Life is tough enough…give me a break. Here we go again in New Orleans. I am sure you have seen the coverage on every national news station about Hurricane Gustav. My new favorite person to dislike, Glenn Beck at CNN, recently commented on our poor judgement of living in New Orleans.
Anyway, we have torn apart Garden Gate in an effort to minimize our losses to wind but with the Mandatory evacuation of Orleans and Jefferson Parishes, it appears that our ability to water will go down the drain. I am sure we will be without power( we need the power to run the fertilizer injectors) which will magnify the problem.
I spent the day with one of our crews that stayed in New Orleans to make sure and take care of the necessary preparations. We are very fortunate that these guys are so loyal to The Garden Gates and our parent company Oasis. They are Mexican migrant workers that are on work visas in New Orleans as part of the H2B federal program. We have been using this alternative labor source for about 10 years and it was the reason The Garden Gates remains in business today after a devastating blow from Katrina in 2005. After the storm they were instrumental in reconstruction and I am glad to have them on my side this go around.
I will let everyone know this, just like last time, its about dusting yourself off and standing back up after a fall. I have plans to be here as soon as the officials will allow us to safely come into Garden Gate.
Oh..Sparky…those new French Pots that you purchased have been safely stored.
So, The Garden Gates has been working around the clock updating our website to make it more user friendly. We started with changing the background and it just kept going from that point. You may find it interesting that we were going to have someone make the modifications for us but Marc( Garden Gates website manager) decided that it would be easier to just do it himself. He is really talented and is the brains behind all the television commercials that Garden Gate now produces.
Please let us know if we can do something to enhance your experience with The Garden Gates or make it simpler. In the end, we just want you to have the same experience on the web as in our store. Let us know at info@thegardengates.com
One day I needed to order the fountain heads for a pool I was building and I started my google search as I typically do with everything today. I didn’t realize that you needed to google water spitter to find a wide range of water features. I ended up ordering 3 different styles of water spitters and ended up not finding any that worked.
So we were buying some pottery in the South of France and notice that the potter made really nice water features. Beth and I ordered a lot of different colors and styles. I didn’t realize that the fountain heads were so nice until they arrived. I quickly came up with a simple design and built a display to show people how they can be mounted and used.
I used cinder blocks and portland cement to build a basin and mounting wall. We used a large liner to hold the water and finished the exterior with a portland/stucco rub. If I would have thought about it a little bit more, I would have mixed a color into the portland cement. The plumbing was really simple. A few fountain pumps, some pvc pipe and a few miscellaneous fittings and we had flowing water.
front and rear of fountain wall
About a week ago I turned a year older; I am not saying how old, lets just say I am old enough to know not to tell. I woke up a did my usual morning routine with includes watering my container gardens. I have been working very hard on growing my herbs and some veggies from seed. I have had some success and some failures. One of the troubles I was having was my parsley. I started curled parsley in mid spring from seed these guys where taking their sweet time to grow. Fertilizer helped, of course, and a regular watering. I was just getting them to the point that they where looking like something, when the most amazing thing happened.
I counted ten Swallow Tail caterpillars munching away at my baby crop of parsley. It was the most wonderful thing. To think that they thought my parsley was the most delicious to have a feast in my garden. Most would think that this would be a bad thing, but I know how beautiful these creatures can be and what a wonderful contribution to my small ecological environment they have. Sadly enough, all that parsley made them extra scrumptious to the birds and wasps, that also inhabit my garden. By the time I got my camera to share this wonderful experience with you I had one smart caterpillar that had crawled into my basil to hide. I am sure more survived but they are hard to find if they want to be.
I had so much fun with these little garden friends, it did not bother me that they decimated my parsley. In fact I am going to grow more next year in hopes they come back for round two. I though it was a great birthday present and I hope this means a year of good things.
Beautiful patinas on the pottery
90 days in production
Here are the pots we selected for production in St. Jean de Fos, France. The production time is approximately 180 days and 90 days in the kilns.
So it has been a really long time since my last post about our French Pottery. Well it has finally made it to the US. It has been the most difficult time have every encountered. Besides the ever rising Euro, the French ports went on strike at one point and made transportation difficult. So it finally makes it across the ocean and end up in the mouth of the Mississippi River and wouldn’t you know that a accident took place…the river get closed the day we are to unload.
A week goes by and Houston needs up with our container. Of course now we have to hire another shipper to transport it via trucking to New Orleans. I am glad to say that Tuesday Morning August 5, 2008 we will finally receive a shipment that we placed in March 2007.
Life is always a great adventure….
Angel Pottery from Anduze
This is for the gardener looking for perfection. These shears make prune almost fun. Slicing through new growth, soft foliage or wet material is one of the most demanding tasks for a cutting tool. It is in effect a specialist job. It’s no good expecting secateurs to do it – they were designed specifically to cut through woody material and will just chew up anything soft, leaving ragged, unsightly AND unhealthy edges.
These shears, with their razor sharp blades will slice through soft stuff like butter and what’s more, they’ll keep doing it long after other similar tools have blunted.
This design of shear (developed from sheep shears) is particularly good for Topiary because:the grip position places the hands right over the blades giving maximum possible cutting control – essential for precious topiary shapes.and the single handed operation leaves one hand free to ‘fluff up’ the foliage
Burgon & Ball Topiary & Garden Shears are also ideal for lawn edging, dead heading, opening compost sacks, cutting wet pond weed and dozens of other trimming jobs around the garden.
Burgon & Ball shears out perform any others of similar design by miles – here’s how and why – insert anatomy of a shear!!
Garden Gate advertises all the time and we finally decided to make our own TV commercial. We were only able to pull this off because our website guru is also a film guru. He did an awesome job and it truly is a piece of art.
Hope you enjoy it as much as I do.
