In the spirit of Saturday morning garden blogging, I wanted to invite everyone to come spend Sunday in the country.  

Five years ago, my family bought a half-finished log home that’s located only about thirty miles outside St. Louis, but might as well be in a different time zone.  Since them, I’ve learned to be a (bad) carpenter, (poor) bricklayer, (miserable) landscaper, and (awful) lumberjack — all just to try and stay even.  Having this place has been an adventure, a blessing, and sometimes a curse.  Come on in for a visit.
The house is made of some 2,500 6″ southern pine logs.  It’s set in a mixed oak-hickory forest, with scrub and undergrowth that pops up faster than I can cut it down.  All houses deserve a name, and this one quickly got the name it deserves, “The Sticks.”  

If you’re coming along the road to The Sticks, watch out for the local wildlife.  

And yes, that thing the birds are standing on is the road you follow to our house.  Many a friend or would-be contractor has turned back after a good look at the road — not to mention the thirty degree pitch the path makes as it dips toward the house.

These young turkeys like to perch on the branches of a big white oak in the front yard.  There, they can swoop down over people who don’t expect them, doing a passing immitation of a pterodactyl.  We’ve got the rest of the standard midwestern wildlife compliment — whitetail deer, fox, coyote, rodents of all sizes and tail configurations, possums, and many, many racoons.  The racoons get into everything.  They’ll steal cat food in midday (nocturnal my behind), and will tip the hummingbird feeders to slurp down the sugar water.

With nearly five acres to tend, we have a lot of space for gardening.  At first we tried to be formal about it — sitting up a giant chess board with a fruit tree at each corner and different plants on each side.  That didn’t turn out so well.  The plants that are native to the area are the only ones really able to cope with the hard clay soil and blistering hot summer days.  So the “formal” garden ends up looking something like this:

Not very formal, huh?  Purple Coneflower,  Black-eyed Susan, Yellow Coneflower, Ox-eye Daisies — these are the characters that have wandered everywhere in our property, swallowing all pretense of order.  Those that think dandelions are tough to deal with, have never faced the wrath of daisies.  Here’s one more shot of the daisy brigades.

These pictures make it look like the whole thing is sunshine and prarie, but the truth is less than an acre is really cleared.  The rest of the time we’re dealing with shade.  After five years, we’ve planted more than two hundred hostas along with ferns of all descriptions — and learned the reward you get when you take care of moss.  I’ll save that for next time (assuming anyone reads this time).

All right, everybody back to war, treason, and disaster!