“At some point in life, the world’s beauty is enough. You don’t need to photograph, paint, or even remember it. It is enough” - Toni Morrison

Hey there, and welcome to a new season!

I’m assuming everyone is ready for us to come and get their garden ready for the Spring, oh wait, it’s been spring since January, so we need to get going pronto right!? Things are blooming and greening up, so I better get out of my winter mode of chillin’ and start groovin’. I have been trying to resign myself to stop dwelling on the dramatic climate changes we are experiencing, just do everything I can to make things better, and try to always look at the positive (except when I’m boiling in the EXTREME heat of the summer. I will be VERY negative and cursing out loud, I promise you that) But, as long as I am on this Earth, I will fight for the environment, that is my role in this world, because the fight never ends. There are always evil weeds to battle and deer to cuss out!

CONSISTENCY IS THE KEY

Let’s talk a little about the MAINTENANCE of your gardens. It's something that I want to stress because it can be a very simple part of keeping things looking their best. Things can go downhill very fast, plants are not pieces of furniture, where once they're placed, it’s all good. I know that there are many people out there that like to do it themselves, but I have to say, many times it can be a painful experience for my eyes:) So when we first put in a new landscape, we come in, take out all the old lovely landscaping (some usual suspects: cherry laurel, japanese hollies, barberry, burning bush), then plant away. That disturbance of the soil will send those weed seeds that are dormant in the soil into a tizzy. They get all stimulated and start growing like crazy. That first year is VERY important for maintenance. Taking care of those first intruders will help the new plantings take hold and cover the ground to prevent more weeds. Sometimes there are weeds that CANNOT be ignored (talking about that Thistle), and will NEVER go away if not addressed swiftly and consistently. And then comes the end of June, July, and August. The garden is EXPLODING. This is where some haircuts are needed. Not necessarily a lot, but just enough to not overwhelm the landscape. We can provide you with whatever you need. Once a month is ideal, and once things are on a regular schedule, the costs are low. You’ve invested a lot into the outside, don’t let it go to S***!

CREATING YOUR OWN PATH

Are there rules to Landscaping? Well there should be more but there aren’t many (I vote that dyed black mulch and HOA’s are now illegal). You really should be free to express yourself with your landscaping, bad taste and all (and there’s lots of it). Who says I have to put a row of evergreen shrubs along the foundation of the house (looks oppressive)? Who says I need to have grass at all (HOA’s please go away)? Why can’t I use Pine needles instead of Hardwood mulch (it’s not just for informal areas)? Back during my time in prison, I mean high school, we were told that you had to follow certain rules. Adhere to the norm, otherwise you would never get anywhere in life. I don’t like rules. Not all, just the stupid ones:). I soon realized what I really wanted. To be that fearless girl I was before high school sucked the life out of me. To be true to myself, to trust myself, and not let grades define who I was capable of being.

I can’t tell you how many times I was told by a guidance counselor that my grades were a reflection of my future success in life, and well, my grades were NOT great. High school was not set up for people like me (or my kids unfortunately, ugh, it’s been a long haul). Creativity, ha, that will be squashed! Believe me, I wish I was super smart, intellectually that is. My life would be a hell of a lot easier (My common sense is exceptional, I must say, and I was told it was a sign of intelligence, might be bs, but I’ll take it). I’ve learned that rules were meant to be broken, and our business has thrived because of it. Our landscapes are not the norm, we are a different landscape company altogether, and I like that. For example, I think it’s ok to have groupings of perennials, grasses with a couple blooming accent shrubs along the foundation of a house, with not one evergreen shrub (gasp)! I do love evergreen shrubs and trees, and it’s not like I don’t include them at all, but they don’t have to be included in the foundation just because that’s what people think the rule is. There are plenty of plants that will give you winter interest, some can be evergreen ground covers, some can have great winter texture/colors, and many have very attractive dried flower heads that also feed the birds.

