watering can

I was using my watering can the usual way and my thumb went right through the handle. And every time my thumb touches the spot it gets worse. This is the thing that when a friend saw it he said, "Oh Jeeze, even your watering can is Republican."

How rude.

No need to be offensive. His remark diminished my affection for the thing. And to regard him as politically obsessed. What a jerk. He's not funny anymore.

But now I'm bummed that my watering can is deteriorating, then I realized it's been over 10 years. Goodness times flies when your old friends aren't around to bug you. But now what will I get to replace it? 

I don't recall what I paid for it at the plant nursery, but I know it wasn't so low a price as offered on Amazon now. I can buy a new one as add-on item for $6.80. And I can have it in pink, or other elephants, or metal elephants from India. 

It holds only half gallon. That is its one shortcoming. But that makes it possible to fill from a bucket. 

You can get one with googly eyes. But that would be ridiculous. And you can get one with a sprinkling spout if you need that. They're so inexpensive it's incredible. You can have a whole herd. They're perfect for aiming water into potted plants. 

You should buy one. 

Planters

The inspiration comes from Tim's gardens in containers front yard and back, the entire perimeter, around trees, hanging from trees, hanging from eaves, on pedestals, on poles, stacked, under porch roofs, in a greenhouse, everywhere except planted in the ground of the tiny property. But Tim is not around anymore to inspire. We were at Tim's house for his reception, Tim offed himself a few days previously. Tim would have also had access to wholesale suppliers, and had I known it, that right there would have been worth pursuing a friendship assertively, plus the living inspiration and access to his vast knowledge. But, no.

Thank you for the inspiration, Tim, a real shame that didn't happen with you still alive. Simultaneously inspired and abandoned this way to my own resources then I had just manage on my own without Tim's advice nor help. Glorious mistakes and waste and all the rest.

I saw that Tim did at his house far more successfully on a much more committed scale, an idea I thought of myself and had only just attempted this year, mixing tomatoes and basil with mint and chives and the like in the same terrace container, peppers with cilantro and so forth. Tim took that to such an extreme you'd think him possessed, but few of us knew any of that. One tiny photo on Tim's vast Pinterest page pointed to a book by Pamela Crawford and that is where I see Tim's inspiration.

Because they match exactly.

I also learned Pamela wrote other books along the same lines so I bought them all and read them. They are now mostly passed along and inspiring others. Pamela cites different figures for different projects but in Easy Combos, Vegetables and Flowers, Pamela states up to that point at the end of ten years trial, trials and errors, mostly errors, some 2,500 ornamental and landscape plants had been planted but not any vegetables, and of those 2,300 are dead. She still views that miserable record a success because she ended up with 200 great plants and I realized right then I had encountered a kindred spirit.

Then on to other books that have nothing to do with containers particularly.

But they must be planted in something.

After all that, not just anything will do. A lot of things will do, but not just anything. It will not be possible to create a unique space using trite, overused, or common items, unless they are changed. Anything purchased from the best places to purchase things will have been seen a million times. Unless something is changed, for example take something plastic and make it look like rock, the elements purchased together at any hardware store. Not everything need be utterly unique, the point is to make them disappear anyway so that they are discovered, not actually featured as if for sale, more like, lucky you, nosy thing, you found it.

On the patio deck at MoZaic I noticed the planters and pitied them isolated like that and lost in their scale and my very first thought was, "Home Depot."

There they are, in a fantastic place, a very nice architectural space, and treating it conventionally. Those lonely undersized planters would be fine but they must be mixed with things that have some kind of interest. 

I buy seeds from eBay and get fifteen notifications regarding the sale. Seeds from any place and you're on their catalog list forever, but not so the Designer Stone Garden Shop. 

The Stone Garden Shop did not do that. They acknowledged the sale with one simple brief recap and that's it. I was thinking, what next? How long will this take. Do they take the money, go on vacation, come back, begin the order? What? *Knock, knock, knock* The UPS guy right at that exact moment of doubt as if I had conjured him. 

Spooky, eh?

These things weigh a ton.

Possibly a hundred pounds. Possibly two hundred. I don't know.

They were packed very well.

