Your Mind Is A Garden - Anchorage Garden Club Garden Tour 2019

I love going on the garden tour each summer.  It gets me to neighborhoods I don't know and it gives me ideas and inspiration to imagine what I could do in my garden (and I'm ok with a small change here or there, I'm not interested in a yard that gets on the tour - I know how much time and Miracle Grow that would take and I'm trying to be organic.).

But I love to see what others have done.








Probably the most endearing garden for me was actually two gardens - neighbors.

The guy lives on the left and the lady lives on the right.  She's the gardener, he's the handyman/laborer.  These planters are on his wall.  His explanation was something like, "She asked if she could put plants along my house and I said sure.  But it was starting to get to sissified so I had to make more macho."  So he used car parts and they look great.

And she's put these monster lilies on his side too.

Her side was more genteel.  No auto or biker parts.  And he was responsible for the wine bottles.  He said a brick edging would be too ordinary.  And in answer to my question, no, he didn't have to drink all the wine first.  Lots of bottles came from a recycling place.  He was worried that they wouldn't make it through the winter, but has found out that they do fine.

It was in this yard we saw this 2017 Oregon eclipse T-shirt and it was only then that it dawned on me that in Argentina we saw zero eclipse merchandise.  Nada.  Kind of nice that people go to see a natural phenomenon without having to turn it into cash.

We also saw this license plate on the tour.  I can imagine a pro and an anti-GOP interpretation, I'll leave it up to each to imagine what it means.

What I love about the Anchorage Garden Club Garden Tours is that they are the opposite of pretentious.  People wear what they have on.  And you can have a garden that, while full of interesting flowers and veggies, can also have a bunch of trucks in the yard too.

This last one was pretty packed with plants in every planter.  If you look closely you can see those giant sunflowers.


And I did spend a few hours in my yard today with the tour as inspiration.