 Here are the colors that the Sacred Chickens team likes to plant! What are your favorite colors of flowers? Julie I am a sucker for pictures of beautiful English cottage gardens, pink roses, clematis, with occasional spikes of blue delphinium to set off the delicate pastels. All this should be set against the soft fresh greens of mown grass, with a few white lilies thrown in for scent and serenity. If I could choose any colors at all, it would be these…however, I live in the Atlanta area where the summer sun is bright and hot and it has a tendency to wash all those colors out.
So, I try to get my pastel fix in spring, setting off pink blooming peach trees, pale yellow jonquils, white Thalia daffodils and grape hyacinth with brightly colored tulips. In my current garden I have bright red camellias and deep pink ruffled azaleas in the background, and I find that these colors pop better than pale pastels would. I can then add my usual pastel early bloomers. If I do go with a pastel, I prefer one that spends some time absolutely covered in blooms, like my yellow lady banks or the sweetheart rose I had at the old house. Those plants are about as “in your face” as pastels are likely to get and I set them off with bright or dark purples, yellows and pinks. For the summer, I have planted a wall of peach drift roses which shift from pastel pink to peach as they age. I find that this little bit of peach is complemented the purples of clematis or annuals. I also plant zinnias in my summer garden because they love the sun and the colors pop, even in the sea of hot sunshine that washes over them every day. I love the golds, browns and reds of autumn and I try to have at least a few trees and shrubs that turn brightly colored in the fall. Colors are a matter of taste, but also location and you have to take that into account when you are planting.
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 Summer fun for Sacred Chickens. We went on an expedition yesterday! Can we call it team building? We spent the entire morning wandering around the Atlanta Botanical Gardens, getting ideas for our own gardens, enjoying herb gardens, vegetables, lilies, woodlands, and moving rapidly from one ecosystem to the next in the conservatory. Jarad, of course, bought a book. We discovered that the heat and all the walking fried our brains so instead of a real post...here are some pictures of the garden!  Jarad ruminates on garden maintenance, weeds and other day to day garden things. When I say the word gardening, people tend to think of planting flowers or trees, pruning shrubs or something of that sort. And while that is a large part of it, an equally larger part of gardening is maintenance. Watering, weeding, pest management and other general care of flowerbeds is a lot of work, and something I didn’t necessarily realize when I began my projects (mulch, or any other weed suppressant, is my new best friend). And really, you are never fully in control of the garden. There’s no way to be, unless you have a hired staff, and then, you’re not really a gardener, are you? But, unlike flowers, one cannot cultivate control. There’s always a stray weed, a dramatic plant drooping in the heat (hydrangeas are the worst of the drama queens), or some other problem that you must troubleshoot on a daily basis.
 Cats and Gardens by Julie Carpenter How thoughts about murder and mayhem in the garden led me to question my intake of caffeine – another random train of thought that stopped at an unexpected station. This particular thought train to nowhere was triggered by squirrels. Squirrels seem to be taking up an inordinate amount of real estate in my mental landscape lately, but that’s another story. I looked out my kitchen window yesterday and I saw a squirrel looking back at me. He was stuffing his cheeks with almost, nearly, barely ripe blueberries. The ones I was going to pick today. I pounded on the window and he shrugged. Whatever. I could see it in his eyes.  Hats off to Tom! by Julie Carpenter (Friday is usually garden day. Is this Friday? No it is not. Pity poor Jarad trying to establish a publishing schedule with me in tow. Anyhoo...here is the post that was perfectly ready yesterday but just didn't get put up.) Tom is the gardener who lived in my new place before me. He was an elderly man who apparently died of dementia. I never met him, but the neighbors have some lovely stories about how helpful he was, finding treasures for the kids and helping them with their gardens. But even though we were never introduced, Tom gave me some gifts as well. He planted my garden full of perennials, shrubs, and small trees, and now I don’t have to start from scratch.  