol. Later, it was purchased by a founder of the Canada Suffrage Association, who made it into a retreat for artists and writers, notably James Thurber. In 1936, the Inn and many of its outbuildings were destroyed by fire and never rebuilt. The surrounding area is now Bon Echo Provincial Park.
Tea service on the verandah of the Inn, between 1920 and 1936.
Life in gardens: group portrait
Unidentified girl holding doll and cat, probably taken in the Jackson area, Mississippi, date and photographer unknown, via Daniel, Al Fred, Photograph Collection, Mississippi Department of Archives and History Commons on flickr.
Vaux-le-Vicomte
View from the château, Maincy, France, 1925, by Frances Benjamin Johnston, via Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.
Vaux-le-Vicomte — the château and garden together — was “the first great work of the French baroque,” according to garden historian Tom Turner.
In his book, The Seven Ages of Paris, Alistair Horne tells the story of the estate’s big reveal to Louis XIV, then only 22 years old and struggling with a nearly bankrupt treasury:
Nicolas Fouquet, a vain, ostentatious and ambitious parvenu, had been Louis’s minister superintendent of finance since 1653. Now aged forty-five, he had just built himself a magnificent mansion at Vaux-le-Vicomte. . . . [O]n 17 August 1661, [he] audaciously invited the King to a lavish gala. . . The massive iron gates gleamed with freshly applied gilt; in the vast gardens laid down by André le Nôtre 200 jets d’eau and fifty fountains spouted on either side of a main alley nearly a kilometer long. For the previous five years, some 18,000 workmen had toiled to produce this wonder of the modern age, eradicating three villages that had happened to be in the way. Certainly it trumped the modest royal hunting-lodge of the King’s father out at Versailles, which Louis was currently doing up.
Inside the imposing mansion the royal party dined off a magnificent gold service which likewise must have made its impression on the King, who had had to sell off his plate to meet military expenditure. . . . [T]he whole episode outraged him. At various points in the evening, Louis came close to losing his temper — whispering to his mother, “Madame, shall we make these people disgorge?” . . . Less than three weeks later, just as he was arriving at a meeting in Nantes, Fouquet was arrested by the legendary D’Artagnan of Three Musketeers fame.
After the arrest, Louis took possession of artwork, furniture, and all the orange trees from Vaux-le-Vicomte. More importantly, he sent its architect, Louis Le Vau, and its painter-decorator, Charles Le Brun — and, of course, Le Nôtre — to Versailles. Fouquet died in prison in 1680.
Seven Ages . . . is a very good history to read if you are planning a trip to the Paris.
I have been taught never to brag but now
I cannot help it: I keep
a beautiful garden, all abundance . . .
I want to take my neighbors into the garden
and show them: Here is consolation.— Paisley Rekdal, from “Happiness“
Our August yard
Here are some mid-month pictures of our shaggy backyard on one side. (Click on any thumbnail image below to enlarge it.)
Shaggy. . . .
The pattern that I cut in the grass in May has blurred quite a bit, but I still enjoy it, especially in the morning light.
Our little corner bean-shaped flower bed has produced a surprising number of blooms this summer, considering that I had pretty much written it off last fall and had started using it as a compost pile. I thought this would kill off everything but the golden spirea and the “Fairy” rose, and then I could start over with better ground.
The ‘Autumn Joy’ sedum is just about to go pink.
The little ‘Fairy’ rose started slowly but is now covered in blooms.
This yellow rosebush has filled out several bouquets this summer.
A single self-sown black-eyed Susan.
Instead, the previously sickly looking hydrangea, hybrid tea roses, and sedums seem to like growing under at least 3″ to 6″ of half-rotted leaves and grass clippings (and some coffee grounds). I did smother a lot of weeds, but I don’t know what has happened to the mice that were living there too.
My plan to follow the Spielhaus Garden this year for Bloom Days and Foliage Follow Ups has not worked out very well due to travel, rainy weather, and a sometimes hurting foot — with surgery planned in a few weeks — but I hope I can get over there sometime this month and bring you an update.
Thanks to Pam at Digging for hosting Garden Bloggers’ Foliage Follow Up on the 16th of every month. And to see the mid-month flowers of other garden bloggers, please visit Carol at May Dreams Gardens.
enclos*ure 