the Backyard B'zmany hands make light work!

Our task this meeting was to take the dry creek bed that Suzi had started some time back and bring it to the level of excellence that we have come to expect of the B’z.

Runoff is a frequent problem in yards with a steep slope, and in Suzi’s yard the runoff from the downspout and rain barrel overflow needed to be directed and not allowed to just cut a gully through the yard. Suzi had begun to try to take it in hand, but it was a daunting task for one person and it was understandable that she had been putting off dealing with it.

Where we began. Lots of rocks, but no real organization going on here!

The first step was to move the old weed blocking material out of the way and till the path intended to direct the runoff. Then the dirt was mounded on the sides and sloped toward the middle. The whole trick of the thing is to make it look natural and not like a sluice.

Here you can see the tilled path and the beginning of the rock placement.

You need to be a bit of a Rock Whisperer to get the rocks placed so that they look like they were deposited there naturally. You must overcome your need for order and neatness, and embrace a little chaos. Keep in mind the natural streams you have seen, and allow the sloppy edges in nature to be your guide.

Here you can see the mix of large, medium and small rocks that form the edge of the dry creek bed.

“Where did these rocks come from?” you may wonder. Well, some came from Nancy’s yard in the area she calls the rock garden because rocks just sprout up from the ground there. Some we dug up from Suzi’s yard or relocated from other areas. Any unattached rock is fair game as far as we are concerned, and we are not above stopping on the side of the road to pick up a worthy specimen from the ditch.

Here's one we dubbed The Fanny Rock because, well, see for yourself...

All of the toting and hauling and rearranging paid off big-time in the end. Some plants and some big chunks of the pine trees that fell in the yard one rainy, windy evening were relocated and the results were even better than we anticipated. Sometimes we shock and surprise ourselves, and this was, I think, one of those times. We were amazed at the transformation – the best part of every meeting! And we could hardly believe how easy this was to do.

Can you believe the difference? This went from blah to WOW!

Another thing we have fun with is what we call “gilding the lily” which is where we add the little touches that put the design over the top and really bring in the “oohs” and “ahhs.” Here a red chair adds some pop to a corner that wasn’t even noticed before.

This scene is so inviting. I want to take my iced tea out there and wait for it to rain so I can see this creek bed in action!

Practicality comes through all we do, too. Suzi needed a path across the creekbed for a wheelbarrow or mower to traverse, so we took some of the flattest and largest stones and made a path that won’t stop the water’s path, but will allow her to get from one side to the other easily.

Functional and attractive - does it get any better??

We all agree that the B’z meeting days are among our favorite days of the month. When we began this adventure we never realized that it would be just as much fun to work in someone else’s yard as it is to work in our own. The synergy of ideas that we have when we all come together is what makes it such a transformative experience – for the yards and for us! Each of us contributes a unique perspective and a unique talent, and we are all important to the process. I would recommend starting a group like the  Backyard B’z to anyone. But you would be fortunate indeed to find a group of women as fabulous as our four!

It was with great anticipation that I looked forward to the monthly meeting of the B’z. It was my turn to benefit from the group effort and boy did I need it! I have a 3/4 acre lot, which didn’t sound like much when I moved here from my 2.25 acre lot, but is a lot to take care of alone all the same. My brush pile is at the far back right hand corner of the lot, and the front of my little plot of ground slopes up from the street quite a bit. So it’s a hike from the street to the brush pile, and I soon get worn out from the trips.

Also, I prefer working in the back of the house where I am out of sight and not under scrutiny by the constant parade of cars and neighbors. So needless to say the whole front area has been sadly neglected since my one big effort in spring when I discovered that my neighbors had been allowing their dogs to use my juniper bank as a restroom all winter. After collecting a good sized grocery bag of dog poo on just the left size, I walked away in disgust and abandoned all effort.

My trees belch sticks and branches every time a puff of wind stirs, and the ivy on either side was conspiring to cross over, join hands and eliminate the driveway altogether. The juniper was advancing over the orderly row of stones toward the street, and everything had generally run riot and misbehaved. It was, in a word, a mess.

