I've often thought of this post in the last few days. While damage has
already been done, perhaps future damage might be reduced. It's possible
the folks doing the "clean up" know very little about gardening and in their
efforts to tidy up unknowingly destroy and damage. Perhaps if you would
very sweetly (One catches more flies with sugar than with vinegar.) offer to
help with the "clean up". Something along the lines of, "I can't help but
notice you are doing some yard work. Since I've live next door, know what
is planted, and can identify many of the emerging plants, perhaps I can give
you a hand. I'm sure it is difficult to decide how to proceed when you're
not sure what is planted where. In any case, I have very fond memories of
Miz Mary and would very much like to work in the garden she so much enjoyed.
In addition to giving me the opportunity to help out, perhaps you would
allow me to have some cuttings or plants you intend to remove. Planting
them in my own garden in memory of Miz Mary would please me very much.
Please let me know if there is anything I can do to help."

Well, maybe I'm too much of a Polly Anna but then again maybe it would work.
Sorry you have to witness the devastation. I'm sure it is very painful.


"madgardener" wrote in message
...
Sometimes you just have to vent your spleen......I will explain.

Over the years, those who are familiar with me here over the fence in
wrecked gardens know that when I am outraged or moved emotionally by
something, I'll most likely post it here. Usually it has to do with
horticultural things. I have discovered over the years that most of us
gardeners are benevolent creatures of various levels of stewardship
towards growing things. We're nurturers and growers and usually
optimists, because we plant seeds, and trees. We sit on cold, snowy
winter evenings (and days) and pore over catalogs and slobber over the
newest tomato or perennial or blooming shrub. We push the envelopes with
zones and plant figs and crape myrtles or magnolia's or lust and long for
those tulips and hosta's that to some living in the more tropical climates
think are just fabrications listening to us up northerly wax happily about
(yes, Zhanataya, I speak of you wherever you are in the Southwest now
happily growing cacti and other desert things......)

I've anguished over things lost, like my lower neighbor cutting down three
incredible Forsythia's to the ground that were over a hundred years old.
But I'd captured their magnificence in early spring before his farmer's
mindset persuaded him to go out and cut them severely to the ground.
They're coming back, but they won't bloom for another two
years...........and they'll have the last laugh even when he's gone to his
own rest, and hopefully his surviving children will see the beauty of the
old roots as they will have thrown healthier shoots that will be loaded
with even more bright yellow lanterns and they will never cut it again. I
wrote of those shrubs that his wife's family and ancestors had planted
well over 100 years ago when they first laid claim to the land and made it
theirs and their family and kinfolk. I have great grand daughters of
those bushes, and when I leave Fairy Holler, I will take a cutting with me
to remind me of something that I hold sacred in it's simplicity and
tenacity. It endures when we've all gone back to the soil ourselves.
(you always see lilacs and Forsythia's and old fashioned three flowered
narcissus growing where old homesteads used to be).

So why do I want to "vent my spleen" again? Well, to put it simply, yet
another action against something that I grew to love and respect has now
been take away and gotten rid of for whatever reasoning. Miz Mary whom
I've spoken of many times in the past ten years on this newsgroup has
always had a magnificent old iron and thick slat park bench that she
always painted white every Spring. It sat in the special prominent place
of honor of her side yard before you got to the old farm house she was
raised in. Her grandmother and daddy lived in this house. She has life
rights, meaning she can live there as long as she's alive, and as she
would have told you quickly, she had no need of it once she was
gone..........

Over the eleven years I grew to love and respect Miz Mary, I learned she
was the epitome of what you all would know in the phrase of "Southern
Lady". She was hospitality and charm, and quite the character. If you
drove up the dead end road which was named Niles Road for her daddy, she'd
have come out of her cluttered house, maneuvered through the clutter of
her piled up front porch that she'd tell you immediately she was enclosing
and cleaning off one day, to tell you that once, Niles Road was known far
and wide as Mockingbird Lane because of all the mockingbirds. (they're
back now). Much to your chagrin, she'd talk your ears off, and if you
COULD get a word in edgewise, you soon found yourself hearing her
trademark response to your feeble efforts to respond of her "Like I was
SAYING........." Her energetic and generous character taught me that
Spinsters weren't always the stereotype they were thought to be. She'd
quickly put you in your place if you called her a Spinster (and I did,
just to get her fire up) and she'd tell you that she had dated many men,
thank you very much, and had almost married ....insert names of local men
through her lifetime of the 72 years thus far here, and all of them had
married and passed on!!

Her observations of people was astounding, her knowledge of incredible
trivia was also astounding. Despite her incredible and ever mounting
clutter of her porch and home with the trails that kept her from cooking
in her own kitchen, she'd whip up awesome things to take to community
meetings outside on her summer tables underneath the trees. Always
scrumptious and never ceasing to amaze. She'd use me as a co-conspirator
to bake her cornbread for her cornbread salad.....and reward me with
leftovers, and a dessert of fresh ripe peaches with sour cream and dark
brown sugar whipped and lavished on mismatched colorful plates or bowls
she'd find at little shoppes she frequented from all around. Bric and
brac was everywhere, and when my granddaughters visited, she'd appear with
little gifts for each girl (there are four of them) and crayons and books,
dolls, silly little things, bottles of bubbles, all manner of little
things. For the boys in my family, she'd give little trucks and cars and
things that fascinated them. And always there was the open door of balls
and toys in her yard, encouraging the children who had their bicycles (one
year my grand daughter brought her bike as I have a perfect driveway and
road to ride upon safely)to visit and sit and drink lemonade with her and
munch cookies and listen to stories about people they hadn't a clue who
were......this was Miz Mary. To the 100th power.

