Let me introduce you to Tara Dillard from GEORGIA.Her business is THE GARDEN and I have been following her BLOG for years!She moved a year or two ago to an old FARMHOUSE which made me PEE GREEN with envy!She is MY PICK for my second installment of quizzing a GARDEN FLOOZY!
LA CONTESSA
HAVE YOU ALWAYS BEEN ATTRACTED TO THE GARDEN OR WAS IT A PASSION THAT CAME LATER IN LIFE?
Before I could speak I understood what gardens were saying.
Thought everyone did.
After college it was obvious few understood Gardens, going back to college again, for HORTICULTURE , I met kindred spirits, life began in earnest.
Remember well playing with my Grandma’s pansies at Christmas, in her backyard flower garden, age 5. Grandma created dirt paths, used upturned garbage can lids for bird baths, and later in the year used tall sticks/branches to tie up Chrysanthemums & Dahlias. She ordered plants/bulbs from catalogues, her small town had no garden center.SUMMER 1966. I happily cut Grandma’s tall red flowers for her.
IF I INVITED YOU TO A GARDEN SOIREE AND I ASKED YOU TO COME AS A FLOWER WHICH ONE WOULD YOU PICK?
Easy, head to ankles, a bouquet of peonies, blossoms-foliage-stems, including several fat peony buds with their precious ants. My feet circled with a wide rigid ruffle, topped with hundreds individual Mountain Laurel blossoms made of silk. Karl Lagerfeld orchestrating the entire ensemble, from his celestial atelier. Shoes inspired by a fat magnolia bud about to open.
May at Lake Rabun, GA, ca. 1982, fresh from growing up on the Texas coast, I spent a week on the water and hiking the woodlands with wasband (ex-husband), our honeymoon. Upon a mid-morning boat ride we floated into a fingerling cove, entire mountainsides coated in Mountain Laurel blossoms, so dense the foliage could not be seen. And, on the lake, in equal abundance, Mountain Laurel blossoms floating, with shafts of diamonds arising from the water, the sun barely allowed to land, sparking when it did.
Not Mountain Laurel, Japanese Snowball blossoms in spring in my garden below.
DO YOU PREFER TO LEAVE YOUR FLOWERS IN THE GARDEN OR DO YOU PICK AND BRING INSIDE?
Cutting garden flowers makes me feel guilty.
Taking food away from wildlife, and preventing seeds or plants from forming.
Do not, in the least, feel guilty if you cut flowers, not my intention.
A new chapter of thought is forming about cutting flowers, in my garden. Perhaps planting rows of zinnias, dahlias, and flowering shrubs, for cutting.
I do take greenery from the garden, and side of the road, that will be trimmed during normal pruning across a year’s time.Each arrangement of greenery a benediction from Nature, inside my home.
In irony, must mention a pair of floral designers I enjoy on Instagram,
LUCYTHEFLOWERHUNTER and THELANDGARDENERS
CLICK on THEM TO SEE.
EVEN IF YOU DONOT HAVE AN INSTAGRAM ACCOUNT!
(Worth checking OUT says CONTESSA!)
View off my master bedroom, kitchen, breakfast room. Cannot imagine cutting any of these blossoms, or having real blossoms on the table, need low maintenance.
Looking into my house through the front bay window from the garden,
Vanishing Threshold.
WHICH SEASON IS YOUR FAVORITE?
Professionally, I love WINTER, it’s the test of good GARDEN DESIGN.
A garden beautiful in winter, will be beautiful all year.
My Cottage Garden.
Same gate, below, now in our ca.1900 garden.
Notice Tara Turf, below, mix of clover and what the wind blows in, Agrarian.
Tough, eco to soil & wildlife, unique to each zone.
Personally, I love the poyeema Fall teaches.
When trees let go of their leaves they’re fed by what they let go of.
What can I let go of, to enrich my life?
Nature takes us from being individuals to being our self.
Nature teaches us to see our terrain, maps are vague.
WHICH GARDEN BOOKS RESONATE WITH YOU BESIDE YOUR OWN AND PLEASE TELL US THE NAMES OF YOUR BOOKS?!!
The Best Garden Design book is,
The Garden in Winter, by Rosemary Verey.
https://www.amazon.com/Garden-Winter-Rosemary-Verey/dp/0711220204
An Affair With a House, by Bunny Williams.
