A sinking feeling

     On the side of my garage is a garden called the Sunken Garden.  About 40 feet wide and 50 feet long, it is about four feet lower than the garage level.  That is because my one-acre (0.4 hectares) lot slopes down from the back right to the front left, about 30 feet in total.  And as I located the house a couple of feet above grade to avoid water problems, it allows this garden to be lower than the garage.
     The antique paving bricks in the garden were collected for free from three cities: Milwaukee, Manitowoc, and Sheboygan, all in Wisconsin.  They were used in streets in the early 1900s.
     The sunken octagon area was excavated in the early 1980s for a fire pit, but it is no longer used as such.  I now have pots of Colocasia escuelenta, commonly called taro, but often incorrectly called elephant ear, which is in the genus Alocasia.
     The containers are filled with moss, with some having hostas, ferns, or early meadow rue, as well.

A good trade

     In March, I drove past a site where grading was being done for building a house.  I stopped to visit with the owner, and I noticed a large blue rock on a pile.  It was quite striking, so I offered to trade him five smaller rocks for the larger one, as he needed lots of rocks to build a wall.  The deal was made, and now I have this cool rock in a new moss garden.  It took three people to move it with my old tree mover (from my nursery business days), as it probably is over 300 pounds.

New York, New York

     Well, mainly New York--but also northeastern Pennsylvania, as well.  That is, those areas (and only south central New York state, specifically in the Empire State) is where bluestone is found and quarried.  When I first bought the stone in 1970 for our front sidewalk on the east side of the house, it was known as New York Bluestone.  Now I find it is more commonly called bluestone.  It is a sandstone, primarily consisting of feldspar, quartz, and phyllosilicates.
     I extended the sidewalk to the corner of the house in the late 1980s. Then I again extended it in the 1990s along the north side of the house (now in my Japanese-style garden) all the way to the Willamsburg Garden, which is on the west side of the house.

More water

     The last post showed the first of three water features in my water garden.  The first photo shows the other two, with only the large waterfalls in operation on the right.  It has a recirculating pump with a capacity of 4500 gallons per hour.  I completed the falls in 2003.

     Last Saturday I had an open garden tour, and over 500 people showed up.  I was so busy I never took photos of the crowds.  If anyone has photos they can email me (to: ddsievert3@gmail.com) I would appreciate it.