That she had this iron park bench with the thick slats underneath the
shade of two 75 year old trees that her daddy planted with her mama, and
you could sit and visit and just look across the miles to the majesty of
English Mountain and the slice of blue that was Douglas Lake. Watch the
trees and see hawks or turkey vultures circling overhead. The stretch of
"Thunder Road" or as some knew it, old Highway 25-70 below to the south
could be seen through the window of trees and you could see vehicles, and
despite that there were more and more signs on the pastures beyond to the
south that the farmlands were being sold and subdivided, the stars are
still visible underneath her sky up here. You might see more lights across
the road where you know it lies a mile away at the end of Wine Road, but
you know you're in an island of peace and tranquility where deer, coyote,
foxes, possoms, raccoon, woodchucks, chipmunks, flying squirrel, gray
squirrel, a huge wide assortment of birds from yellow finches, blue
cranes, hawks,turkey vultures, gray eagles, Mountain bluebirds or Indigos,
hummingbirds, from the tiniest to the largest reside here and around here.
It's called a green belt. At least 16 acres that doesn't get taxed the
same because it lays fallow.

Well, since Miz Mary experienced her many little heart attacks and then
the strokes that wound her up in the nursing home five miles away, her
family have been methodically coming up and cleaning out her home. It
needed it, but lately, I've been seeing a disturbing practice. Miz Mary
will never come home. I grieved this year that she wasn't brought up here
on Easter to see her beautiful dogwoods and azalea's and tulips and
candytuft and phlox all blooming at the same time. Nor see her little
dogwood she'd planted in the gnarled up roots of the 80 year old maple
beside the driveway we share that wraps around the back of her house. It
bloomed for the first time this year before the hard freeze nipped the
blossoms and leaves. And it's a perfectly shaped tree as well.......Her
family have not only been throwing away the stuff she accumulated, but
doing radical cleaning.

I spoke of coming home a few weeks ago and couldn't figure out what was
different, and realized someone had completely cut down her six year old
pussy willow tree that she'd had planted a bit too close to the
foundation. Over a foot thick, I knew it WAS too close to the foundation
but this year, it was glorious and I took cuttings of it before it
"disappeared" and they are now all rooted...........I'll pot them soon.

Today I discovered much to my anguish that her beloved park bench was
simply gone. And after leaving a message on her brother in law's machine
at his house down the road, I had my grieving spell and went about doing
aimless stuff for about an hour. I got over it but was still raw about
it, and when I told the old man (when I went and picked him up from the
truck stop to bring him home for the weekend) about it, and his blowing it
off to family doing what they want to, I noticed in the headlights of the
van as I circled and prepared to drive backwards down the driveway as I
always do.

Something was missing. And it was huge. I stopped once again at the
boulder that Miz Mary and I have sat and talked many, many times, that I
had bought a reflector to shove into close by so you don't HIT that
boulder as you negotiate the curve to come back to my abode, and stopped
dead. The brights were on, and as my sentence trailed off I figured it
out immediately..........ALL of her beloved (and mine too) pink Acacia
trees were GONE. Every one. Cut to the ground. They were woolly twigged
pink Acacia's, members of the pink Locust family and had suffered like
everything else had with the hard freeze. But underneath the brown and
crispy leaves, I had seen new growth of leaves AND buds. But now they were
all cut down and even the clump of prickly pears that I'd planted
underneath my mailbox that used to sit in the middle of what was then the
growing colony of Acacia's. They had colonized the sides working
themselves eastwards towards me, and I was actually contemplating removal
of the cactus when I realized I'd left a few when Miz Mary had offered to
put up three mailboxes for the three of us up on this ridge and hilltop.
When she had them put next to the asphalt road for the conveniences of the
mail carrier (this is how generous she always was), she asked me to leave
a few cacti to colonize around the base of the Acacia. She liked the idea
of the thorns of the locust, the huge pink pea like flowers that drove the
bees insane with delight, and my prickly pears in yellow blousey blooms.
It's all gone now. Just scraped clean and mowed to almost bare soil.
clipped short.

To say I'm devastated is an understatement. That the man I am married to
never figured out why I was so distraught and upset was saddening. His
rationalizing that the people had "farmer mentality" wasn't correct. His
statements that they didn't know they were Acacia's nor did they care only
proved he didn't know WHY I was so upset. My pleas to just not speak
anymore of it fell on unsympathetic ears, so I dropped it on the ground
and went off and wept.

It was because the beauty was gone, and so was her beloved park bench.
And this was two things in one day that was very unsettling. And so, I've
posted the pictures I took last fall of that peace and quiet place she'd
provided to anyone who wanted to sit and just experience it. and I've
added pictures of last years bounty and last hurrah of her pink Locusts
that she herself had planted..........Sometimes it makes me
wonder......but the gardener in me still drives on. And I will be
vigilant in watching for shoots of the trees coming up from the roots that
lie below the soil and will lift them over and over again and pot them up
in hopes of saving one or two to have for my own, be damned, and I will
plant them at my own gates and hope they tromp down towards the WEST
towards the edge of the pastures.

I only hope that when I come home one day and discover the old family
homestead farmhouse has been bulldozed like I suspect they will, they'll
not cut down the remaining sister sugar maple tree with the perfect little
white dogwood underneath her. I hope they realize underneath the boughs
of this young maple, lies Miz Mary's sweet cocker spaniel, Hero, whom she
lovingly tucked in his blanket, planted a huge swath of bright daylilies
over him and then put up her old mailbox to mark his grave. Birds have
built a nest inside it, and the daylilies struggle with the reality that
they're underneath a maple tree, but the leaves shade her little dog she
loved dearly like a child, and I know. I know soon they'll probably cut
the front maple tree down that is now quite dead from being struck so many
times by lightening last year after she left.

Thanks for letting me vent my spleen. The next post will be of sticky
pots and frustration container gardens..........

madgardener, up on the ridge, back in Fairy Holler, overlooking English
Mountain in Eastern Tennessee, zone 7, Sunset zone 36

William Rose wrote:
In article ,
Jangchub wrote:
Be glad to be who you are, those people are missing the entirety of
life's offerings.

said with love and sadness,
Veet



"They paved paradise and put up a parking lot
With a pink hotel, a boutique, and a swingin' hot spot
Don't it always seem to go
That you don't know what you got 'til it's gone
They paved paradise and put up a parking lot . . ."

