Exhibit A -- The Garden

Since moving into our new home in early July, I've been distracted. Blissfully distracted. Nurseries adore me. So does my credit card company. Alas. Below you'll find images of my first ever garden. You enter through a gate on the east side of the house by a japanese maple I will soon replant and whose soil needs amending (hence it's feeble look).

Then you go through an iron arbor by a clump river birch, wind your way past louisiana iris, coneflowers, an up top some butterfly bush, sedum, black-eyed susans, penstemon, catmint, then ya all come down the other side by assorted prairie grassses, a crab tree on a standard (or on a steeeek), then at the bottom again you find a bog garden of sorts with cardinal flower, chocolate joe pye weed, some more grasses, lots of smelly bee balm, more iris, and by the deck more butterfly bushes.

Around the back yard you have LOTS of trees I've planted in less than 30 days, to date: prairie cascade willow, clump river birch, single trunk river birch, crab on a steeeek, tree althea (flowers oh so beautifully all summer), bald cypress, october flame maple, autumn blaze maple, autumnbrilliance serviceberry, a weeping white birch out front, and something else I'm forgetting. I consider this all research, mind you, for my memoir. Can a person get grants to go buy plants?

And I'll have you eco people know I've been using only (well, mostly, let's be honest) organic fertilizers et cetera. I refuse to spray my yard with crap to pollute my drinking water. Also purposely created a massive garden so I'd A) have less to mow--still takes an hour though, I hate being converted so easily to suburbia--and B) less grass means a friendly micro eco system. I've already seen all kinds of birds I never saw at my old place--red house finches, yellow finches, cardinals, even blue jays and one solitary hummingbird.

Eventually, I'll post a laboriously detailed list of plants I'm hoping make it through the winter--namely all of them. I have too many that will need to be babied, even though I've tried to xeriscape as much as possible and put plants in their own little micro climates accordingly. See how detailed I am? I do 10 minutes of research on each plant before I dig to be sure.

And, not saving the least for last, my "hobby" has been aided much by someone who knows who she is. This included about 100 loads of mulch in wheelbarrows and buckets in 95 degree heat, a few dozen trips with a stepper stone in each arm and planting of said steppers, and the comment "at least you don't sleep with hookers, do drugs, or kill kittens." Still, you never know what a gardener is planting out there....