Glamour Shots and The Lollipop Guild Garden

Valeria

Is gardening glamorous? Today it was. Kim Ritzenthaler of www.kimtakespictures.com took pictures for gagasgarden and for an extraordinary experience go to her site and click on her macro photography of her nature slide show. It is an experience in wonderment.

In the 8o’s I headed up a French line of cosmetics and toured the US with make-up artists from Paris, France not Paris, Texas. When the président directeur general Thierry Mauvernay of Innovation Scientifique Dermatologique visited he explained, as I escorted him back to DFW for his flight back to Paris, “Sue, it is now difficult to have new artists travel to the US, you make them work too hard.” And here’s what will amaze you. I was pleased at his remarks, I took this as a compliment. We travelled to every major metro in the US, hit the stores by 7:30 AM for kick-off breakfasts, pep rallies to pump up the troops, and then worked all day until the stores would close at 9:00 P.M, including week-ends. The French girls were young so they partied until who knows. They never appeared weary after 9:00 PM when it was time to go out and hit the dance clubs in every major metro across the country.

And you say Gaga “What does this have to do with gardening, and growing roses?” And I say once again, EVERYTHING!” Gardening is hard work and it’s all about passion. Someone once said to me in a very sappy voice. So hear extra sappy when you read this “What a nice little hobby you have. “  And I inwardly coiled up like a fer-de-lance, a member of the viper family of snakes, which is the most deadly poisonous snake on the planet.  Being outside, planting and growing things is essential to my soul. Doing this is a need not an option so we can’t categorize it as a hobby. If for some reason I have to live in a high rise apartment then I would devise a place to grow things.

Whatever stage you are at, hobby or necessity we are going to walk a new path together.

One beautiful afternoon a dear friend, Susan Davis was over for a wine and rose tour and by that time I was showered and looking quite presentable and for some reason we got on the topic of whether she thought gardening was a glamorous “hobby.” I excused myself and returned dressed in my protective spraying clothing, my respirator for spraying, gloves, tennis elbow brace for the acute tendinitis I had developed from pruning roses, not tennis and my Solo pump back pack sprayer. I know she will never see me the same way again.

Now that I have explained gardening is lots of work and can be glamorous and it was today thanks to Kim I have a little circuitous work to do. I have to go to the HR Southwest Conference in Fort Worth through Tuesday then go to the spectacular Gaylord Texas for the Texas Association of Builders Sunbelt Builders Show where I will hope to gain some insights toward building the greenhouse. However, we have purchased the supplies and I have arranged to interview some landscape designers for the kid’s garden.

I am so excited about the pictures the lovely Kim Ritzenthaler took of this spectacular fall garden today. She got such beautiful shots that I almost collapsed laughing when my husband looked at one particular shot where my head is emerging from the flowers and started singing from the Wizard of OZ “We Are The Lollipop Guild” and both he and Kim did the Lollipop Guild dance on this glorious day in the garden. I will leave you with that song playing in your head as it has mine all day because that wasn’t enough for  my husband to sing and dance that song he had to show me the clip on YouTube of the Lollipop Guild and how I looked just like ‘em when they emerged from the flowers. That’s better than a space alien in my respirator and Solo pump back sprayer and elbow brace I suppose.

The interviews with landscape professionals on winter perennials, kid’s garden and greenhouse coming soon. Reports from the HR Southwest maybe but definitely from the beautiful spectacular Gaylord Texan in Grapevine, Texas at the Association of Builders Texas (TAB) at the Sunbelt Builders Show next Wednesday through Saturday night.