(Big Yellow Taxi, Joni Mitchell)

- Bill
Cloribus gustibus non disputatum (mostly)


here's the incredible difference, though, Bill. Up here on the ridge
where I live, Miz Mary's house still sits atop of the dead end, my
driveway still hooks around on the northern side and ends in a holler.
Trees at the bottom with what amounts to a REAL holler (like shady
terraces). The lower part that lays behind Miz Mary's old farmhouse
that her sister actually owns now is predominantly pasture, with a
couple of interesting sink area's. This whole hill once millions of
years ago was probably covered in water or had intense running water
around because of the way the boulders that stick out look. It's still
nice. Not much scraping yet, just cutting down the "weed" trees that
happen to have incredible character. She also has an old "L-M, (Elm)
that has that neat pinched bark when it's young and is almost flat on
all four sides. I'm sure they won't cut THAT down. There's another on
in the pasture (or is there? now I gotta go look for that sucker
tomorrow to see if anyone has bush hogged it from near the electric
fence that keeps the cows inside). No paving so far. Today there were
turkey vultures circling lazily overhead, probably in search for some of
those imbred cats of my neighbor across the shared driveway..g there
is quite a nature balance going on up here. Coyote, foxes, vultures,
hawks, felines (too many, I'm seeing bird carcasses, but this is nature
at it's basic. his cats are starving and inbred. So Mom's Nature
provides them with less than normal instincts to survive. I hate to see
the birds (my cats are fed and only slightly cruel, and I thwart them at
every chance as I watch from the quiet of my bedroom window, living room
window or kitchen deck door.....) but this goes on in the wild which is
damn near what this is anyway. There are possoms, raccoons, all manner
of wild life. (even owls!!)And the deer that are around, and wild turkey
are hunkering down. Especially the wild turkey at the moment. I think
it's bow season. I'm not quite sure, but I overheard talk about turkey
shooting today twice, so it must be season for some. I coulda sworn you
didn't shoot turkey when they're nesting. But there are so many, maybe
I'm mistaken.

After having a brain fart, I realized that no matter that they cut the
suckering shrubby trees to the ground. The roots are healthy, and
unless Benton sprayed Post on the stubbs, I can watch for the shoots
coming back up and sever me one or two with my sharp spade for my own to
plug in beside the gate. If I plant it just past my gate, near the
pasture, it will have chance to root if I can get a calloused shoot
later this springtime. The park bench was taken by the middle sister's
granddaughter, and I decided today that unless the Adirondack chairs
disappear as well, I'll drag one over underneath the trees and sit. And
if they take THEM, I will take my OWN lawn chair and sit and gaze. Miz
Mary would never deny me that solace and peace and view. Besides,
there's also grass underneath those trees near the electric fence where
the cows sometimes graze, and it will be soon cow picking time for me.
The pear tree might bloom, and I'm a mind to take cuttings of her old
fashioned snow ball viburnum when it gets new growth going.

I planted up two containers today and felt really good to get my hands
into the soil. Mostly dry and sun loving perennials. Ruby heart
sempervivum and Red Ruby semp, Katrina semp, three Arnaria that I put
two on either corner of the large Earth box, then two silvery leafed
Prince Edwards yarrow that are starting to bloom. I'll cut them back to
encourage them to double, and the semps fanning out. After planting the
boxes, I felt a bit better, and they will bulk up nicely for me given
time. The Arnaria are already opening their flowers (they were bud
tight). Simple things make me happy.

maddie

On 4/23/07 9:02 AM, in article ,
"madgardener" wrote:
SNIPPING

I planted up two containers today and felt really good to get my hands
into the soil. Mostly dry and sun loving perennials. Ruby heart
sempervivum and Red Ruby semp, Katrina semp, three Arnaria that I put
two on either corner of the large Earth box, then two silvery leafed
Prince Edwards yarrow that are starting to bloom. I'll cut them back to
encourage them to double, and the semps fanning out. After planting the
boxes, I felt a bit better, and they will bulk up nicely for me given
time. The Arnaria are already opening their flowers (they were bud
tight). Simple things make me happy.

maddie
Those semps sound lovely.

Reminds me that I have to get some shots of mine as they shed their winter
leaves for the spring!

In article ,
madgardener wrote:

gldancer wrote:
On Apr 21, 3:13 am, madgardener wrote:
Sometimes you just have to vent your spleen......I will explain.


Oh, Maddie, what a terrible thing! Someone took down the trees?!?
Why? How sad. And the bench going missing, I sincerely hope it
wasn't vandalizement. Nothing is safe anymore. By the way, I will
have baby hemlocks for you this week? Is that okay? I'll bring them
down there.

dancing in my mind,
gloria in sunny hemlock hollow


yeppers, bring em down but call me first, I'll be out gardening and
huntin' fer jobs................
maddie

(Sigh) Like it or not, life goes on, within you or without you.
Hopefully, the glorious bursting forth of new buds takes some of the
sting out of the loving memories of old canes. Anywho, they both need
acknowledgment and care.
- Bill
Cloribus gustibus non disputatum (mostly)

On Apr 21, 8:13 am, madgardener wrote:
Sometimes you just have to vent your spleen......I will explain.

Over the years, those who are familiar with me here over the fence in
wrecked gardens know that when I am outraged or moved emotionally by
something, I'll most likely post it here. Usually it has to do with
horticultural things. I have discovered over the years that most of us
gardeners are benevolent creatures of various levels of stewardship
towards growing things. We're nurturers and growers and usually
optimists, because we plant seeds, and trees. We sit on cold, snowy
winter evenings (and days) and pore over catalogs and slobber over the
newest tomato or perennial or blooming shrub. We push the envelopes
with zones and plant figs and crape myrtles or magnolia's or lust and
long for those tulips and hosta's that to some living in the more
tropical climates think are just fabrications listening to us up
northerly wax happily about (yes, Zhanataya, I speak of you wherever you
are in the Southwest now happily growing cacti and other desert
things......)

