Skip to What's New
In The Garden of Paghat the Ratgirl
"Why garden? God knows."
-Mirabel Osler,
A Gentle Plea for Chaos,
1987
A Gentle Plea for Chaos,
1987
Granny Artemis & Paghat the Ratgirl live on a high hilltop in a working-class neighborhood near Puget Sound. In the 1870s the settlement was called Charlestown, today called "the old Charlestown neighborhood" overlooking Sinclair Inlet. Our Edwardian era home was a humble orchard grower's house a century ago, but by today's standard it's a mini-mansion. It's certainly a wonderful place for two eccentric gals, who've been making a bit of a living off the arts, to ramble around in.
Although the property is small, we've managed to create gardens that we love, adding much to what was here when we bought the place before the new millenium.
When Granny Artemis suggested documenting the garden, I hadn't used a camera for a few years because mine needed a battery &, you know, procrastination. But Granny Artemis had a sudden inspiration in Autumn of 2001 & got us started taking pictures. We started with a pretty high quality Pentax, but in 2003 we got a digital camera. We're not excellent photographers, but just about anyone can get a few cool pictures if enough shots are taken, & some of these photos give a good enough impression even if we are a bit shy of award winning photographers.
This page for immediate example of our photography shows our back stoop rainbarrel in 2001 (it has rosy-white "tuffy" minnows living in it, which make sure no mosquito larva live there). It sits between the door of the house & the arbor entryway to a shade garden. The color of the twigs on that red-twig dogwood didn't come out, but oh well, it's not a bad composition for beginners who weren't quite sure how to set the f-stop on the Pentax.
The plan for the garden was to have woodland gardens completely encircling the house. We've mostly achieved that. As trees & shrubs grow, we have more & more the pleasing illusion that we live in the woods, even though we don't.
New pages are added regularly, depending entirely on whether or not we've succeeded in getting good enough photographs of a given element of the garden. At the end of 2002, when the Garden website first moved to its own website domain, there were about 750 garden photographs for 300 articles about different plants throughout our gardens, these being accessible from the Garden Indexes & from the navigation bar at the bottom of every page. By the start of 2005 there were about 600 gardening articles, & over 2,500 plant & garden photographs.
Most of the pages are exclusively about our humble garden. But in 2004 I began doing landscaping & gardening work for SinLur Stoneworks' Garden, expanding the established gardens & adding entirely new ones. These are extensive gardens with elaborate possibilities for expansions. So beginning at the start of 2005, photos & articles documenting the work at SinLur have been added.
Over time this gardening website has become rather useful as a reference source, with special value for the Pacific Northwest or in expressing the care of plants that grow nicely in USDA Zone 8 (Sunset 5).
|
[Garden Indexes: What's New] [Shade Perennials] — [Ferns] [Sun Perennials] — [ Sun-garden Herbs] [Hardy Geraniums & Heucheras] — [Creepers & Vines] [Monkshoods & Delphiniums] [Bulbs & Corms] — [Jack-in-the-Pulpits] [Evergreen Trees] — [Deciduous Trees] [Rhododendrons, Azaleas, & Camellias] [Evergreen Shrubs — [Deciduous Shrubs] [Succulents] — [Miscellaneous Essays] [Species Index] — [DONATION] — [Contact] For Paghat's film reviews, visit:
|