(CONTESSA, bought when she received this and has ORDERED AND READ BOTH!)
(I CONQUER WITH OUR GARDEN FLOOZY!)
Plus, there is a GOOD POT ROAST RECIPE IN BUNNY’s BOOK!
I MADE IT!
Tool Bouquet over TARA’s fireplace BELOW!
BEYOND FABULOUS!
I SO WANT TO COPY THIS!
IF ANYONE HAS THE TOOLS TO MAKE
ONE PLEASE DO AND SEND TO TARA AND I
SO WE CAN EXHALE WITH JOY!
(I think on a BARN or over a Fireplace or even in your GARAGE as you pull in to PARK!)
Or as TARA DID below in THE MAIN ROOM OF THE GLORIOUS CASA!
Garden Books by Sir Roy Strong,
Inside my front bay window, below.
Proud of this view out, front yard, cluster home neighborhood, yet lush Nature, and private, without hiding my home.
Beverly Nichols wrote several books about his gardens, charming, funny, and you’ll be mentored about living a house & garden life.
May Sarton, Plant Dreaming Deep, a journal of life, house, garden, a template for living well.
Sarton wrote poetry, fiction, and her journals.
How her garden resonates in those journals, pulses.
Tasha Tudor’s Garden
House & Garden lived together, with agrarian, pastoral methods.
Nature’s methods.
Our methods.
Industrialized landscaping, harmful to Earth, and soul.
A few books I’ve written, all on Amazon,
THE GARDEN VIEW: Designs for Beautiful Living,
BEAUTIFUL BY DESIGN
STUNNING BLUEPRINTS for HARMONIOUS GARDENS
GARDEN PATHS & STEPPING STONES.
Then a couple MORE books pertaining to the STATE of GEORGIA!
CONTESSA NOTICED!
CLICK ON LINK BELOW AND ALL WILL POP UP TO ORDER!
https://www.amazon.com/s?k=tara+dillard&i=stripbooks&ref=nb_sb_noss_2
Front Porch at my ca. 1900 home.
Coming home after Covid picnic dinner in town.
WHAT DO YOU LOOK LIKE WHEN YOU GO INTO THE GARDEN TO WORK?
DO YOU HAVE A PAIR OF GLOVES THAT YOU LIKE BETTER THAN OTHERS?
Proudly filthy in the garden.
Bruised and bleeding too.
No matter the filth, or how I smell, will go to garden center, grocery store, print shop, dressed from the garden.
Zero time to live life with several costume changes and showers a day.
Cleaned up for dinner, after a day in our ca. 1900 garden.
For summer, would love a pair of Garden Pants, lightweight linen, with Velcro Crotch.
FOR OBVIOUS REASONS!
Prefer gardening bare handed.
Gloves, leather, only when working with brick/stone.
Had to wear an apron while working as a professional propagator.
Once that job was over, knew wearing an apron with several pockets was my best gardening tool, this was before cell phones, and living on 5 acres.
Love my apron from, RoughLinen.com.
I have their original.
Never wear this apron into public realm someone doesn’t ask,
“WHERE DID YOU GET THAT APRON?”
Went to the local pastry shop many years ago, dirty/filthy/happy from the garden.
Placed order and noticed dirty pants and work shoes of a woman next to me.
Slowly I looked upward along her body to her face, it was friend and mentor, Jane Bath, author, Landscape Design Answer Book: More Than 300 Specific Design Solutions for Your Landscape.
We hugged and laughed, delighted in our public filth, badge of garden honor.
TARA IN HER ROUGH LINEN APRON.
IF YOU COULD INVITE ANYONE TO COME SIP A LEMONADE IN YOUR GARDEN WHO WOULD IT BE?
GONE FROM THIS EARTH OR STILL ALIVE.
George Washington, with Karl Lagerfeld. Happy to ‘serve’ lemonade, for the honor of listening, and asking a few questions.
Both men, masters of Garden Design, and so much more.
Preferring to cross-pollinate Washington’s brain with Lagerfeld’s, gaining far more learning than being alone with either.
Not humble, total selfishness.
Letting grace reign.