Street view. Depressing!

As I got ready for the day, Stealth Cat (Stealthius incognicatus) watched me with a jaundiced eye. When I took his picture he accused me of trying to steal his soul and stalked off indignantly.

Whose idea was it to plant ivy? I can’t believe they still sell this stuff in garden centers and people continue to fall for it under the mistaken idea that they can control it. Ha!

The ivy plague advances.

I’m a person who likes things neat and tidy, I love a clean edge. But you sure wouldn’t be able to tell from my front yard. My neighbors have no idea that the back yard is a paradise. All they see is this weed pile disguised as a mailbox bed. I’m so sorry!

My untidy mailbox bed. Oh my.

So these were the challenges that stood before us. We gathered at around 10-ish in the morning to enjoy some coffee and freshly baked blueberry scones on the screened porch, then hitched up our sox and went to work. Jane loves to cut down trees, so I asked her to take out any of the small trees in the front that she thought she could handle. I have too many trees as it is, and don’t want to encourage anymore oaks or tulip poplars. The dogwoods and Japanese maples can stay because they grow slowly and stay small. I also had an abundance of drooping and dead branches hanging around. We dubbed her “Lumber Jane” as she labored all day to clear the view and turn my front into a deer park.

Suzi, Sharon and I spread out to attack the edges and clear all the fallen branches and sticks. We must have hauled six tarps or more of debris to the back! Suzi observed that even if you don’t have time to weed a whole bed, if you get the big obvious weeds and the edges done, it improves things by 100%. Very true. Sometimes we get overwhelmed by the big picture and give up before we start, but even a little effort can be rewarding.

But believe me, this was no small effort! We reclaimed the edges of the driveway, the edges of the mailbox bed and the edges of the juniper bed.

Wow! What an amazing difference! Just look at those edges!

Now my house doesn’t look like a neglected mess from the street. Hm, someone might actually believe a gardener lives here. Curb appeal plus! I’m shocked at how bad I had allowed it to get.  It slowly spun out of control, but with the help of my wonderful comrades-in-arms it’s restored to its former glory, and even better than before. Now if I could only get the trees to drop their sticks into a bag I’d be all set. Soon the leaves will start falling again, and I’ll be mulching night and day to try to keep up. That’s why I love my Worx leaf mulcher! It spins leaves into garden gold! Finally I can use them for something instead of just creating a mountain in my back yard.

Oh look! There IS a mailbox there and not just a weed pile!

I’ll use those leaf shreds to mulch this mailbox bed, and all the other beds, for the winter. The leaves will break down and enrich the soil, then I’ll cover them with pine bark mulch or mulch from my mulch mountain donated by a local tree service.

I still don’t like working in my front yard, but maybe now I’ll be able to at least keep up with tending the edges and pulling the big weeds that stick up. If not, there’s always my next turn with the Backyard B’z!!!

Last Sunday was the monthly meeting of the world famous Atlanta Gardening group, the BYB’z! and it was a hot one. These Southern summer meetings are always dicey. You never know how unbearable it will be, and it’s important to stay hydrated! We met at Sharon’s in the lovely city of Cass, GA, and were there to help her get her weeds under control. No, not her WEED, her weeds! Here’s what we started with:

This is the kind of thing that makes you tired.

We all face this: weeds have taken over. How is it that during the drought in Georgia which plagues us seemingly every year, when all the plants we love and have paid good money for are threatening to keel over, or have already bit the big one, the weeds thrive and survive? I guess that’s why they’re weeds. Maybe. Well, they are no match for the B’z in any case.

Oh now we feel better!

That didn’t take long at all. When four determined women are on a mission, anything or anyone had better get out of the way, and this includes chickweed and crabgrass, not to mention blackberry and greenbrier. While working to dispatch the weeds, we talked about the books we had read recently (House of Sand and Fog, Girl with the Dragon Tatoo, Teacher Man to name a few – we are all big readers) and the merits and demerits of each.

