Wicked Gardener

My intention for this blog has always been to be a “warts and all” depiction of a garden. So many sites and magazines have lush flowers, perfectly in bloom. Their gardens have fully matured, with not a blank spot to be seen. The only bugs are beneficial and a synthetic fertilizer is completely unheard of. You never see the weeds and the compost bins, the toys and the stray beer bottles (an essential gardener’s tool) left about. These gardens aren’t perfect. They are shot at calculated angles, cropped tight on beautiful flowers at the perfect time of year. They are beautiful, but have always felt a touch empty.
I wanted a garden that immediately provided a sense of place. You’d enter my blog and feel like you entered the garden. What is going that day is what you see. I want my pictures to be broad sweeps of the garden instead of tight shots of flowers. The problem is that the big pictures of the gardens, like this one of the butterfly garden, looks so disappointing. My fence is crooked, which I had never noticed before, and very plain. I can’t see a single flower even though I know there are azaleas and passion flowers in there. The picture doesn’t convey my feeling of the garden when I’m in it. The garden is pregnant with bud, full and right to the point of bursting with color and scent. The butterfly bush in the foreground looks raggedy, but has at least a hundred buds, just waiting burst with lilac like blooms. The lilies have sprouted, completely hidden. The lantana and the pentas obscured in the background. The picture just doesn’t show what I see, a garden full of potential.