Celebrating the end of landscape drudgery

For 23 years at my forest house, I worked continually on my 1-1/2 acres. When I was married, my husband took care of the mowing and orchard trees. I took care of the gardens -- a huge vegetable garden and what ultimately became ten small gardens. There was the wall of rhodies, the dahlia garden, the antique rose garden, the two tiny shade gardens, Elizabeth's Garden, the shasta daisies border, the long shade garden, the woodland garden, the hydrangea border. On top of that, there were invasive blackberries, invasive ivy and invasive vinca. And then mint that I foolishly planted that imposed itself everywhere. Plus a never-ending influx of new invasives like Herb Roberts. Even though half of the land was forest, there was always more work to be done than time to do it. I often had to remind myself to see how beautiful it looked and not just the undone labor.

After I got divorced and hung onto the house because I loved it so, I rented out part of the place, so there was a need to keep the grounds looking nice. It all fell to me and I did not have the money to create more hardscaping or hire help. I bought an electric lawnmower I could start myself and settled on a schedule of a half-hour of landscape drudgery year-round, even in the worst of weather, and most of my spare time on evenings and weekends. I applied for and got a West Multnomah County Soil & Water Conservation grant to remove the ivy and vinca and the very last of the blackberries and replace that with 500+ native plants. Even with that, I ignored the few blackberries that came up the next spring and when I got to them in the fall, I kept track and saw that it had taken me 18 hours to clear them all.

So one thing I was looking forward to with a riverhouse was having a stunning landscape that I did not have to take care of. I have some flowers and trees on my deck and have resisted going overboard (no pun intended).

A few weeks ago I went with a friend to my favorite (of many) annual art event -- Cracked Pots. It's a two-day show and sale of mainly garden art, all made from recycled things. The creativity is delightful and inspiring. I always buy something, both because I love the art (my place was filled wacky garden art -- more about that in another post) and because I like supporting the artists.

This year I could not resist splurging on a fantastic piece that I decided I would keep in my office as a celebration of the end of landscape drudgery and a reminder that I now have more time to write. The object is a shovel and the steel blade has been "cut" into a lacy design that includes a dragonfly, which is part of the logo for my business, The Writing Works. It also has a wrapping of feathers and a bead, which goes along with other feather/bead art in my office, too. The artists is Kelly Phipps and you can see more of her work at www.kellyphipps.com.  It's now "installed" next to my desk and makes me smile.