The aristocrats

You know that part in "Gone With The Wind" when the South has lost the Civil War, but Rhett Butler joins up anyway, just to be there for the last days?

That is the way I am with my garden!

I get in only late in the summer, after the war is lost!

Above is a picture of just a little slice of it that I took last week. But it has improved since then! That is because I was out pulling up bishop's weed. A plus side to all this rain is that the weeds are loosened and you can pull them out of the ground. Normally I can pull nothing out of the ground where I live thanks to the notorious North Buffalo clay.

Yesterday I was looking at the garden thinking, it does not look too bad!

I have some day lilies in the background, a cloud of orange day lilies which, I do have some memory of putting them in a couple of years ago. They were planned! And there are some hardy bright yellow Rudbeckia, I seem to remember they were called.

This was part of a design plan I had. Notice, I actually planned something! I wanted a sunset garden such as was had by that famous gardener Vita Sackville-West. See, I know my gardeners.

Here is a picture of Vita Sackville-West.


Vita Sackville-West was the cousin of the eminent music critic Edward Sackville-West, 5th Baron Sackville, who eloquently recognized the stature of Leonard Pennario. You were wondering how this post would lead to Pennario! So was I. This is how!

"What we really need, however, is the Capitol LP (available in the U.S.A.) of "Gaspard de la Nuit" made by Leonard Pennario, whose recital at the Wigmore Hall the other day left me breathless with excitement and inconsolable that I could not hear him play through the entire corpus of piano music, week after rapturous week." That is the excellent Edward Sackville-West writing restlessly in Gramophone Magazine in the 1950s.

Remember when I was in Gramophone Magazine? Baron Sackville-West and I, we are of like mind.

Zut alors, they keep photos of Edward Sackville-West under lock and key! Every time I try to rip one off from another Web site I am thwarted and scolded. So here is a picture of his bust.


And here is a sketch.


And now, if you will excuse me, the weeds are calling.

Forward into battle!