Survivor Extreme Home Edition, episode 2

Oh where to start today’s episode? The horror is almost too much to face again. I have always heard gardening referred to as a genteel activity. Something to calm the nerves and sooth the soul with all that gentle quiet nurturing. Lies!

In this next episode I will tell you the horrible dirty truth of gardening’s seamy underside. The underside of the all those pretty flower beds with their lush green foliage and bright cheery flowers decked out like two bit strumpets. Sure they say, “Come on over, take a little peek, get a whiff of my intoxicating perfume.” You take the bait, you look, you sniff and suddenly you’re hooked like an innocent rube on a free crack high. You can’t wait to get your next one, your next hit of horticultural ecstasy.
Suddenly your life is all about those little fantasy peddling pimps wearing the bling of the garden world, aprons and dirty garden gloves “Oh, yeah, we got what you’re looking for. We have some fine young ladies in pink for you just over here or perhaps you’d like something a little racier in deep red?” they coo at you with their compost scented breath. “Oh, but first you’ll need a few things if you’re to keep the little pretties happy. Let me direct you to our $ales a$$ociate”

On you way over to the, ahh, $ales A$$ociate you notice the oddly glazed yet hungry expressions on the faces of the newly addicted. They shuffle along pushing carts full of bushy plants from seven different zones. A bell goes off in your head but you can’t hear it. The heavenly sprinkler system has just turned on and it is causing those tender young things to glisten with sweet moisture. There is a heady scent of rich lavender filling the air. Bees are hurrying to and fro rubbing their dainty legs in the fertile pollen dancing wildly in the… um, excuse me while I uh…


Ok, never mind all that. It’s better if we just move along.
If you bought the sales pitch from Guido the plant pimp and you expect those garden beauties to perform for you in your bed at home then you had better not be taking them home to this…


On the previous episode of Survivor Extreme Home Edition we learned how I had rocks and more rocks on top of one great big rock. So yeah, no dirt. No heavy clay to amend, no sandy soil to loam, no bone dry depleted desert baked dust barely able to support cacti. Nope- just rocks. Now don’t get me wrong, I could grow a mean crop of gravel if I wanted. I think there were even a few species of alien weed left over from the last ice age in there but, if I wanted the floozy cabaret that Guido the plant pimp promised me then this would simply not do.


First to tackle was… oh hell, who am I trying to fool? There was no “first things first” business because there was no plan. I approached it the same way I approach my paintings and sculpture. I want to create a certain feeling or express a particular emotion and that is my focus. I’ll admit a little secret here that I always try to hide from my art buddies; I don’t give a lick about the subject or the light. Gasp! I know, I know. Blaspheme. For me it is always about what I want the art to say. How I want you to feel when you see it? It is about plucking the chords within the soul to produce a certain song unique to you. And that is how I saw this space.

There was a tough issue with the layout of the house and driveway, it cut right through the middle. There was the problem a too large an area of weeds to kill and the total lack of soil. Then I also had an unexpected issue caused by a lack of visible boundaries other than the electric horse fence. The space right behind the pond/yard is the neighbors land; their horse barn is just up the hill.

I wanted to incorporate all those challenges rather than fight them, I wanted to highlight them. The “Rock” I wanted to dig out and make into a focal point. (That however was before I knew what it actually was). From the Rock the neighbors had a lovely view into the woods so I wanted to visually make that part of our space. It was important that the space felt like it was supposed to be there, that it blended in with the surroundings. I suppose I really just wanted it to feel like the land had risen up to meet us.

We started…OK, I started, Hubby had better sense than I did, started pulling in gnarly tree stumps and digging up large rocks. Well I suppose I should use my chiropractor’s words, huge boulders and giant trees. He was so finicky. I had put down light gardening on my activities list and he about had a hissy fit when I told him how big they were in terms of feet x feet. Of course he should have seen that coming when I first came to see him crawling on my hands and knees. He very deliberately and right in front of me I might add, scratched out my light gardening entry and put “suicidal.”


You may be wondering how we got the desert landscaping. Pretty aint it? (no offense meant to all my desert loving gardeners. I know this isn't what you mean by desert garden) I can not begin to tell you how awful it was to look out there and see that everyday. The chiropractor may have been right if I had to keep looking at all that ugly brown much longer. You see a neighbor to the side of us has a saw mill where he is milling the lumber to build his house. This seemed like a good situation for both of us. We went down and collected his sawdust to spread on our “yard” and he got rid of the build up. I figured the sawdust would smother the weeds and hopefully add some cushion. We went down to the mill every few days and collected all the sawdust we could and raked it out. We just kept going till we eventually got a pretty thick layer all around. After a never ending ugly blur of time everything looked like the Saharan desert. It was just the look I was going for!

In between sawdust runs I was working on hunting down and dragging home new and interesting stumps and boulders. Every day the poor man I am married to would come home to find me smiling some big dumb grin and saying “honey come look what I found! I just need some help…” It was usually something like digging it out of the earth or lifting this 50 foot tree. I was trying to build up natural structures to fill the space. Eventually each one of these elements became the framework of a bed. With every new piece added I would walk the entire area to see where my natural step wanted to travel then placed items according to that pattern. There is a very easy natural flow that encourages strolling the garden. Because of doing this at the beginning of the process I don’t have to fret about placing focal points or plants. There are natural breaks and flows. I even placed seating according to that rhythm.

Next time on Survivor Extreme Home Edition we discover how to turn a mole hill into a Big Freakin’ Pond. What was I thinking and why did my doctor threaten to send an ambulance?Tune in next time for those answers and more…

I just needed a little happy place at the end.