“Common sense is something that everyone needs, few have, and none think they lack"-Benjamin Franklin

Speaking about norms, I was told by an exterminator recently that I wasn’t normal. At least what I didn't want wasn’t normal. So, this fall we discovered that there were rats digging tunnels and coming through an old wall outside, then coming into the basement. Gross!! We knew we couldn’t let it go very far (rats make lots and lots of baby rats). So Scott called an exterminator. When I first met him at the house, he mentioned that he was confused, that he has never been called on to perform just one task, that he is usually on a schedule to kill stuff on a regular basis. Didn’t I want my whole house sprayed inside and out to prevent spiders and every other living insect from existing? He said to me (not having the faintest idea who he was talking to), “we kill bees also, have any? Those Cicada killers, yeah, we kill a lot of them.” I did mention to him that Cicada killers, although scary as hell, are harmless and beneficial, but I might as well have been talking to a large rock……Back to the rats. He said we HAD to put traps outside. I asked him, wouldn’t the outside traps kill everything else that grabs the bait, like the chipmunks, including the predators that eat them? “Um yeah”, he said,” but the rats.” I told him that wasn’t an option, we need to find another way (the only thing high school taught me was to be defiant). He then called Scott and asked him to try to talk some sense into me (hilarious). Without talking to me first (and not thinking I would go ballistic) Scott put a trap outside. We hardly ever fight, but oh boy, those damn rats and that bonehead exterminator led to a good one.

So…... we needed to prevent them from coming in. First I dug a trench along the old wall where they were tunneling in, and filled it with large rocks. This actually worked in the long run! However, the rats were still inside. There was one corner spot in the basement where we consistently saw them run to. So I put on my gas mask and started taking apart their lair! After one scurried into the open, I screamed for Scott to get his ass downstairs and help me. I told him to grab a hockey stick that was down there and get them as they came out. Well, here comes Rambo with a pellet gun instead, which of course went well;) After I got whacked in the shin with a hockey stick and almost shot with the pellet gun, we were able to clear the area where they were living, and corralled them outside. Rats are gone!! There were eight total, 7 made it out. (Scott got one with a pellet, he was so proud of himself). I really didn’t want to create a toxic windfall because of the rats, so we became rat hunters instead.

SIMILARITIES BRING COMMON GROUND

I make it a priority to remember to try to live with all of nature (except rats). To remember that, as humans, we are part of an ecosystem that we CANNOT live without OR control completely. I mean, humans, we’re just ANIMALS anyway. Evolved animals, but animals nonetheless. We may be smarter than your average rat (debatable in many circumstances), but we are all connected to the wildness of nature. Plants, like animals, are complex. They can be just as complicated as a 17 year old girl (there’s a reason some animals eat their young). Like animals, plants have gender. In the plant world, some are female, some are male, some may switch, and sometimes they’re both! When we plant a Holly tree or shrub, most have their male and female parts on different plants (DIOECIOUS), and you need a male (they can be very useful at times) in the near vicinity to pollinate the female. The bees go back and forth between them and the magic happens! Some plants are MONOECIOUS (pines, cucumbers), meaning that there are both male and female flowers on the same plant but different structures. Then there are the HERMAPHRODITIC plants (Cherries, roses, lilies), with male and female parts on the same flower, the bisexuals of the plant world:)

Did you know that all Clown fish (Nemo!) are born male, and when the female dies or disappears the dominant male becomes female? Crazy. You can have a male frog that’s like, I’m done, I’m switching, and it can become a female. Sometimes you may have an animal that's both sexes together, like a butterfly or a cardinal! Many times the reasons are environmental stresses, but it's really all just very complex. The line is decidedly blurry…. With our big animal brains we know that plants release Oxygen while animals take it in. Animals release Co2 while plants take it in. We both have DNA and RNA. We reproduce, grow, die. We’re sensitive to our environment, we communicate (yeah, trees yak amongst themselves). We living things are mutually dependent on one another, and plants and animals are way more similar than different.

I know every year I preach about taking care of the nature that surrounds us, it will always be a fight for me, and that’s because it’s about survival. My animal brain may be smaller than others, but it all just seems so simple to me, the things we can do to thrive as a species (my common sense tells me so), and I do believe that our baby animals will rise up to the challenge of what’s ahead in their future. They have to.

We will see many of you soon, we're ready to use our new ELECTRIC Blowers and Weed wacker, and looking forward to hanging out with our plant and animal friends!

Kirsten and Scott

 

“Nature itself is the best physician”-Hippocrates