My Older Sister’s Bloom Day Contribution
My sister left a comment yesterday that her lilac is confused and blooming again for Garden Bloggers’ Bloom Day in September.
Spring flowering shrubs do sometimes get confused and rebloom lightly in the fall. That’s quite a bit of bloom on her lilac, more than I’ve seen before on any lilac in the fall. I wonder how this will affect its spring bloom? I’m assuming the shrub got its signals crossed because of the ‘moderate drought’, followed by some rain and cooler temperatures. It’s really going to be shocked at the end of the week when temperatures are supposed to go up to 90 again, after a few very cool days. It was 50 degrees yesterday at 9:00 AM when I went out to work in the garden.
I want to thank all those who posted pictures and lists of their blooms yesterday for Garden Bloggers’ Bloom Day. There is still a lot going on in everyone’s gardens, but many of us will see flowering come to a halt, or at least slow down considerably, by the time the next Garden Bloggers’ Bloom Day comes around on October 15th. Then we’ll just have to admire and be envious of what is blooming in others’ gardens.
If you haven’t posted your blooms for September, by the way, feel free to do so whenever you get a chance.
Garden Bloggers’ Book Club Survey
I’ve published another survey, this one on the Garden Bloggers’ Book Club. The most important question is which book should we read for October. The four books I’ve put on the list for consideration are:
Green Thoughts: A Writer in the Garden by Eleanor Perenyi
For Love of a Rose by Antonia Ridge
One Man’s Garden by Henry Mitchell
Dear Friend and Gardener the correspondence of Christopher Lloyd and Beth Chatto
There are only five questions, so if you have a minute, I’d be ever appreciative if you would share your ideas and thoughts on the Book Club. Click here to take the survey, or you can access it above on the right sidebar.
What Would You Do?
And now a question for you to think about and maybe comment on.
Imagine that you’ve been working out in the garden most of the day and realize you need just a few more bags of top soil or maybe another pound or two of grass seed for overseeding the lawn. You decide you need to make a quick trip to the garden center to get it so you can still finish up your project. You look like someone who’s been working outside in their garden all day long. Do you….
a) Wash your hands, run a comb through your hair and go get what you need?
b) Do the above but also change your clothes so you at least resemble a clean person?
c) Take a shower to get all cleaned up, then go?
d) Make someone else go for you?
Guess which one I chose?
I think you would wipe the sweat off your face & go. I’ve never seen you really ‘dirty’ since you were 5 years old
My answer is A. Wash your hands and go…I find many gardeners looking like they are doing some REAL work at the garden shops! Of course, I took a quiz on line that tells you which wife of Henry the VIII you matched most closely with, and I turned out to be Anne of Cleaves,…she was very practical and didn’t mind going out wearing ugly shoes! THAT’S ME!!! LOL.
Julie
a) But no comb thru the hair…I have very curly hair and would look like a banshee. A wash of the hands, a hat…and out the door.
At our garden center I see gardeners working a project come in gloried up with dirt just needing that one last thing. I love it.
I would do A for the most part but B if I’ve been sweating a lot. My worst fear in the world is for somebody to be standing beside me going “OMG SHE STINKS!” So, if I stink I will change clothes.
I think you would do “a” unless you had someone visiting that you could talk into going. I would also do “a” but I wouldn’t comb my hair because it would be braided up, and it wouldn’t even occur to me to change my clothes until I was in the line to check out and happened to look down and see my dirty knees.
Hi Carol, though I am not participating in the Garden Bloggers’ Book Club, I am always reading with interest the suggestions you make. Some of the books you already have proposed and read, I know too (sometimes they have been also translated to my native language). And I also have some books in English (actually two of your new books). All the books of Henry Mitchell are worth to be read and the correspondence of Beth Chatto and Christopher Lloyd is just wonderful, full of warmth and humanity and also with a sense of humour and wisdom. I bought this book, when it came out almost ten years ago. It was a great pleasure reading it. I’m wondering what books you are going to discuss in your GBBC and I’ll certainly follow the comments. The two other books you mentioned are unknown to me and I’m going to check them. I am always thankful for new book proposals.
Besides, I would probably do A, when going to the gardencenter where everybody knows me.
Carol,
I’m all about d) baby.
If there is no one to go for me, I would choose a) except I wouldn’t comb my hair.
When I pick up my kids from school, I can’t tell you how many times my friends pick things out of my hair, leaves, sticks, bugs.
This has happened to me any number of times—or I’ve got to pick up my kids at school. I pretty much go as is, washing my hands if they’re really bad. Oh well, people know I like to garden.
Carol,
You would do A. But would you really comb your hair first? I don’t think you would send someone else because you wouldn’t trust them to get the exact item that you want, AND more importantly, there might be just one more little plant that jumps into your cart and wants to go home with you — you wouldn’t miss that oppotunity.
I never change my grubby clothes to go to the garden center. But I usually take a minute and put on a bra.
I had five updates to the GBBD post including a spring-blooming Indian hawthorn. I was really surprised to see it. Plants are confused all over the country.
As for your survey, I probably wash big chunks of clay off my hands but I never manage to get the fingernails clean. Nor do I remember to comb my hair. I have, in my gardening attire, been mistaken for a fellow homeless person by a guy panhandling.
I would do a, just a quick wash of the hands and then off I would go. I mean, I’m only going to the garden center … where I’ll meet other gardeners.
No comb…I’ve got curly hair like Chitweed…but in any case I usually have my hair up in some clips, etc anyway. I am of the belief that I am invisible at these times…in any case gardening is dirty work and so is hauling stuff from the garden center! I do try to pick leaves off my clothes/out of my hair.
Carol, I have gone many times to garden centers wearing my grubby garden clothes, if I’m not too dirty. So, I would answer, a).
You mentioned your sister’s lilac blooming, I actually saw a Bradford pear blooming in my neighborhood the other day. I couldn’t believe it.
Carol, I am afraid I would not only change clothes and shower, but get the curling iron out and redo my hair before I would even consider leaving my house!
If at all possible, I would get DH to go for me.
I wash my hands, comb my hair and use a little hairspray, and apply lipstick, thinking maybe they won’t notice my muddy knees, shoes, and the rubbed in dirt on my shirt. Oh, well.
Forgot: One squirt of perfume. Then I’m good to go.
None of the above. Wipe my hands on my pants and hop in the car. Realize half way to the garden center by glancing in the rearview mirror that I have dirt streaks on my face and my naturally curly hair is sticking out of its ponytail in 50 different directions. Pray that no one I know from my professional life recognizes me at the garden center. Since I’m wearing clothes covered in dirt and my face is vaguely tomato-hued realize that most people I’m related to wouldn’t recognize me much less people with whom I work.
Gardens are always throwing surprises. I still have a forget-me-not in flower, a pink one, very odd.
I pick D for an answer. 😉
A for me. If I showed up at the garden center clean then they’d know I wasn’t working !
All… loved the comments, some very funny answers to my question. I would, by the way, choose A and did just that on Saturday when I had to run back to the garden center for some more grass seed. (I reseeded some parts of my lawn that didn’t do so well in the drought… I know some of you gardeners are going to think “should have just tilled it under and made a flower bed”, but the yard is too big for that!)
Thanks for all the fun!
Carol at May Dreams Gardens
A… but with Heather’s modifications above! That’s why I wear long pants instead of shorts while gardening, right? So I have more material to wipe my hands on before I run to the store/go inside to answer the phone/run for the digital camera (and extra good wipe there, and consideration of washing the hands) etc.