The thing about us is that we have so many things in common that we never lack for conversation. Another hot topic was things that surprised us about this group after we had been into it for awhile. One thing we never expected was how much fun it would be to work in someone else’s yard! As it turns out, it’s just as much fun as working in our own, and more, actually!

On to the next area: Along the fence, where we envision a cottage garden of lilies, daisies, black eyed Susans and the like.

Someday this will be a riot of color!

We have vision! Someday this will be gorgeous! Gardeners have faith galore, that’s for sure. Who else can take a barren piece of red clay and shale ground and create an oasis of beauty? We worked on this until lunch time, I’ll show you how it turned out in a minute.

Meanwhile, one of our favorite pastimes, besides gardening our brains out, is scrounging. No yard sale, thrift store or junk pile is safe from our creative eye. We look at things not as they are, but as how they could be. This is very useful for finding unique garden art, but sometimes isn’t so good when you’re dealing with real life. Note this fabulous use of cast offs and 99 cent bargains:

Isn't this grand?

After lunch we attacked the fence line with renewed vigor. We took the pole saw to dead branches and discussed how a row of azaleas would make a fine floral wall along the tree line. Isn’t this an improvement?

Much nicer vista now!

All of us are artistic, you really have to be to be a gardener, I think. Suzi paints, Jane quilts and paints with words, I make jewelry, and Sharon is a collage artist. We forced her to trot out her latest creations, and judge for yourselves, but we were blown away by their awesomeness! Here’s one that rocks my socks off:

Wow! Just. Wow.

And then there is this one:

Love the garden theme on this one!

We also spent a good amount of time lounging in the lovely sitting area we helped create for Sharon during our first meeting here, and discussing the possibility of an upcoming Bitchezz, oops! I mean B’z Book. That’s right, my friends, we could be on the road to a collaborative masterpiece. It’s all really hush hush, so don’t tell anyone, and seeing how many comments as we (don’t) get on this blog, I suppose there is no danger of word leaking out. Ha!

Speaking of that, we would really LOVE for you to comment on any and all of our posts. Just scroll to the bottom of any individual post and there you’ll find a little box set up JUST FOR YOU! We want to hear from you. We want to hear from your friends, your relatives, and your relative’s friends! And Lyle Lovett, we’d really like to hear from him. He’s from Texas, you know.

Next meeting will be at Nancy’s where we will be trying to make some sense of her driveway and front, as well as beating the ivy off the trees and spreading mulch. Bet you wish you could be there. Sorry. But I’ll write all about it so you’ll feel like you were there!

I am a patient gardener. I grow shrubs from cuttings, knowing that in just 3 or 4, or 5 or 6, years, I will have a wonderful lush shrub where there are now only four leaves protruding from the ground. I am also big on plant rescue. Just like some people have 14 dogs and 8 cats because they can’t stand the thought of an animal being homeless, I have been known stop the car to pick a houseplant from someone’s trash because I know it still has some good years in it. It just needs someone to love it and bring out the best in it, someone to believe in its greatness. It’s kind of like codependence, with plants.

I also love to shop what I call “death row.” Some local big box stores and garden centers have racks of bedraggled plants, one step from the grave, marked down to practically nothing! I patrol these shelves all summer, and so my garden, much like my closet, isn’t a perfectly planned and coordinated whole as much as it’s a mish-mash collection of things I love. And although I’ve learned to pick up objects at yard sales and mentally walk through my house wondering where I’ll put it, and if not finding a spot, leave it, I have no such discipline with plants.

Who can resist the siren song of a Nikko Blue hydrangea for $4.00?? Crape myrtles for $2.00? Sign me up! I once bought a ton of bags of bulbs at the end of the season for 50 cents or $1.00 a bag. I potted them all up and the following year wandered around mumbling to myself, “Now where am I going to PUT these???” But there is always a spot somewhere, and if that spot doesn’t work out, it can be moved and moved again if necessary. That’s the beauty of gardening, it isn’t an exact science, and a garden is never “finished.”

