Gardens Here and There

Last month, while in Portland for dance competition, we spent an afternoon visiting the Japanese Gardens. It was so beautiful, restful and serene. I wish my garden looked like that! I had hoped it would give me some ideas, but so much of what they had created related to the climate of the area, with mosses and other wet loving plants everywhere. I would love to view a Japanese style garden created in a dry, arid climate.

In the meantime, I am finding a bit of time here and there to do a little weeding and pruning in my garden. Things could use a bit of a face lift and some shifting around, but I haven't found the time for that. I think my next project will be to eliminate the grass(weed) path and replace it with shredded bark. The tough part will be moving a mountain of rocks I've unearthed and left laying in a pile on the path. I thought it would be great to create a dry stream bed with the rocks, but have no idea where to put them. It would be so much better to move them only once!

The front yard is still bare dirt. Sometimes I'm afraid it will always be that way. With our bathroom remodel project done, next on the list is a sprinkler system. The estimate we got was way out of our price range, but we just don't have the time or know-how to do it ourselves. Clint has a friend with some experience in irrigation systems; maybe I'll get lucky and we can hire him to install them for us. It would be so lovely to have a front yard again.