LEAVE US WITH A GARDEN QUOTE THAT SUMS UP WHO YOU ARE?
“Gardening is a conversation, gardening is a prayer, gardening is thanks.”
GARDEN & BE WELL,
XO Tara Dillard
Front bay window at my Cottage Garden house for 30 years.
Below, age 16 at Versailles.
Versailles awakened me to the work of man on Nature.
After work designing booster rockets and training astronauts for NASA’s Gemini, Mercury, Apollo, and dad wrote the request to Congress funding the Space Shuttle, we were 6 weeks across Europe with European Space Agency, dad working the SPACE SHUTTLE PAYLOAD AVIONICS.
MOM AND ME TOURISTS!
Dad remained, to his end, horrified at my career choice, not using my ENGINEERING DEGREE.
Dad often bullied me to change careers, out of concern for its paycheck.
My career path was not taken lightly, not socially acceptable in the ouvre of my childhood, yet easily by
my soul.
(OMG, Dr. Scholl’s sandals, and bell bottoms!Still like the hobo purse style.)
THANK YOU TARA and I have already read all of YOUR BOOKS and TWO of the books YOU recommended!I ADORE YOU AND HOPE TO MEET YOU AND SIP LEMONADE ON YOUR PORCH!MY sons were read books by Tasha Tudor and her CORGI TEA PARTIES way before we had a CORGI!There was something there that resonated with me GARDEN, HOME and ANIMALS!
TO FIND TARA and SUBSCRIBE TO her BLOG CLICK HERE!
INSTAGRAM TAP HERE!
FACEBOOK GO HERE!
CONTESSA’s,
BOLERO ROSE IN ALL HER GLORY!
This week has been a SAD STATE of AFFAIRS!
ACTUALLY this WHOLE YEAR HAS BEEN one UGLY THING AFTER ANOTHER.
First COVID-19.
Ahmaud Arbery.
NOW
George Floyd
NO WEAPON IN HIS POSSESSION.
HE ASKED NICELY FOR THE OFFICER TO GET OFF HIS NECK………….
He used the word PLEASE!
(I watched the video)
I WOULD FEEL REMISS IF I DID NOT SAY SOMETHING!
TWO AUTOPSY REPORTS WERE FILED.
The independent autopsy says Floyd died of “asphyxiation from sustained pressure” when his neck and back were compressed by Minneapolis police officers during his arrest last week. The pressure cut off blood flow to his brain, that autopsy determined.
The medical examiner’s office, in its report also released Monday, said that the cause of death is “cardiopulmonary arrest complicating law enforcement subdual, restraint, and neck compression.” Cardiopulmonary arrest means Floyd’s heart failed.
LET’s WAIT AND SEE WHAT HAPPENS…………..
I know being an OFFICER of THE LAW cannot BE EASY!
However, there were FOUR POLICE OFFICERS and ONE SUSPECT who did not poise a threat.
I FIND IT INCREDIBLY UNFAIR AND HORRIFIC
FOR A CRIME OF PAYING WITH A FAKE BILL
COULD CAUSE ONE’S DEATH.
This is about using a $20.00 bill to buy a pack of cigarettes!
READING this BOOK NOW which I can hardly put down to write THE BLOG!
His story of rising through the ranks of FASHION and what he endured!
ANDRE is 72 years old now.
André Leon Talley is an American fashion journalist, who is the former American editor-at-large of Vogue magazine. Talley has also served as international editor of the Russian fashion magazine Numéro.
A FASCINATING READ how he was raised by his GRANDMOTHER in the SOUTH and earned a scholarship to BROWN UNIVERSITY and received a MA in FRENCH LITERATURE and became DIANA VREELAND ASSISTANT which took him to WOMAN’s WEAR DAILY in the PARIS OFFICE!
A racist encounter sent him back to New York into the offices of VOQUE!
I am enjoying this and I am only on page 68.This was the time I was in FASHION and recall the people and designers and models he KNEW!
TARA……….HE AND KARL WERE BEST FRIENDS!I KNOW YOU WOULD ENJOY THIS!
It’s the FIRST AUTOBIOGRAPHY that I have read that I can actually say I WAS THERE!
XX
AS MY GUEST TODAY TARA
would say
GARDEN AND BE WELL DEAR READERS!
XX
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