Joel Dinda's photos with the keyword: plants

This is our show garden, out front by the sidewalk where anyone can see. It begins flowering in March and has color far into fall. One spring Joan suggested building a garden beside the driveway. Since we already had a couple driveway gardens, I needed that clarified. Out we went, looked over this corner of the lawn, and agreed to a 4 by 8 foot rectangle with Burning Bushes at both ends. Digging out that rectangle was painful. Evidently the contractors who built our lawn put a six-inch layer of clay just below the turf line. But we eventually planted our bushes, and filled the intervening space with tall Verbena and Cranesbills and Bellflowers and Foxgloves and a Columbine. And a couple Blanket Flowers. Blanket Flowers, we've since learned, will take over your garden. So will Cranesbill, but they're more patient; they send out colonies. This bed changes constantly. We doubled its size one spring, and then expanded it again. One year I ripped out one of the Burning Bushes. We add perennials every year. Once we removed almost everything on the front half, and planted new stuff. This year we've Coneflowers and Sedum (yep, we plant Sedum everywhere) and Yarrow and Black-Eyed Susan and Beard Tongue--and still the Blanket Flowers and Cranesbill and even a bit of Verbena, all descended from the originals. And a Columbine. We really like Columbine. This garden's a bit of a mess, just now; next spring we'll likely rebuild it. And that bush really needs a trim. That's coming in a day or two. My brother calls this The Square Garden, which is accurate but implies we've no imagination. Perhaps he's right, but we're fairly proud of this effort.

In our yard. (Bleach Bypass effect, via Bibble Pro.)

The twelfth day of February was still snowy, so I started with a couple garden shots. This was the day's first photo. I took several pix along my usual route to the Thriftway, then several more of Swede's Restaurant, which neighbors the store. For 366 Snaps I went with one of those. On my return to the house I found Taffy'd taken refuge in the covered cat bed, which is too small for her. I wasted a bakers' dozen poorly-lit shots trying to capture that. ========== Which reminds me: Parts of my daily life are surprisingly well documented: The photographs, themselves, often tell stories, particularly if you sort the set into time sequence. Facebook logs everything you tell it (only the Swede's photo on February 12). LibraryThing tells me I wrote (posted) a review of Alexander Kent's In Gallant Company on that date, which suggests I finished the book that day. I also posted that review to my blog, a dabbler's journal . Then I duplicated my (December 2009) LT review of James Schmidt's Agent of Vega on dabbler , this duplication being part of a daily project that stretched over several months. I didn't ride my bike on 2/12/2012, but would do so (in the basement, on a rack) the next morning. I can't, however, tell you what we had for supper, or whether we ate out. I expect I'll return to this theme on or about March 20. Keep your eyes peeled. ========== This photograph is an outtake from my 2012 photo-a-day project, 366 Snaps . Number of project photos taken: 28 Title of " roll :" Around Mulliken [again. my default title] Other photos taken on 2/12/2012: none.