These are about 1/3 of the plants started in anticipation of Spring.

It is why I was thinking about containers. There are other pots too. I already own several. Now I can pick up regular things too that blend in and disappear but they must be big. Craigslist in Denver is presently offering this for $75.00, among many other things, I could drive over and buy it tomorrow. I am in container acquisition mode.

This container is the sort of thing Tim had around in abundance. Imagine the whole place lined with containers similar to this.

Container gardening

One of the five books by Pamela Crawford that I read is particularly good because it covers the areas of the other four. My interest is large potted plants packed with with flower plants and foliage plants combined with herbs and the same thing with vegetables.

Having seen Tim's Pinterest page before his funeral reception and noticed the pin of a container combination that mentioned Pamela Crawford, and then having seen his front yard and home and back yard packed with just such arrangements, and having overheard at the reception three separate mentions of a unique (for them) and interesting visit to a wholesale plant warehouse with Tim, together caused me to think, "Hey!" I can do that. I did that before.

A long time ago right after my first apartment I met a guy in my building who is much older and lazy as can be but needed some money real badly. He was completely put off with the idea of having to do something about it. How he complained. The idea of work was repulsive.

He attained a state sales license. Easy to do at the time, apply and pay a small fee. He drove his van around to bare buildings and offered his services to outfit the whole interior place with plants. Or just the lobby. They wouldn't have to do anything but pay a small set-up and monthly fee. He had accounts immediately and due to his laziness kept the accounts small. He was uninterested in expansion. The set-up fee paid for the plants then he owned them. He bought some very large plants and some trees. The usual things you see everywhere. He serviced the accounts either once or twice a week. This went on for the length of time that I knew him.

During that period I went with him to the plant importing warehouses where plants are surprisingly inexpensive. All you do is present your sales license.

I had a sales license. I bought plants for my apartment and never collected sales tax, so that was it.

But after that I haven't renewed it and I think you must to continue. I don't know. Maybe it is still valid.

It enables you to buy containers at wholesale prices too and it makes a big difference. Especially if you intend to buy a ton of containers as Tim did along with all the plants purchased with undisciplined abandon.

Looking through the first Denver plant wholesalers the fist catalog hasn't any pictures. The second is all outdoor landscaping, down the line of results Calabrese Greenhouse, I suppose plants for our area. From their catalog.

Iron cross oxalis. This caught my eye right off. It looks like something you'd make up. I could recreate this picture with a carved potato. The other similar specimens are tri-leafed. I've seen those before a lot but not these. 

I haven't been big on begonias but I am willing to change, this one is begonia escargot. You got to love the way leaf curls bizarrely outward as it grows. A few such large leaves clustered would set off a planter dramatically, here a full bunch of them.

Bromeliad del mar, the same type plant as pineapple. This plant type is tropical and  has sturdy upright leaves that curl around a wide base forming a cup that catches and retains water. The cup is the plant's main source of nutrients. In jungle rain forests these cups of water become mini ecosystems among the branches of trees. The bromeliad's roots less important for uptake of nutrients than for digging into tree branches and settling into tree branch elbows.

Spring cactus.

When we moved to Colorado as a teen I was kicking down the railroad tracks that run parallel with Santa Fe, now a commuter track among other things and off limits now to such idle trespass kicking. I was fascinated with native cactus that grows in the ballast between the railroad ties. They are very poor starved abused specimens. I went back with gloves (insufficient), a box, and a digger and retrieved enough mangled cactus to replant as a small inhospitable garden.

At home I chose my spot poorly; east with southern exposure then nothing after noon. Nonetheless my little garden perked right up in Spring. I replanted them all to the back, now full sun at noon and thereafter. The garden tripled, quadrupled grew out of hand bloomed beautifully, as these are except the most insane pure yellow. The blooms persist for a satisfyingly long time and at the spot of each bloom a new ear forms like dangerous green spiked prickly Mickey Mouse ears until all the new cactus-Mickey Mouse ears themselves have their own Mickey Mouse ears that started as insane yellow flowers that lasted satisfyingly long. They are outrageous. Shown just the barest care of the sort a teenage boy can muster and boom off they go.