I've anguished over things lost, like my lower neighbor cutting down
three incredible Forsythia's to the ground that were over a hundred
years old. But I'd captured their magnificence in early spring before
his farmer's mindset persuaded him to go out and cut them severely to
the ground. They're coming back, but they won't bloom for another two
years...........and they'll have the last laugh even when he's gone to
his own rest, and hopefully his surviving children will see the beauty
of the old roots as they will have thrown healthier shoots that will be
loaded with even more bright yellow lanterns and they will never cut it
again. I wrote of those shrubs that his wife's family and ancestors had
planted well over 100 years ago when they first laid claim to the land
and made it theirs and their family and kinfolk. I have great grand
daughters of those bushes, and when I leave Fairy Holler, I will take a
cutting with me to remind me of something that I hold sacred in it's
simplicity and tenacity. It endures when we've all gone back to the
soil ourselves. (you always see lilacs and Forsythia's and old
fashioned three flowered narcissus growing where old homesteads used to be).

So why do I want to "vent my spleen" again? Well, to put it simply, yet
another action against something that I grew to love and respect has now
been take away and gotten rid of for whatever reasoning. Miz Mary whom
I've spoken of many times in the past ten years on this newsgroup has
always had a magnificent old iron and thick slat park bench that she
always painted white every Spring. It sat in the special prominent
place of honor of her side yard before you got to the old farm house she
was raised in. Her grandmother and daddy lived in this house. She has
life rights, meaning she can live there as long as she's alive, and as
she would have told you quickly, she had no need of it once she was
gone..........

Over the eleven years I grew to love and respect Miz Mary, I learned she
was the epitome of what you all would know in the phrase of "Southern
Lady". She was hospitality and charm, and quite the character. If you
drove up the dead end road which was named Niles Road for her daddy,
she'd have come out of her cluttered house, maneuvered through the
clutter of her piled up front porch that she'd tell you immediately she
was enclosing and cleaning off one day, to tell you that once, Niles
Road was known far and wide as Mockingbird Lane because of all the
mockingbirds. (they're back now). Much to your chagrin, she'd talk your
ears off, and if you COULD get a word in edgewise, you soon found
yourself hearing her trademark response to your feeble efforts to
respond of her "Like I was SAYING........." Her energetic and generous
character taught me that Spinsters weren't always the stereotype they
were thought to be. She'd quickly put you in your place if you called
her a Spinster (and I did, just to get her fire up) and she'd tell you
that she had dated many men, thank you very much, and had almost married
....insert names of local men through her lifetime of the 72 years thus
far here, and all of them had married and passed on!!

Her observations of people was astounding, her knowledge of incredible
trivia was also astounding. Despite her incredible and ever mounting
clutter of her porch and home with the trails that kept her from cooking
in her own kitchen, she'd whip up awesome things to take to community
meetings outside on her summer tables underneath the trees. Always
scrumptious and never ceasing to amaze. She'd use me as a
co-conspirator to bake her cornbread for her cornbread salad.....and
reward me with leftovers, and a dessert of fresh ripe peaches with sour
cream and dark brown sugar whipped and lavished on mismatched colorful
plates or bowls she'd find at little shoppes she frequented from all
around. Bric and brac was everywhere, and when my granddaughters
visited, she'd appear with little gifts for each girl (there are four of
them) and crayons and books, dolls, silly little things, bottles of
bubbles, all manner of little things. For the boys in my family, she'd
give little trucks and cars and things that fascinated them. And always
there was the open door of balls and toys in her yard, encouraging the
children who had their bicycles (one year my grand daughter brought her
bike as I have a perfect driveway and road to ride upon safely)to visit
and sit and drink lemonade with her and munch cookies and listen to
stories about people they hadn't a clue who were......this was Miz Mary.
To the 100th power.

That she had this iron park bench with the thick slats underneath the
shade of two 75 year old trees that her daddy planted with her mama, and
you could sit and visit and just look across the miles to the majesty of
English Mountain and the slice of blue that was Douglas Lake. Watch the
trees and see hawks or turkey vultures circling overhead. The stretch
of "Thunder Road" or as some knew it, old Highway 25-70 below to the
south could be seen through the window of trees and you could see
vehicles, and despite that there were more and more signs on the
pastures beyond to the south that the farmlands were being sold and
subdivided, the stars are still visible underneath her sky up here. You
might see more lights across the road where you know it lies a mile away
at the end of Wine Road, but you know you're in an island of peace and
tranquility where deer, coyote, foxes, possoms, raccoon, woodchucks,
chipmunks, flying squirrel, gray squirrel, a huge wide assortment of
birds from yellow finches, blue cranes, hawks,turkey vultures, gray
eagles, Mountain bluebirds or Indigos, hummingbirds, from the tiniest to
the largest reside here and around here. It's called a green belt. At
least 16 acres that doesn't get taxed the same because it lays fallow.

Well, since Miz Mary experienced her many little heart attacks and then
the strokes that wound her up in the nursing home five miles away, her
family have been methodically coming up and cleaning out her home. It
needed it, but lately, I've been seeing a disturbing practice. Miz Mary
will never come home. I grieved this year that she wasn't brought up
here on Easter to see her beautiful dogwoods and azalea's and tulips and
candytuft and phlox all blooming at the same time. Nor see her little
dogwood she'd planted in the gnarled up roots of the 80 year old maple
beside the driveway we share that wraps around the back of her house.
It bloomed for the first time this year before the hard freeze nipped
the blossoms and leaves. And it's a perfectly shaped tree as
well.......Her family have not only been throwing away the stuff she
accumulated, but doing radical cleaning.

