Every year the garden club (of which we are members) organizes visits to a number of gardens around the lake and this year we were one of six chosen. Of course they ask those who are chosen, but the other members of the garden club aren’t told until the day of the even when a flyer is handed out identifying the gardens and providing a brief description. This is what they said about us:

“Relatively new to the community, Eirah and Howard have become active members of the Garden Club. Howard’s photos in the calendar and delicious baked goods are both favorites with our members. Eirah has literally dug in and helped plant and the guide Girl Scouts with their planting. Gardening in pots is their very special talent. Enjoy the transformation of the property.”

Of course my wife was pleased to have been chosen and for the past few weeks she’s talked about nothing but gardening – that is when she’s not buying plants and otherwise tending to the garden itself. My role as usual was to dig holes, carry heavy stuff and generally clean up. Either side of the driveway is somewhat overgrown so I decided to attack that by trimming some of the junipers growing on the right side. Trimming didn’t seem to help much so I ended up cutting some of them down completely. We were surprised to see to very picturesque boulders hidden by the junipers. Since these looked nicer that the junipers I had to cut some more down. The problem is that I don’t have very good tools. A chain saw would have been helpful – but then again you can’t give me anything sharp. So I had to content myself with a pruning saw. Luckily junipers wood is soft so although it was hard work it was possible to cut even quite thick ones with the pruning saw. I have a few left which are just too thick, but I’ve cut them back drastically so they don’t cut off the view of the boulders too much. If I say myself it looks a lot better now.

The Garden Tour took place yesterday. People came to our house and we visited the other houses. All but one were on the lake and it was interesting to see the variety of views and the way people had organized their spaces to take advantage of their lake view. After the visit we convened for lunch (paid for by our Garden Club dues) at one of the member’s houses. I guess there must have been sixty or so people there. A good time was had by all.

Now it’s all over and I can relax a bit….I hope….at least for a while.

Another Garden Club member was taking pictures of the assembled multitude so I decided to focus on things in the gardens: