Jaci Dawn

I saw this item for sale at a nursery a couple weeks ago and I told Don, “I could do that.”

He said, “Yes, you could. We certainly have the wire available.”

He brought me home two big bales of galvanized wire once a long time ago when I was going to devote my life to making wire sculptures. I’m still going to devote my life to making wire sculptures, but in the meantime… we have a lot of galvanized 8-gauge wire in twelve foot lengths.

Anyway, back to my story. I picked out two rosemary plants.

And they have languished on our front stoop waiting for a break in the rain.

We didn’t exactly have much of a break in the rain this weekend. Yesterday I spent it killing myself by weeding. Today I decided to see how much more damage I could do to myself by potting the rosemary.

First, the pot:

I decided on a pedestal planter big enough that Murphy can’t knock it over accidentally. Well, he could, but please do not tell him that. I settled on the pedestal style because it looks… um, Grecian, and somehow a rosemary planting sounds like it should be Grecian. Truly.

The pot I purchased is made of fiberglass. I prefer ceramic but after pricing a few, I settled for the fiberglass pot at 25% off retail.

I filled the bottom of the pot with broken terra cotta pots and river rock.

I already knew that I needed to do this, but the pot came with instructions: “fill the bottom with gravel, rocks or broken pottery to 3″ depth to insure good drainage”.  (7.6 cm)

Then I braided the wire together into a circle the size I want my rosemary to grow to. That was fairly simple: just wind it in and out of itself using one single strand.

I buried the ends of the wire in the potting soil (also purchased at the same time I bought the planter).

Last, I added the rosemary plants. (The glittery globe was a Christmas gift from Chrystal. She gave me three plastic garden decoration “balls” and I finally have a place for one of them.)

I decided that I may not be out there to oversee the first growth spurts of the rosemary plants, so I gave them a little incentive to grow toward the wire by using some of that Velcro™ produce tape:

Eventually, the rosemary will grow up the wire and intertwine.

Well, it will look prettier than that, but I wanted to give myself an idea of what it should eventually look like, properly pruned & trimmed. It will stand a meter tall (about 40″).

When I was finished with that, I obsessed and attempted to weed the north flower bed. I hoed, pulled, dug and clawed through 2/3’s of it before giving in to the compacting mud & the imminent drizzle. I also confess that my shoulders, upper arms and back were beginning to hurt from two marathon days of trying to get in all the weeding that should have been done over a course of several weekends back in April & May, but which were confined to one three-day weekend at the end of May.

I threw in my rubber garden gloves and called it quits.

Then I put Tripod to pasture.

(Don’t blame me: Donald named him!)

I inserted myself into a hot shower, took some pain reliever and settled in for a long movie on the television while the rain began to pour.

Maybe next weekend we will have another break…