I spoke of coming home a few weeks ago and couldn't figure out what was
different, and realized someone had completely cut down her six year old
pussy willow tree that she'd had planted a bit too close to the
foundation. Over a foot thick, I knew it WAS too close to the
foundation but this year, it was glorious and I took cuttings of it
before it "disappeared" and they are now all rooted...........I'll pot
them soon.

Today I discovered much to my anguish that her beloved park bench was
simply gone. And after leaving a message on her brother in law's
machine at his house down the road, I had my grieving spell and went
about doing aimless stuff for about an hour. I got over it but was
still raw about it, and when I told the old man (when I went and picked
him up from the truck stop to bring him home for the weekend) about it,
and his blowing it off to family doing what they want to, I noticed in
the headlights of the van as I circled and prepared to drive backwards
down the driveway as I always do.

Something was missing. And it was huge. I stopped once again at the
boulder that Miz Mary and I have sat and talked many, many times, that I
had bought a reflector to shove into close by so you don't HIT that
boulder as you negotiate the curve to come back to my abode, and stopped
dead. The brights were on, and as my sentence trailed off I figured it
out immediately..........ALL of her beloved (and mine too) pink Acacia
trees were GONE. Every one. Cut to the ground. They were woolly
twigged pink Acacia's, members of the pink Locust family and had
suffered like everything else had with the hard freeze. But underneath
the brown and crispy leaves, I had seen new growth of leaves AND buds.
But now they were all cut down and even the clump of prickly pears that
I'd planted underneath my mailbox that used to sit in the middle of what
was then the growing colony of Acacia's. They had colonized the sides
working themselves eastwards towards me, and I was actually
contemplating removal of the cactus when I realized I'd left a few when
Miz Mary had offered to put up three mailboxes for the three of us up on
this ridge and hilltop. When she had them put next to the asphalt road
for the conveniences of the mail carrier (this is how generous she
always was), she asked me to leave a few cacti to colonize around the
base of the Acacia. She liked the idea of the thorns of the locust, the
huge pink pea like flowers that drove the bees insane with delight, and
my prickly pears in yellow blousey blooms. It's all gone now. Just
scraped clean and mowed to almost bare soil. clipped short.

To say I'm devastated is an understatement. That the man I am married
to never figured out why I was so distraught and upset was saddening.
His rationalizing that the people had "farmer mentality" wasn't correct.
His statements that they didn't know they were Acacia's nor did they
care only proved he didn't know WHY I was so upset. My pleas to just not
speak anymore of it fell on unsympathetic ears, so I dropped it on the
ground and went off and wept.

It was because the beauty was gone, and so was her beloved park bench.
And this was two things in one day that was very unsettling. And so,
I've posted the pictures I took last fall of that peace and quiet place
she'd provided to anyone who wanted to sit and just experience it. and
I've added pictures of last years bounty and last hurrah of her pink
Locusts that she herself had planted..........Sometimes it makes me
wonder......but the gardener in me still drives on. And I will be
vigilant in watching for shoots of the trees coming up from the roots
that lie below the soil and will lift them over and over again and pot
them up in hopes of saving one or two to have for my own, be damned, and
I will plant them at my own gates and hope they tromp down towards the
WEST towards the edge of the pastures.

I only hope that when I come home one day and discover the old family
homestead farmhouse has been bulldozed like I suspect they will, they'll
not cut down the remaining sister sugar maple tree with the perfect
little white dogwood underneath her. I hope they realize underneath the
boughs of this young maple, lies Miz Mary's sweet cocker spaniel, Hero,
whom she lovingly tucked in his blanket, planted a huge swath of bright
daylilies over him and then put up her old mailbox to mark his grave.
Birds have built a nest inside it, and the daylilies struggle with the
reality that they're underneath a maple tree, but the leaves shade her
little dog she loved dearly like a child, and I know. I know soon
they'll probably cut the front maple tree down that is now quite dead
from being struck so many times by lightening last year after she left.

Thanks for letting me vent my spleen. The next post will be of sticky
pots and frustration container gardens..........

madgardener, up on the ridge, back in Fairy Holler, overlooking English
Mountain in Eastern Tennessee, zone 7, Sunset zone 36

Bless you heart.

"Treelady" wrote in message

Bless you heart.


Do you not know how to trim threads and postings?

Mike


--
.................................................. ..............
The Royal Naval Electrical Branch Association.
'THE' Association if you served in the Electrical Branch of the Royal Navy
www.rneba.org.uk

'Mike' wrote:
"Treelady" wrote in message

Bless you heart.


Do you not know how to trim threads and postings?

Mike


lighten up on 'becca, Mike, she loved the words I wrote and forgot is
all! (((hug)))
maddie

'Mike' wrote:
"Treelady" wrote in message

Bless you heart.


Do you not know how to trim threads and postings?

Mike



what more should I expect from a Greenie?? gbseg
maddie

Cheryl Isaak wrote:
On 4/23/07 9:02 AM, in article ,
"madgardener" wrote:
SNIPPING
I planted up two containers today and felt really good to get my hands
into the soil. Mostly dry and sun loving perennials. Ruby heart
sempervivum and Red Ruby semp, Katrina semp, three Arnaria that I put
two on either corner of the large Earth box, then two silvery leafed
Prince Edwards yarrow that are starting to bloom. I'll cut them back to
encourage them to double, and the semps fanning out. After planting the
boxes, I felt a bit better, and they will bulk up nicely for me given
time. The Arnaria are already opening their flowers (they were bud
tight). Simple things make me happy.

maddie
Those semps sound lovely.

Reminds me that I have to get some shots of mine as they shed their winter
leaves for the spring!



