5 Minutes of Quiet, in Pictures

Yesterday was D-Day for the garden tour. You know, the one that over the last few months had forced me to address multiple unfinished projects, permanently organize my garden tool/supply storage and do a thorough combing of the area for removal of scraps, artifacts and other random objects that had been moved/kicked around and tucked in corners over the last 5 years of “build out”. It was badly needed regardless of whether or not the gate was to be opened for a few hundred interested friends and strangers to view inside my “fortress of solitude”.

Wow.

I had trained my brain to ignore scores of lumber scraps, pieces of metal fencing and all of the fragments of bricks, bottles, and other oddities unearthed after residing under a layer of dirt for the past 50 or 100 years. Over the last few weeks Mrs cohutt ramped up her attack on the ever encroaching English ivy and for the first time in a half a century or more, most of the back had been “picked to the bone” (an overly dramatic description and a modest exaggeration perhaps, but in relative terms it makes my point.)

A few minutes before the gate opened and the few hundred (mostly) interested people wandered through, it dawned on me that I had not taken a picture of the garden in this very rare state of tidiness.

Uh-oh……

Five minutes later the camera was stowed in Lizzie’s house and the first visitors appeared wide-eyed through the gate. I had not considered that in comparison to the confined scruffy area of the alleyway near our back gate, the guests were greeted by an entirely unexpected and open oasis hidden behind the fence.

Mrs cohutt has reinforced how this should be the “new normal” for our little plot. I have earnestly agreed, but the only time will tell if she will be able to re-train this often scatterbrained & ADD gardener to clean up after himself every day. I am certain she is up to the task and hope that I am as well.

Just in case, this is how it looked a few minutes before 10:00 yesterday morning. (All pictures will click through to open a higher resolution version if you are interested).