When I worked in landscaping a fellow project manager stopped by one day to see how my project was coming along. In the back of his truck I spotted 3 bedraggled Knock Out roses that had been planted in the shade and were replaced with something more suitable for the situation. “What are you going to do with those roses?” I asked. “Take them back to the shop and throw them in the dumpster” was the answer. “Oh no you’re not!” was my indignant reply, “I’ll take them home with me!” And I did. I put them in pots to allow them to recover their root systems, and they became part of my garden rescues.

My mom and dad could never stand to see a leaf fall from a plant without putting it in soil or water to start a new plant, and I have inherited their tender heart toward the struggling and unwanted plants of the world. So even if my garden isn’t a coordinated, meticulously designed showplace, it satisfies the rescuer in me to see that those who were given a second chance are gratefully thriving there.

This month it was Suzi’s turn to harness the power of the Beez at work. We had an honorary Bee in attendance: Dana!

Dana provided all the lovely photography for this entry. She also brought some terrific food to share with us! We want Dana to come back again and again!

Our project this month was to provide some clarity for Suzi. Path-wise, that is. Sometimes we allow everyday obstacles to slow us down. We recognize them as irritants, yet somehow continue to live with them. Gardening is a lot like life.

Suzi had an area in front of her house where she frequently walked, yet she was always getting smacked around by an out-of-control weeping cherry tree and tripped up by some gardenias who were muscling their way in front of her. There was no clear path to the hose either; she had to step around various plants to get to the spigot. Adding to the general chaos, her tree-form lorapetalums were seriously out of round.

Enter the BYBz to fix things up! But first, a photo-op.

Photo op for Beez

So, here is what we started with:

Something must be done. First: Out with those gardenias. There are four in this spot. We think we’ll leave one.

The cool thing about the way we BYBz work together is that we each find our own job once the plan is laid out for us. We all seem to gravitate toward different things, so there’s never any bickering over who gets to dig out the gardenias and who gets to prune the lotapetalums. We pick a job and do it without a whole lot of discussion. Just one of the very many reasons we rock!

We get right to work, and we frequently have to be coerced into stopping to eat lunch. One of the rules we made when our group was first formed was that the only thing the hostess had to provide was water. We were to bring our own lunch and so not burden the hostess with feeding us. However, that’s one rule we all seem to love to break, as feeding each other is lots of fun, too! This time lunch was especially yummy, as Dana contributed a wonderful bruschetta-like treat, and Suzi contributed greens for a salad from her garden. Fresh peaches from South Georgia made their way to the table, too. Yum!

After our lunch break, it was back to work. We had cleared out the gardenias and settled them in their new homes, along with some hellebores (common name Lenten Rose) and iris, pruned the cherry tree back, and now it was time to create a pathway.

Then we re-purposed some stepping stones from another part of the yard.

The stones are set, and ground cover will be grown around them. Doesn’t this look better? It feels like a real path now, and the flower garden seems like more of a garden somehow.

It was a productive and fun time, as usual, and we never cease to be amazed at what only four women can accomplish in one day. It certainly never seems like work! Don’t you wish YOU could be an honorary Bee for a day? Well, maybe you can. Just ask!

Today we’re talking with artist and landscape architect Melinda Polites about her fabulous mosaic pots. Each pot is hand made in a meticulous process which she will talk about in the interview. Let’s begin!

BYBz: Tell us something about yourself, and about how long you’ve been making these mosaic pots and objects. Where did the idea for mosaic pots originate?

MP: I’ve been a landscape architect for over 30 years, and I’ve been crafting things all my life, really, but in 2002 while working as a landscape architect for one of Atlanta’s largest landscaping companies, I was assigned the job of making some colbalt blue mosaic pots and a matching water feature for the company’s 2002 Garden & Patio Show exhibit.  At that time I don’t think they knew me well enough yet to know that it wasn’t in my nature to just go out and break a bunch of tiles and glue them to a pot and that would be that.

Instead, I borrowed a neighbor’s brand new wet saw and learned how to cut tile.  I’m surprised I didn’t cut any fingers off! After that I began to collect pieces and parts, much the same way I used to collect quilting fabrics. I started making the pots again at the end of 2009 when I became unemployed.  I had shopped the landscape market well enough over the years to know there was nothing else like them out there.

