Small and New Horizons

Expect to see more Nananthus transvaalensis in gardens and about in future. I am currently in love: I find that this one doesn't need fancy dinners out, cute chocolate/gifts, nor have I heard it ask to borrow one's letter-jacket. Just an occasional splash of water and well-drained soil.

New Digs: Pots for Hope

(As a short personal note: I have started work for the unsurpassed Timberline Gardens in Arvada, Colorado; managing perennials. I feel I should be given a degree after everything I'm learning from this work. I certainly have a better headache at the end of each day than all those times I "crammed" in college.)

My job at Timberline is gardening en masse, and all in pots- thousands of them. Keeping the plant ready to deliver to garden all over the front range and beyond.

My trouble at home is that I am not yet landed enough to have land.

A gardener finding himself maniacally without an actual garden, I have been humbled to explore the advantages and limitations of the humble pot. It is a great and terrible thing, keeping a plant in a container. While I suffer from my trials and error and error and error on my fine Balcony "Garden" with everything from peas to Cholla cactus, I want to share some pictures from around everywhere meant to inspire the user of the potted plant.

It's really all about the ground not being right (or maybe existent) for the plant, or the plant not being right for the ground (or hardy - like a tropical this-and-that in a cold-winter place). So we improvise, with pots.

The ingenious lemons-to-lemonade treatment of a broken terra cotta pot by a late Victorian Alpine Enthusiast.
A memory that inspires me perhaps more than any that I can indeed garden, even if my garden are spread far from my dwelling. This, above, is part of my buddy Zhiro's Tulip collection on top of his grand parent's garage roof in Armenia. (The white veil keeps extra-special plants protected from well-meaning bees who may carry virus.)

Even in the confines of a soilless courtyard-neighbourhood in Tbilisi, Republic of Georgia, a housewife has a tinket collection of doorstep plants.

Another one in Georgia- probably Batumi. Even I've fallen to the simple charms and promise of eternal flowering from a potted Zonal Geranium (Pelargonium)

Someone, or a couple someones, who have by far less balcony (and sunlight) than I do. Somewhere in London.

Home sweet boat. Nothing beats a fresh BLT. On the water. Lincoln, UK. I didn't check to see if it had an appropriate bumper sticker that read "My other boat is a bike."