Feb. 13 was the date of my last entry here: what a lot has happened.  My mother turned 95.  I went to a John Burroughs (St. Louis - actually Ladue, MO - high school) gathering in Washington, DC.  A few days after I came back, took Mom to the doctor and she was hospitalized for pneumonia, and we learned she'd had a heart attack as well.  Spent a week in hospital with her, then home with hospice care, and on March 19, after what finally were peaceful days together, she slipped away quietly in her sleep.  So today, Mothers' Day, was a tough day for Dad and me.  We've been going to church regularly since Mom died (did not go before, not wanting to leave her) but both of us felt that that would be too hard today.  Dad slept most all day but enjoyed quiche for dinner with me.

We had a memorial service for Mom right here, a month after her death, when my brother was able to be here.  Wanted to have it here in her environment, to let people see her beautiful artwork that fills the walls.  We put up photo boards showing happy times throughout her life.  And guests saw the peony garden which I'd planted with Mom in mind, and which has been dressed up now as a memorial garden.  Photos of the memorial gathering are on my Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150581397115405.666310.744610404

So there has been a lot to deal with in these last few months.  I've been getting to spring garden cleanup a bit late.  There is always some comfort in the renewal of life that spring brings, but I'm sad not to be able to bring all the beautiful flowers in to Mom any more.  I did take Mothers' Day peony bouquets to neighbors who kindly mow my roadside strips of land.  Sharing flowers is always a pleasure.

Gardening can be both therapeutic and exhausting, so I'm putting in some long days outside.  I got the indoor painting / touch ups done in time for the BBAV inspection in early April, but still have some exterior work to do.  The gardens are so eye-catching, the rest doesn't seem very worrying.

Guest bookings are picking up now, it looks like the rest of spring and early summer will be full and lively here, and that's a happy situation.  I'll get back to normal posting soon and talk about some of the other developments here and local events.  For now, I sign off, hoping friends far and wide have been able to enjoy good things this Mothers' Day.

This heat! What a year! We were seeing 90 degrees at the beginning of May, and while there have been a few mild weeks or days, the last three and a half months have been brutal in their heat and aridity. Oh, for last year's rains! It seemed then that every time we really needed rain, it came. This year, predictions of some fair percentage chance of rain, or even more welcome thunderstorms, just tease us with so-very-rarely realized promises. Much of what I planted last fall and this spring has succumbed, especially the plants at a distance from the house, that I had no time to water. A season for the survival of the very fittest.

"Xeriscape," my mind's ear can hear friend Richard Satnick say, with no sympathy for foolish choices of resource-hungry plants. But we here in the east are used to abundant water and are shocked when wells go dry. I'm just planting things I grew up with ... and a few more plants that needed this milder climate, but those are also more drought-tolerant.

Yet it's very clear, we're all going to have to be more conscientious about conserving water. Drip irrigation is a familiar idea, such a good practice, delivering small steady amounts of water just to the plants that need it. But if you're not ready to start laying tubing throughout your garden, setting emitters just so, I have a terrific alternative.

EvoOrganic makes a "Weed-Free Garden Watering Blanket" with built-in drip irrigation. It's 8' by 10', with irrigation lines spaced a foot apart, and planting guidelines drawn in-between. There's a header hose ready to connect to your standard garden hose, and a dozen stakes to anchor the blanket to the ground. And about that blanket: it's two layers of weed-block fabric, with the watering system in-between. Guaranteed to last 3 seasons if you don't cover it with mulch, and may last a decade and more if you do. How great is that?

I didn't get this product installed myself this spring, rather too much parent-care to finish my garden projects, but I'll be using it when I do plant again. This puts in one easy installation just the kind of system I rigged for myself when I planted my first strawberry beds here. I prepared the soil, made mounded rows, laid sprinkler hose and anchored it in place, covered the whole bed with lightweight landscape fabric, then put a top layer of red plastic landscape cloth, and finally cut an X for each little plant and put it in, spreading the roots over the mound. Worked great and the beds lasted 3 years. But that sprinkler hose can have a mind of its own when you bend and shape it, and it wasn't a perfect fit, bed to bed. I love this new version, ready to go in one piece, and using water only for exactly the shape of your planting bed.

Guests and visitors can buy the product in Heaven Scent's lobby gift shop, at $45 plus 5% tax. Email me for shipping costs. (MSRP is $59.95.) BTW, you can link one blanket to another, for a larger garden, or I can get you the same product in any configuration you need, as it's also sold by the foot, in narrower widths.

