Art on Palm Photos

I’m a little behind on this, but here are some shots from the fabulous Art on Palm event in Wildwood Park on Oct. 10. MaryRose Smyth hosted with help from fellow artists. I need to caption a couple of them so you know who these incredible artists are. I will do so shortly. In the meantime, here are the pix!

 

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Cultivating Home Gardens

http://www.latimes.com/features/home/la-hm-revisit3-2009jan03,0,5812086.story

My pal Susan wrote this piece for the LA Times featuring those of us with gardens that come with attachments — those of the former owner, or those of us still attached to our former gardens. Letting go isn’t easy. You’ll see my little house mentioned here because of its former owners. I’ve always felt that I am a caretaker of what has come before, yet I must make the changes I need to be happy, and in some cases, be a responsible neighbor. Our giant sycamore on the edge of our front yard, for example. One branch had fallen years ago into my former neighbor’s hedge. Now, the new neighbors, and friends, were expecting a baby. The tree leaned so far over their driveway the possibility was clearly there to have a serious accident. If a branch had fallen while they were in the driveway, or if the tree had fallen after one of our legendary rains and injured them, we wouldn’t have been able to live with ourselves. So, in October, instead of trimming the tree yet again, we decided to remove it. Painful to lose such a beautiful tree and its shade, but we couldn’t take a risk of injuring our neighbors.

Another change we made last year was to replace the small rose garden with a vegetable garden. We had tomatoes, lettuce, eggplant, and more. I will need to plant another rose or two because I do miss them, but I love being able to go out at dinner time and pick fresh produce. In fact, we’ll likely extend the vegetable patch to replace a portion of our lawn. We don’t use it much and it’s infinitely more satisfying and waterwise to grow something edible. The trick is to do all this and make sure the garden still compliments the house. In fact, right now I’d like to fill winter sparse veggie garden up with anything to make it look better!