The garden tour

I woke up today and realized that this was one of "those" days. This was one of the days that I promised myself when I was packing boxes, packing children and packing pets. I told myself that there would be days when I would be so glad to have put our entire life into boxes and cars and headed south.

Today, you see, is garden tour day. It is a lovely day and I get to spend it wandering around chapel hill looking at beautiful gardens that someone else has to tend. If you are not a garden person, the appeal can seem weak. But if, like me, you are someone who looks at gardens the way chocoholics look at the Godiva window, it doesn't get much better than this.

There are eight private homes that have opened their gates to teeming hordes of flower-crazed fans. As with other community wide activities, tickets have been sold and maps have been printed. Signs sprouted on curbs overnight with arrows and bouquets directing those in search of outer beauty to the promised land.

Knowing my own limitations, I have only planned to see four of the eight gardens. After consulting neighbors, I plan to focus my efforts on one corner of the show neighborhood. I arrive in the show area at around 11:30. It is like parking for a concert. I knew gardening was more important in this area but this is like a sale at Filene's Basement. There are people in straw hats and yellow vests directing us to open spots along the sides of the road. Everyone, as is nearly always the case down here, is pleasant and patient while we jockey for road position. At one point, my parking guru laughingly waves me into a u-turn and parking space as he explains that there is no space left on the length of the road to the first house I want to tour.

The tour is concentrated in a particular neighborhood of Chapel Hill, which allows for multiple garden viewing without moving your vehicle too often. With most of the neighborhood roads parked off and people dressed in their garden viewing best (note to self - next year wear a straw hat), it feels like we are headed to an enormous afternoon tea party.

The first garden is breathtaking. The second garden is splendid. The third garden is perhaps the most interesting use of a vertical lot I've ever seen. The fourth garden looks like something that Hollywood visits when it is looking for garden settings. The goal of the tour is to raise money for the garden club and their various community activities. The goal of the gardeners who go on the tour is to steal good ideas. At the end of two hours, my head is exploding. It would never have occurred to me to tuck a fern garden underneath a two story deck on a sloped lot. I had no idea that simply shifting the material used for a walkway would define a different area of the garden so effectively. One of the gardens has triangular cut-outs of one patio carefully planted with tiny tiny succulents. Another garden uses slant cut wooden boards to create a deer fence that looks like an architectural element while not blocking any of the view. I find myself mentally redesigning the deck on the back of our house so we could incorporate more planters.

Tired and sated, I collapse onto the couch at home. My feet ache, my hands are cramped from note-taking. I let my eyes wander towards our backyard, recently denuded of four trees to open up more space. I could probably put a small pond near the woods, couldn't I? How hard could it be?