A Very Blustery Day

This week has been so busy with work that not a lot of work has happened in the garden, much to my dismay. It's spring and I want to play in the garden but work calls me away. Hopefully I'll be able to play in the dirt later on this coming week and finish up the edging for the curved strolling beds. The winds are galing today, possibly up to 40 miles an hour according to The Weather Channel. I can believe it. I can hear it wailing around the house and, looking outside the window, I can see the garden whipping around. Watching the 7 foot plus canes of the climbing roses flapping about makes me cringe and send up a prayer to protect my roses. Hey, I've waited months for these suckers to get buds on them again. Since the outdoors are a wash I'm getting my gardening fix by watching old episodes of A Gardener's Diary, Gardening By the Yard, and The Victory Garden that are saved on my DVR. Sure wish I could figure out a way to save these to dvd.

Meanwhile, I thought I'd post a few pictures I took on Saturday night at a banquet. The images were taken at the Wind Power Museum, which owns a very unique and variety collection of windmills and I believe even has it's own wind turbine that produces electricity. During the meal someone pulled open one of the large garage doors that close off the patio entertaining area so that everyone could wait the sun go down behind the windmills. I heard several gasps as people took in the site.

Aside from wind, West Texas is notable for its glorious sunsets. The colors you see are as bright and pastel-y (if there were such a word) as one would see in paintings. Visiting friends from outside of Texas are amazed at the color of our sunsets. Course, if they were here today they would see the other side of our skies - the pinkish-purple haze that occurs when there's high winds and flying dirt. That's truly a part of West Texas life as well.

Ground Force

The big difficulty with early spring in West Texas is that it's early spring, complete with unpredictable weather, whipping winds and 20-30 degree temperature differences every three days. One way to soothe the gardening bug is to catch up on other good gardening blogs on the net. Sadly, many of the garden shows I loved are no longer on the air and no videos seems available to watch back shows. Gardening By the Yard, Rebecca's Garden, and my favorite, A Gardener's Diary, were a great way to get new ideas and live vicariously through other amazing gardens. Thank goodness P. Allen Smith is still airing.

Imagine my joy to discover that a few DVDs of the BBC series Ground Force had been released. Luckily there are numerous libraries that have the dvds and are willing to loan them via Interlibrary Loan (ILL). This worldwide lending program is so important to patrons who either cannot afford the item(s) and cannot find the item due to rareness. For Texans ILL will be even more important this coming legislative session as proposals for massive slashing for libraries are proposed. So I'm going to take advantage the program now and request as many items as possible before September. Several garden themed books and dvds are hopefully on their way to me.

The first dvd received is the a great show I haven't seen in years. "The Best of Ground Force: Garden Rescues" starts off with screen tests for Alan, Tommy & Charlie, an explanation of how Ground Force came about [BBC wanted a companion show for Changing Rooms with a garden twist] and shows the cast sharing various antedotes on past gardens they've developed along with corresponding show footage. Alan Tichmarsh's last episode is highlighed and it seemed so sad that he left the show when the cast fit together so well. My only fault with the dvd is that its highlights and not full episodes themselves, which is what I was expecting. Especially since I had not seen some of these episodes originally.  Oh well, it was still fun to watch.

A Windy Day and Not Much to Watch on TV

With winds clocking up to 59 miles an hour today, working out in the yard after work was out of the question. Did manage to water the newly expanded bed and sadly wilted re-planted perennials which had been dried out by the high winds. So many roses unnecessarily de-flowered by the wind. Grrrrr.  Oh well, got my fix by watching some saved gardening shows on the dvr. How sad is it that HGTV no longer carries many of its popular gardening shows anymore? I loved "A Gardener's Diary" and have about 8 episodes saved. I would have saved more episodes had I know that HGTV was getting rid of the "gardening" part to move towards only being a DYI show revolving around fixing up, decorating, and buying/selling the home. Some online research revealed that the network has no plans to release the episodes on dvd nor re-air any episodes anytime soon. Even shows such as "Gardening By the Yard" and "Curb Appeal" are rarely aired. Thank goodness for PBS and a local church channel air new episodes of P. Allen Smith's two gardening shows.