I sent you a picture and comcast refused to let you have
it......DAMN~~~~~~~~~~~~~

maddie

On Mon, 23 Apr 2007 18:48:05 +0100, "'Mike'"
wrote:

"Treelady" wrote in message

Bless you heart.


Do you not know how to trim threads and postings?

Mike

Bless your heart actually means something else. I've learned this is
how the south is (rudely) polite. And no, part of the passive
aggression is that she leave the entire post and not trim it. Smarmy,
that's what I call it.

i'm so glad i joined this group... the only reason why i decided to
be a member was to get tips on my revived interest in gardening
(planted veggies and shrubs when i was a kid and had forgotten all
about it when i went to college, graduated and had a job). i'm now
28, and i'm thankful that one day while i was on a trip, a beautiful
lantana caught my attention and flashed back all my passion and
memories on the joy of planting.

little did i know that more than gardening tips, i would get to see
lives of tender, loving and kind-hearted people like you. you are all
so sympathetic, not necessarily on gardening alone, but on the
personal lives of the members of this group. i was particularly
touched by the story of maddie, and the people who sympathized for
her.

i will definitely stay here, and learn more about how to care for
plants... but most importantly how you care for each other.


rein

On Apr 22, 9:51 am, William Rose wrote:
In article ,

Jangchub wrote:

Be glad to be who you are, those people are missing the entirety of
life's offerings.

said with love and sadness,
Veet

"They paved paradise and put up a parking lot
With a pink hotel, a boutique, and a swingin' hot spot
Don't it always seem to go
That you don't know what you got 'til it's gone
They paved paradise and put up a parking lot . . ."

(Big Yellow Taxi, Joni Mitchell)

- Bill
Cloribus gustibus non disputatum (mostly)

On Apr 24, 1:11 am, Rein wrote:
i'm so glad i joined this group... the only reason why i decided to
be a member was to get tips on my revived interest in gardening
(planted veggies and shrubs when i was a kid and had forgotten all
about it when i went to college, graduated and had a job). i'm now
28, and i'm thankful that one day while i was on a trip, a beautiful
lantana caught my attention and flashed back all my passion and
memories on the joy of planting.

little did i know that more than gardening tips, i would get to see
lives of tender, loving and kind-hearted people like you. you are all
so sympathetic, not necessarily on gardening alone, but on the
personal lives of the members of this group. i was particularly
touched by the story of maddie, and the people who sympathized for
her.

i will definitely stay here, and learn more about how to care for
plants... but most importantly how you care for each other.

rein

On Apr 22, 9:51 am, William Rose wrote:

In article ,

Jangchub wrote:

Be glad to be who you are, those people are missing the entirety of
life's offerings.

said with love and sadness,
Veet

"They paved paradise and put up a parking lot
With a pink hotel, a boutique, and a swingin' hot spot
Don't it always seem to go
That you don't know what you got 'til it's gone
They paved paradise and put up a parking lot . . ."

(Big Yellow Taxi, Joni Mitchell)

- Bill
Cloribus gustibus non disputatum (mostly)


What a nice comment, Rein. I have been here for about 10 years
and find "wreck" gardens to be as you said. Everyone seems to
be able to discuss things congenially.
I garden in Northern California, way up past Sacramento (39o 43')
Have wonderful soil and a good climate. Our past winter the low
was 20o F and we haven't been that cold for several years.
Mediterranean climate: average rainfall 25 in. with no rain in the
summer months at all. Hot summers with temps over 100
for several weeks. Quite a range for plants to handle well
(and people too)!!
I enjoy mostly flowers, shrubs and any new plant I can find!!
CA natives included. I probably have over 400 species here.
About 1/3 acre.

Anybody else care to introduce themselves??
Emilie
NorCal

How devastating! Could you email me the pics? I can't get your pics to show
on alt. binaries and since my old computer bit the dust, I lost the link
that someone posted here that DID work for me. Maybe they'll see this and
repost it.

Gloria

"madgardener" wrote in message
...
Sometimes you just have to vent your spleen......I will explain.

Over the years, those who are familiar with me here over the fence in
wrecked gardens know that when I am outraged or moved emotionally by
something, I'll most likely post it here. Usually it has to do with
horticultural things. I have discovered over the years that most of us
gardeners are benevolent creatures of various levels of stewardship
towards growing things. We're nurturers and growers and usually
optimists, because we plant seeds, and trees. We sit on cold, snowy
winter evenings (and days) and pore over catalogs and slobber over the
newest tomato or perennial or blooming shrub. We push the envelopes with
zones and plant figs and crape myrtles or magnolia's or lust and long for
those tulips and hosta's that to some living in the more tropical climates
think are just fabrications listening to us up northerly wax happily about
(yes, Zhanataya, I speak of you wherever you are in the Southwest now
happily growing cacti and other desert things......)

I've anguished over things lost, like my lower neighbor cutting down three
incredible Forsythia's to the ground that were over a hundred years old.
But I'd captured their magnificence in early spring before his farmer's
mindset persuaded him to go out and cut them severely to the ground.
They're coming back, but they won't bloom for another two
years...........and they'll have the last laugh even when he's gone to his
own rest, and hopefully his surviving children will see the beauty of the
old roots as they will have thrown healthier shoots that will be loaded
with even more bright yellow lanterns and they will never cut it again. I
wrote of those shrubs that his wife's family and ancestors had planted
well over 100 years ago when they first laid claim to the land and made it
theirs and their family and kinfolk. I have great grand daughters of
those bushes, and when I leave Fairy Holler, I will take a cutting with me
to remind me of something that I hold sacred in it's simplicity and
tenacity. It endures when we've all gone back to the soil ourselves.
(you always see lilacs and Forsythia's and old fashioned three flowered
narcissus growing where old homesteads used to be).

