Category: Other blogs,websites

Arborsculpture blog

wilma erlandson

I stop by from time to time to visit Richard Reames’ Arborsmith Studios website because I’m fascinated by the ways that he and others can turn living trees into art. He devotes a page to one arborsculpture pioneer and favorite of mine, Axel Erlandson, and links to other arborsculpture artists around the world.

Erlandson started bending, shaping and grafting trees in the ’20s, and opened his ‘Tree Circus’ attraction in 1947 on the well-traveled route between the Santa Clara Valley and the Pacific coast. That’s his daughter, Wilma, who wrote “My Father Talked to Trees.” Reames sells that book, his own Arborsculpture – Solutions for a Small Planet and other books and supplies at his site.

As I was surfing once again through the links on Reames funky and fun site, I was happy to find that he started new Arborsculpture blog, apparently last winter. Worth adding to your RSS feeds if you are interested in this kind of stuff, and who isn’t?

Here’s a short (3:39) video by Reames:

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Hank’s back

Hank Wilson's Back album coverIf you’ve been going through withdrawal lately, Hank has a new post about hydrangeas (15K words worth) over at Lake County Point of View. (Thank goodness for RSS.) Go read. Enjoy.

(No, that’s not Hank. Too much hair. It’s the cover of Leon Russell’s 1973 album, Hank Wilson’s Back, a seminal classic that introduced many of us to Hank Williams and other country classics.)

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(Nothing) Lost in Translation

delphine's image from venice garden tourI think I have a new favorite blog, or at least one that is going to chew up a lot of exploration time over the coming weeks: Paradis Express.

It all started innocently enough (as it usually does) when I spotted a comment of Delphine’s over at the Human Flower Project where she wondered if there was a French version. Anyone who speaks French and visits HFP must have a blog worth visiting.

I was not disappointed.

Delphine is nothing if not prolific, approaching 400 posts already for the year. Great images in each feature gardeners and gardens, artists gardeners will love, reviews of other blogs gardeners will love, whimsy and even (thankfully only one image that I spotted) footwear.

I gather that Delphine is an artist herself. But I’m not sure. Did I mention the text is all in French? It doesn’t matter that my three years of high school French is no longer serving me well. If I’m really intrigued by a post, there’s always the babel fish translator to help me get the gist of the text.

Here’s what Delphine had to say about Ellis Hollow (via babel fish):

Craig Cramer is a specialist in communication at the Department in Horticulture in the university in Cornell. Ellis Hollow, its blog personal, is also the name of its piece (see photo sight of plane) with Ithaca, N.Y., south of the area of the lakes. It is according to him, a small pocket frozen always very cold and very exposed with the roe-deers, this is why the garden is cloturé.Ca does not prevent it from cultivating ears of elephant and this superb volubilis “Fujii Mount” do not miss the photographs by its article on the garden-center Motherplants, specialist local in the roof vert.

I’m all about protecting the ears of elephant from the roe-deers.

I will always be endebted to the woman who first pointed me to the Vegetable Orchestra:

Go visit Delphine now.

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The view from above (via local.live.com)

I’m stealing pictures and info from my wife’s blog, Get Out The Map! that chronicles her Airstream restoration and other topics of interest.

My buddy Dean at work pointed out the nice “birds eye” shots available at http://local.live.com.

Put your address in the search box and be sure to click on “Maps” under the search. Once you find your spot, you can chose road, aerial, or bird’s eye. The pictures below are bird’s eye views.

This is approximately the 7.5 acres that the bank lets us call home, looking at it from the north.

our place from above

It’s spring 2006. You can see the vast wetland that runs along the western border of our property, and the woods to the south of our house. The little stream I’ve photographed on occasion runs east to west separating the green cultivate (more or less) area from the wildlands.

our place from above

This is the view from the south, where Elly points out ‘Rosie’ in the driveway.You can see various beds scattered around the place that will eventually coalesce as the lawn shrinks. The largest area is the vegetable garden and the old shed near the bottom, with surrounding borders and a cold frame in the northeast corner. East of the vegetable garden is the water garden. My little rock garden is east of Rosie in the driveway.  Paths around the edge mark the dogs’ invisible fence boundary.

These aerial views are useful for garden planning, I think.  Maybe not so much on a city lot scale.  But I have fun looking at these and imagining what I might do for my next big project.

So go find your garden on local.live.com. Do a screen capture.  Post a picture, then come back here and tell everyone about it.  Follow Elly’s directions (above) and use IE or maybe FireFox.  (It doesn’t like Opera at all.)

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