Garden Hopping with Nora and De

My mother would have had a good time yesterday. It was a beautiful clear summer day, perfect for garden hopping in a shiny red convertible. She'd have liked the gardens, she'd have loved the wind in her hair, and she have relished the fringe benefit of dissecting how the other half lives.

A couple of weeks ago, I'd emailed De to tell her about a Garden Conservancy Open Days event that was going to be near where she lives, thinking it might be something she'd like. One thing led to another and we ended up meeting at a diner just off a highway, piling into her shiny red car, and traipsing through the private gardens of three complete strangers, one garden more wondrous than the next.

By chance, Nora's head had arrived in the mail the day before (because I'm taking her to BlogHer next week), so I brought her (head) along for the ride.

Here's Nora on a fetching lichen encrusted teak bench, overlooking a marshy little cove.



And here she is in a topiary armchair, facing an inviting navy blue swimming pool (you'll have to take my word for that).


And last but not least, here's Nora cavorting with Atlas.

De organized the tour brilliantly. We started off at a lovely little garden, one that felt like home to me - I could have planted it, and maintained it, and enjoyed it. The next one was a far-fetched fantasy of topiary - a pair of lions, an elephant, the afore-mentioned armchair - on a not huge piece of land. It was done to a fare-thee-well, but was the garden of a person with a lot of help and the concomitant funds, and do you really want to live with all that topiary? The third garden was mind-blowing - secret paths through the woods, a koi pond surrounding a Chinese pavilion, fruit trees, a petanque court, sky blue lace cap hydrangeas at every turn, a grotto, sculpture tucked here and there, and a friendly orange tiger cat wandering through the bushes. As we were leaving, I told De I was going to go home and slit my wrists; she reasonably said that since it was so far out of the realm of possibility, there was no point to jealousy.

But I do have the urge to move the shrubbery around.