This is a short post, but I wanted to pop on here and share a little story about a gardener I’ve been observing for a while now. A couple of weeks ago, the street I live on had four tornadoes come through in one day (my house was shaking, and in between worrying that my roof was going to fly off, I did idly wonder if this was finally my chance to meet the wicked witch of the west). Luckily, there wasn’t that much damage, except to one house. It was a house I never paid much attention to, given the fact that it’s almost entirely concealed by trees. It’s a nice house; as I understand it, it was built over 50 years ago, and during the storms, it seemed that all those trees were thrown on the house at once, putting two holes in the roof and a crack down the side. The trees were almost immediately removed, and this was how I discovered that a gardener had been hiding in plain sight. The woman who lives there has a small greenhouse attached to the side of her house, and an area just outside the trees is planted with a bunch of annuals. I don’t know what else she has planted around the property (I have no doubt that she planted all those trees), but I’ve been observing her on my walks for the last couple of weeks. Every day, she’s out there working in her yard. I’ve been told that she’s at least 83, and every day I walk by her house she’s been outside, raking leaves and clearing away branches (on the bright side, she has plenty of room to plant now that the sun can reach her front yard!). I can tell that this will be me when I’m that old, because there is always something to do in the garden (it’s one of the many good things about the hobby). Our work is never done; there’s always something to be planted, pruned or harvested. I look forward to seeing what she plants in the new space!  Bio Jarad is the co-administrator and writer for Sacred Chickens, attends college at MTSU, loves tea and coffee, and tries to spend every spare second reading. He recently developed an interest (some might say obsession) with gardening. Jarad is an English major with a concentration in literature. Bless his heart! Let's all light a candle for him and send him happy thoughts!
 Sometimes gardening can be tough. Jarad shares his thoughts on the less pleasant chores in the garden I love plants; I really do, but there are parts of gardening I don’t enjoy. Weeding isn’t fun, and neither is pruning particularly, but removing sod is probably the worst chore I’ve encountered so far. Firstly, grass is heavy. Very heavy. A couple of days ago, I removed grass for my little vegetable garden this summer. It took 6 hours one day and four the next. I was covered in mud, hands were full of blisters, and I’m sore in places I didn’t even know existed. Grass is now my least favorite plant! But it’s worth it so I can grow a few vegetables and herbs, plant garlic in the fall, and at least I won’t have to repeat the process next year. Still, there were moments when I questioned why in the hell I was doing this ridiculous thing, can’t I grow corn in a pot, and watermelons can grow in pots as well right? You know, really, really big pots? This is what I was thinking as I removed all that grass. And while I’m sure they could, but I wouldn’t have been happy with just that.
 The Scent of an Iris by Julie Carpenter Today I was surprised by the scent of an iris. Tall and elegant irises don’t attack you with scent, like their slightly tawdrier friends, the gardenias. There aren’t a million perfumes that advertise iris in the scent. They seem too classy to spend a lot of time branding or hiring PR firms, but I would like to note on their behalf that they do have a lovely scent. In fact, if you don’t have irises yourself, your neighbors might. Dash out and give them a sniff. (Most gardeners I know would probably forgive your sneaking into their yards to place your nose in an iris - if you think to compliment them about the garden- but for your safety, please ask first.)  Boxwoods are Annoying by Jarad Johnson Boxwoods annoy me. There, I said it. They’re everywhere, in every yard and garden in America, it seems. They’re even in front of my house! And I don’t like them; to be frank, they’re boring, but since they’re living plants, I would feel bad taking them out of the ground. I prefer things with colorful blooms to form hedges or to put in front of a house: hydrangeas, butterfly bushes, even forsythia is preferable to the bland, green foliage of the boxwood. And people want to use them in every part of the yard, a decision that still baffles me every time I see it. The structural upkeep required to keep them in that square, even shape is, to me, overtly contrived and far too high maintenance.
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