So why do I want to "vent my spleen" again? Well, to put it simply, yet
another action against something that I grew to love and respect has now
been take away and gotten rid of for whatever reasoning. Miz Mary whom
I've spoken of many times in the past ten years on this newsgroup has
always had a magnificent old iron and thick slat park bench that she
always painted white every Spring. It sat in the special prominent place
of honor of her side yard before you got to the old farm house she was
raised in. Her grandmother and daddy lived in this house. She has life
rights, meaning she can live there as long as she's alive, and as she
would have told you quickly, she had no need of it once she was
gone..........

Over the eleven years I grew to love and respect Miz Mary, I learned she
was the epitome of what you all would know in the phrase of "Southern
Lady". She was hospitality and charm, and quite the character. If you
drove up the dead end road which was named Niles Road for her daddy, she'd
have come out of her cluttered house, maneuvered through the clutter of
her piled up front porch that she'd tell you immediately she was enclosing
and cleaning off one day, to tell you that once, Niles Road was known far
and wide as Mockingbird Lane because of all the mockingbirds. (they're
back now). Much to your chagrin, she'd talk your ears off, and if you
COULD get a word in edgewise, you soon found yourself hearing her
trademark response to your feeble efforts to respond of her "Like I was
SAYING........." Her energetic and generous character taught me that
Spinsters weren't always the stereotype they were thought to be. She'd
quickly put you in your place if you called her a Spinster (and I did,
just to get her fire up) and she'd tell you that she had dated many men,
thank you very much, and had almost married ....insert names of local men
through her lifetime of the 72 years thus far here, and all of them had
married and passed on!!

Her observations of people was astounding, her knowledge of incredible
trivia was also astounding. Despite her incredible and ever mounting
clutter of her porch and home with the trails that kept her from cooking
in her own kitchen, she'd whip up awesome things to take to community
meetings outside on her summer tables underneath the trees. Always
scrumptious and never ceasing to amaze. She'd use me as a co-conspirator
to bake her cornbread for her cornbread salad.....and reward me with
leftovers, and a dessert of fresh ripe peaches with sour cream and dark
brown sugar whipped and lavished on mismatched colorful plates or bowls
she'd find at little shoppes she frequented from all around. Bric and
brac was everywhere, and when my granddaughters visited, she'd appear with
little gifts for each girl (there are four of them) and crayons and books,
dolls, silly little things, bottles of bubbles, all manner of little
things. For the boys in my family, she'd give little trucks and cars and
things that fascinated them. And always there was the open door of balls
and toys in her yard, encouraging the children who had their bicycles (one
year my grand daughter brought her bike as I have a perfect driveway and
road to ride upon safely)to visit and sit and drink lemonade with her and
munch cookies and listen to stories about people they hadn't a clue who
were......this was Miz Mary. To the 100th power.

That she had this iron park bench with the thick slats underneath the
shade of two 75 year old trees that her daddy planted with her mama, and
you could sit and visit and just look across the miles to the majesty of
English Mountain and the slice of blue that was Douglas Lake. Watch the
trees and see hawks or turkey vultures circling overhead. The stretch of
"Thunder Road" or as some knew it, old Highway 25-70 below to the south
could be seen through the window of trees and you could see vehicles, and
despite that there were more and more signs on the pastures beyond to the
south that the farmlands were being sold and subdivided, the stars are
still visible underneath her sky up here. You might see more lights across
the road where you know it lies a mile away at the end of Wine Road, but
you know you're in an island of peace and tranquility where deer, coyote,
foxes, possoms, raccoon, woodchucks, chipmunks, flying squirrel, gray
squirrel, a huge wide assortment of birds from yellow finches, blue
cranes, hawks,turkey vultures, gray eagles, Mountain bluebirds or Indigos,
hummingbirds, from the tiniest to the largest reside here and around here.
It's called a green belt. At least 16 acres that doesn't get taxed the
same because it lays fallow.

Well, since Miz Mary experienced her many little heart attacks and then
the strokes that wound her up in the nursing home five miles away, her
family have been methodically coming up and cleaning out her home. It
needed it, but lately, I've been seeing a disturbing practice. Miz Mary
will never come home. I grieved this year that she wasn't brought up here
on Easter to see her beautiful dogwoods and azalea's and tulips and
candytuft and phlox all blooming at the same time. Nor see her little
dogwood she'd planted in the gnarled up roots of the 80 year old maple
beside the driveway we share that wraps around the back of her house. It
bloomed for the first time this year before the hard freeze nipped the
blossoms and leaves. And it's a perfectly shaped tree as well.......Her
family have not only been throwing away the stuff she accumulated, but
doing radical cleaning.

I spoke of coming home a few weeks ago and couldn't figure out what was
different, and realized someone had completely cut down her six year old
pussy willow tree that she'd had planted a bit too close to the
foundation. Over a foot thick, I knew it WAS too close to the foundation
but this year, it was glorious and I took cuttings of it before it
"disappeared" and they are now all rooted...........I'll pot them soon.

Today I discovered much to my anguish that her beloved park bench was
simply gone. And after leaving a message on her brother in law's machine
at his house down the road, I had my grieving spell and went about doing
aimless stuff for about an hour. I got over it but was still raw about
it, and when I told the old man (when I went and picked him up from the
truck stop to bring him home for the weekend) about it, and his blowing it
off to family doing what they want to, I noticed in the headlights of the
van as I circled and prepared to drive backwards down the driveway as I
always do.

