Davin and I recently celebrated our 20th anniversary together and to REALLY celebrate we are going on a road trip through the Mojave and Sonoran deserts! !!!!! !!!!!!
[Infinite exclamation points here.]
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Exploring the world of gardening. Observations, gardens to visit, thoughts on ecology, gardener interviews, and commentary.
Books by Gayla Trail
Tall Autumn Grasses
It was a fall evening some years ago, just before the golden hour (my favourite time of the day). My friend Laura was headed out to Humber Nurseries to take some photos in their private garden and offered to take me along. Not one to forgo a chance to get out of the city or into private gardens, I went along and took with me my digital and one film camera.
Leave a commentSpring Plant Sales
Readers often ask where I find such unusual and interesting plants, and the answer is that I am always looking. ALWAYS. I scan corner shops as I walk by. I look in places you would not expect to find plants. I beg friends with cars to take me on buying trips to hole-in-the-wall nurseries outside of the city. I am fortunate in that I have lots of generous gardening friends who share the surplus from their own gardens. And in the spring months, I go to all of the local plant sales.
While not all plant sales are created equal — some can be overpriced and others carry lots of junk — many one day sales put on by horticultural societies and botanical gardens can be a great way to find unusual, well cared-for plants, at below retail prices. Plant sales also give these organizations and public gardens a bit of a funding boost.
Leave a commentGrow Write Guild: A Spring Day
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It’s been interesting to see how differently people react to the Grow Write Guild prompts. Some people say they’re too easy; others too hard. I’m behind schedule with my responses and was very tempted to throw in a super easy one for number 4, but I promised myself from the start that I would not write prompts to suit my own needs. Falling behind is not the end of the world. That said, I do have a simple one in mind for the near future. It just didn’t feel like the right time to pull it out.
I didn’t find number 3 particularly difficult to do. I’m late because I was feeling lazy and didn’t feel like writing it. However, I did enjoy taking the pictures.
Grow Write Guild Prompt #3: Describe your garden right now.
Stand in one spot in your garden and describe what you see in front of you. Turn to your right. Describe what you see there. What’s behind you? Your left side? What is underneath your feet? What do you see above your head?
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Grow Write Guild: From Fantasy to Nightmare
This was a tough one. Even now, as I force myself to sit down and write this thing more than a week after it is due, I am still fidgeting, still looking for a way out. Hoping for some little task of not so great importance to divert my attention.
“I should really clean my desk!”
“Are there any aphids on this pepper plant?”
“You know, the rug could do with a quick vacuuming.”
Grow Write Guild Prompt #2: Describe your fantasy garden.
I am blocked. The brain does not want to think about a dream garden. The brain really doesn’t want to put it into sentences and paragraphs. As time passes, it is getting harder and harder to do. I have noticed that the block is seeping into other writing assignments. I am growing unsure again about the words that I allow to come out of my fingers. So now it’s not just that I haven’t done this assignment that I assigned (you see, I do not write these prompts with my own ease in mind), or the feeling that I am asking others to step outside of their comfort zones and that I must do the same. Now it is like an infection or a poison that must be drawn out.
I could not understand why it was so hard for me to do this so I talked about it in therapy. So now my therapist asks about it, too. “Did you write that thing yet?”
Even now I am avoiding writing about it by writing about how I keep avoiding writing about it.
[And then I picked up a book that was sitting on my desk and procrastinated further by underlining passages.]
The book I picked up was “There is a Season: A Memoir” by Patrick Lane. I picked it up at the thrift store last week and have only just begun to read it. The passage I underlined was something that I read the other night that stuck out. I didn’t have a pen nearby at the time, but had kept it in my head that I needed to go back and revisit it.
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