BYBz: How did you come up with the process? Has it changed much from your first efforts?

MP: There was no process in the beginning. It was strictly trial and error after reading up on the subject. Two of the first three pots turned out excellent, the third was an experiment with the crackle tiles and they didn’t seem to work as well.

In the beginning it was a mess. It was freezing cold and I was getting soaking wet out in the garage using the wet saw-this was in January and February! My fingers would go numb. My sunroom was a complete mess with tiles and pots and plywood strewn everywhere. The pieces were so heavy I had to work around them because I couldn’t pick them up alone. I’m much smarter now. I have a lot of wheels!

I plan things out to scale on paper most of the time, although sometimes I just experiment and it usually works out. I am always striving for perfection – sometimes I get it, mostly I come close.

BYBz: Where do you get your materials?

MP: It’s been a big problem, getting the materials I want for the things I want to do.  I have to shop it a lot.  Vendors aren’t keeping as much in stock anymore. Luckily I’ve just found a tile vendor that is willing to work with me and I have been able to get most of what I need from them.  It’s also difficult to find the exact precast concrete pieces I want without paying retail.

BYBz: Where do you get your design ideas?

MP: I’ve always been a creative person, and for  years I was a quilter, too, so I get a lot of ideas from those resources.  It’s all geometry, proportion, color. I learned a lot from quilting. I used a lot of black in my quilts like the Amish-it has a way of making the colors pop. I tried it on the first pots and the results were amazing. Because I experiment a lot I can see what works in different projects and then use those ideas in different ways. Many of the pieces I’ve made so far have been somewhat art deco in style, but I also love classic and craftsman style and am now moving in that direction. Whatever the style, all my pieces are sophisticated and unique.

BYBz: How long does it take, from concept to completion, to put together a medium sized pot?

MP: Working out the design and colors takes the majority of the time. Once I’ve worked that out I can produce a medium sized pot in about three days. I’m usually working on more than one at a time because each step requires overnight set up time before I can go to the next step.

BYBz: I understand that you do commission work. Who would be your ideal client?
MP: I think my pieces can work well just about anywhere, so the ideal client could be anyone from a homeowner wanting a single piece or multiple pieces, to urban projects, hotels or restaurants that want to raise the bar a notch from terra cotta or precast concrete to something that really glows.  When I go to the Forum on Peachtree Industrial I always envision how that big obelisk focal point they have would look if I had done it.  I believe a focal piece is not a focal piece if everyone’s got one, so my ideal client would be someone who thinks the same way!

BYBz: Can your pots stand up to outdoor use?

MP: Most of my pieces are intended to weather the elements outside.  I have a number of planters that have been outside for over six months now, through all the recent bad weather and they have held up fine.  They require nothing more than wiping off with a clean cloth to knock off any dirt and restore the luster.

Most of the base objects I use are made of precast concrete and won’t freeze and crack. My intention is for everything to last so I use the same type of waterproofing used on swimming pools. I waterproof the outsides of the pots, too, so that water doesn’t leach through to the tiles, and the black grout that I use doesn’t show dirt as the lighter grouts will. However, the small terra cotta based pots will not make it outside in a freeze.  I put several outside and had to pick up the pieces afterwards!  So except for the small pots, all my products are intended for outdoor landscape use.

BYBz: Where can we see more of your work? Where is it sold?

I’m working on creating a catalog of my work so that pieces may be ordered.  I have some planters on consignment at Habersham Gardens off Cheshire Bridge Road. For inquiries, custom work, or for the curious, I can be contacted at politesdesigns@gmail.com. I hope to exhibit in some of the upcoming neighborhood markets as well.  When you see my pots in person, you will see how they have a way glowing in the light.  To see a slide show of most of my creations, check out YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/user/mpolites10011

BYBz: Thanks for taking the time to talk with us, Melinda! We wish you much success in the coming years.

MP: Thank you!