Gardening Archives - Page 31 of 82

Bzzzz July 16th, 2009

People either get it or they don’t. They either dream of showering outdoors or they think people who want to stand buck nekkid under the water in the great outdoors are nuts. For the record, I belong in the first category.

I am not at my most fragrant and lovely best at the end of a gardening day. In fact, most Saturdays and Sundays—when I do most of my intensive outdoor work—I have to end the day by vacuuming up the dirt, leaves and mulch I inevitably track or sprinkle in the house. And I stink. I definitely channel my peasant roots on weekends.

So an outdoor shower isn’t just a hedonistic luxury. It serves a practical purpose to de-stinkify the head gardener at our house.

outdoor-garden-shower

Finally, I bit the bullet and installed the outdoor garden shower this year. I say bit the bullet because I had to hire two men to work for the better part of two days to install it. A licensed plumber ran the pipes through the basement to the great outdoors. A carpenter did most of the rest. If we had done it ourselves, the shower would consist of a cold water hose held up with a nail and a bungee cord. Two men/two days was a good investment.

The size is about 6′ x6′ with an 18″ bench along one side. What you don’t see here is what is underneath. Because the shower is against the house, they installed a French drain with a large tube that runs underground and into the woods. This keeps the moisture from gathering near the house and into the basement.

Tall walls surround the enclosure, but really, that’s a formality considering we live on 20+ acres down a long driveway. In fact, I actually liked showering there better before the guys put up the walls.

Although my husband was an early supporter of the idea, Ben didn’t get the allure of the outdoor shower. But now that it’s built, I notice that more often than not, he’s traipsing outside with a beach towel. Now he gets it.

So, the outdoor shower is open for business.

Posted In: Gardening

Tags: garden, outdoor shower

23 Comments

Bzzzz July 12th, 2009

I’m going to call my next book Why Bad Things Happen to Good Gardeners.***

The first chapter will be entitled “Sh*t Happens and Mother Nature is on Vacation.” It will be an indignant rant about how disease, pestilence, drought, flood and other natural disasters inevitably happen to every gardener sooner or later.

I will use my own experiences as examples. I will discuss how my tomatoes have fursarium wilt—for the second year in a row, despite rotating them to an entirely new location where tomatoes have never gone before. I will describe how a legion of leaf-footed bugs decimated my tomatillos and sweet autumn clematis last year and how I haven’t seen a single one this year. I will show photos of my monarda blooming with powdery mildew.

And let’s not forget the roses, otherwise known as black spot on a stick.

july-view-toward-house2-rw

The title of the second chapter is currently up in the air, but I’m considering something such as “Plants Have Loved and Lost” or “Emergency Rooms I Have Seen, Courtesy of My Fiskars Pruners.”

*big sigh*

As I was watering for hours and hours today (see chapter on drought), I was wondering to myself, “What would I do if I didn’t garden?’

Being fairly obsessed with productivity and in love with checks in little boxes on a to-do list, I would probably do something useful. But what?

I’m not considering giving up gardening. This is more like an intellectual exercise I do when I get frustrated. What would you do?

***Why do I say “next book?” Because, yes, I am writing a book. To be precise, I’m co-authoring a book currently called Grocery Gardening. You’ll be hearing more about it in coming months, but you can reserve your copy now by ordering here.

Posted In: Gardening, Gardening Life

Tags: Grocery Gardening, Pests

9 Comments

The Outdoor Garden Shower: Now Open for Business

Why Bad Things Happen to Good Gardeners