Something was missing. And it was huge. I stopped once again at the
boulder that Miz Mary and I have sat and talked many, many times, that I
had bought a reflector to shove into close by so you don't HIT that
boulder as you negotiate the curve to come back to my abode, and stopped
dead. The brights were on, and as my sentence trailed off I figured it
out immediately..........ALL of her beloved (and mine too) pink Acacia
trees were GONE. Every one. Cut to the ground. They were woolly twigged
pink Acacia's, members of the pink Locust family and had suffered like
everything else had with the hard freeze. But underneath the brown and
crispy leaves, I had seen new growth of leaves AND buds. But now they were
all cut down and even the clump of prickly pears that I'd planted
underneath my mailbox that used to sit in the middle of what was then the
growing colony of Acacia's. They had colonized the sides working
themselves eastwards towards me, and I was actually contemplating removal
of the cactus when I realized I'd left a few when Miz Mary had offered to
put up three mailboxes for the three of us up on this ridge and hilltop.
When she had them put next to the asphalt road for the conveniences of the
mail carrier (this is how generous she always was), she asked me to leave
a few cacti to colonize around the base of the Acacia. She liked the idea
of the thorns of the locust, the huge pink pea like flowers that drove the
bees insane with delight, and my prickly pears in yellow blousey blooms.
It's all gone now. Just scraped clean and mowed to almost bare soil.
clipped short.

To say I'm devastated is an understatement. That the man I am married to
never figured out why I was so distraught and upset was saddening. His
rationalizing that the people had "farmer mentality" wasn't correct. His
statements that they didn't know they were Acacia's nor did they care only
proved he didn't know WHY I was so upset. My pleas to just not speak
anymore of it fell on unsympathetic ears, so I dropped it on the ground
and went off and wept.

It was because the beauty was gone, and so was her beloved park bench.
And this was two things in one day that was very unsettling. And so, I've
posted the pictures I took last fall of that peace and quiet place she'd
provided to anyone who wanted to sit and just experience it. and I've
added pictures of last years bounty and last hurrah of her pink Locusts
that she herself had planted..........Sometimes it makes me
wonder......but the gardener in me still drives on. And I will be
vigilant in watching for shoots of the trees coming up from the roots that
lie below the soil and will lift them over and over again and pot them up
in hopes of saving one or two to have for my own, be damned, and I will
plant them at my own gates and hope they tromp down towards the WEST
towards the edge of the pastures.

I only hope that when I come home one day and discover the old family
homestead farmhouse has been bulldozed like I suspect they will, they'll
not cut down the remaining sister sugar maple tree with the perfect little
white dogwood underneath her. I hope they realize underneath the boughs
of this young maple, lies Miz Mary's sweet cocker spaniel, Hero, whom she
lovingly tucked in his blanket, planted a huge swath of bright daylilies
over him and then put up her old mailbox to mark his grave. Birds have
built a nest inside it, and the daylilies struggle with the reality that
they're underneath a maple tree, but the leaves shade her little dog she
loved dearly like a child, and I know. I know soon they'll probably cut
the front maple tree down that is now quite dead from being struck so many
times by lightening last year after she left.

Thanks for letting me vent my spleen. The next post will be of sticky
pots and frustration container gardens..........

madgardener, up on the ridge, back in Fairy Holler, overlooking English
Mountain in Eastern Tennessee, zone 7, Sunset zone 36

[quote=Gloria;707551]How devastating! Could you email me the pics? I can't get your pics to show
on alt. binaries and since my old computer bit the dust, I lost the link
that someone posted here that DID work for me. Maybe they'll see this and
repost it.

Gloria

gloria here is the link that u might be looking for . i had posted it for everyone quite sometime ago and emailed it to myself as well so that i wouldnt lose it .
hope it works for ya. cyaaaaaa, sockiescat.
http://www.usenet-replayer.com/group...s.gardens.html

maddy (((((((((((((((())))))))))))))))))
im so sorry about everything that is going on and the loss of all the wonderful things that u and Miz Mary shared . i sat here with tears in my eyes thinking how stupid and thoughtless could they be to just destroy things like that without any sense or thought on what they are doing this is so very wrong and they are so very senseless.
u are right on one thing your hubby was wrong on the thought of them having farmers mentality because farmers dont normally just walk in and start destroying things we usually take a look at the picture as a whole and take the time to decide what to do and have respect for others.
especially if its the home farm i dont know of many farmers that have such disregard of their homeplace or that of their ancestors to do something not only that stupid but with so much disrespect.
these people need a good foot put where the sun doesnt shine and need to grow not only a heart but some brains as well .
maybe LAH is right if u were to approach them and maybe offer to help with the cleanup u might be able to salvage a number of the things that u and Miz Mary shared together.
my heart goes out to u and Miz Mary both. god bless the both of u.
take care and know that others are thinking of u. hugsssss, sockiescat.

Rein wrote:
i'm so glad i joined this group... the only reason why i decided to
be a member was to get tips on my revived interest in gardening
(planted veggies and shrubs when i was a kid and had forgotten all
about it when i went to college, graduated and had a job). i'm now
28, and i'm thankful that one day while i was on a trip, a beautiful
lantana caught my attention and flashed back all my passion and
memories on the joy of planting.

little did i know that more than gardening tips, i would get to see
lives of tender, loving and kind-hearted people like you. you are all
so sympathetic, not necessarily on gardening alone, but on the
personal lives of the members of this group. i was particularly
touched by the story of maddie, and the people who sympathized for
her.

i will definitely stay here, and learn more about how to care for
plants... but most importantly how you care for each other.


rein

On Apr 22, 9:51 am, William Rose wrote:
In article ,

Jangchub wrote:

Be glad to be who you are, those people are missing the entirety of
life's offerings.
said with love and sadness,
Veet
"They paved paradise and put up a parking lot
With a pink hotel, a boutique, and a swingin' hot spot
Don't it always seem to go
That you don't know what you got 'til it's gone
They paved paradise and put up a parking lot . . ."

(Big Yellow Taxi, Joni Mitchell)

- Bill
Cloribus gustibus non disputatum (mostly)




and THIS is why I continue, after over ten years to write and contribute
to "wrecked.gardens" and now, share with UK wrecked gardens! LOL
thanks, any questions about horticulture and the passion of gardening,
fire away!
madgardener, up on the ridge, back in Fairy Holler, overlooking English
Mountain (minus a good comfy place to sit and just LOOK, but there are
always other ways!) in Eastern Tennessee, zone 7, Sunset zone 36