A sight that stays with me is the tall thick lavender by the parking area at Mougins, my favorite stop for dinner in the south of France, whether for Roger Verget's Le Moulin de Mougins or one of the many others neighboring it. On my first visit, when we experienced the thrill of dining at Le Moulin, and when I came away with herb jellies and other goodies from the shop, I was struck by that fantastic lavender, all in bloom, so beautiful and so fragrant, and for goodness' sake, it was just a public parking area. Now Le Moulin has been sold, I can't get away to the south of France in any case, but I thrill to being able to just step out my front door and harvest lavender right off the walk.

When in bloom, it's always full of bees and butterflies, but I can still manage to cut quite a bit without disturbing them. And I've just harvested some, and come inside to make little wreaths - for centerpieces or to ring candles - and bunches to put in vases or lay in drawers. Nice work if you can get it!

I learned from an Italian friend who visited that the scent is greatest before the flower buds open. Check it out when you get a chance, it's true. I'd always waited to collect the flowers. Now, I will gather unopened buds to dry and use for sachets. But when time gets away from me, I gather the flowers as I've just done, and still enjoy their look and scent, even though I now know it's not the most intense it can be.

Ever since acquiring this property, it's been my intention to turn the small patches of lawn on the entry side of the house into never-need-mowing herb lawns. After all, there's not much grass really there, certainly not much of any desirable kind; what goes on there is a march through the progression of perennial weeds. And it takes too much last-minute trimming for the area to look good for guests. A main concern for a B&B is to keep things looking good while reducing the labor involved. Quite a few people have tried to tell me that there's nothing easier and faster to deal with than a simple patch of grass, but anyone who's been here knows that I haven't been convinced. So, since I got to stay here year-round this year, I thought this would be the spring to do it. I did clear out the southern patch, the one bounded by the entry walk/ramp on the north, house on the west, wall of English ivy on the south. Hoed out the grass roots and the weeds and got a pretty clear area to work with. I started moving lemon balm, monarda (bee balm), thyme and spearmint to the four edges, to work gradually inwards. Moved bluebells to encircle the weeping cherry but they didn't like it a bit: those glossy, taut lily-like leaves lost all signs of life, but I'm hoping that the bulbs survive and we'll get a nice display next spring. But then the temperature started nudging 90 degrees every day - just too hot to start small transplants, unless I put a sprinkler on every day, and that's a wasteful method. I'm holding off, and that means large patches of dirt, and grasses creeping back in. Will work on it as I can, and in the meantime: apologies ...

You'll have realized that massive applications of herbicide are not my approach to gardening. What organic gardening means to me, in 25 words or less: Weeding with a shovel. (Are you old enough to remember cereal-box contests?) Pokeweed and pigweed, bane of my existence. After johnson grass, that is. And ragweed! Less numerous are jimson weed and lamb's quarters.

But other common "weeds" I can easily live with. I don't mow the field north of the barn when the buttercups are in bloom: I think they're a lovely sight. I like the spreading violets and the white clover is actually good butterfly habitat. I tried to remove oxalis when I first came here, but that turned into my first "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em" response, as it's so persistent, and actually pretty. I moved oxalis plants to ring the fountain, and let them grow alongside the back sidewalk. But last year, the funniest one came along: great mullein (Verbascum) in the front yard; and it so amused me, I left it. After all, it's grown in England for herbal remedies, or so I read, so I consider appropriate to herb gardens. This year Rudbeckia is popping up in that same yard, and as my mother loves daisy-type flowers, and these black-eyed susans are also good butterfly habitat plants, they're being left alone as well. I had tried moving them a couple of years ago, to make a patch out by the locust trees, but they didn't survive transplanting, so now I'll try letting them spread where they are.

The March display of forsythia is so bright and cheerful: greedy me, I've always wanted to double it. Forsythia is at the north (roadside) edge of our yard, in a nice long line - challenged by locust trees and upstart sumac and pokeweed that needs digging out every year. I make the roadside of that line a service drive into the property for when trucks need to get back to the well or the propane tank. Finally, fall 2009, I did plant (with much help from a friend!) a parallel line of another couple dozen forsythia, so that the drive will be between the rows of shrubs. I buy plants such as these in quantity from Greenwood Nursery and have had good luck with them. They were the source of all my lilacs, for example. (Seems McMinnville, TN and area have a number of growers that sell in quantity online, very reasonably.) Now I can see little yellow blossoms all along the slender stalks planted 4 months ago. Can you see the tiny dots of yellow? Nice reward for the labor, and gives hope that in another two or three years, there'll be a very golden display out here.