and the leaves that are green

coleus

and they wither with the wind
and they crumble in your hand
hello, hello
good-bye, good-bye

The last growth spurt is producing some amazing colors. All summer long, I kept pinching the coleus to prevent it from getting long and leggy, but it was the October chill that forced it to fill out and bloom in rusts and yellows. (The plant in the foreground is the coleus.)

It’s been wonderful coming home to a new landscape in my backyard. The renovation was completed the day before I left for Puglia, so I never got to enjoy the new platforms, the short steps, the uniformity of the new pavers, the low stone walls that tier this small space.

I like doing second renovations, because I’ve lived in the space, I’ve lived with the limitations and now know what needs to change. In the first rev, you make the best decisions, but they are not based on experience with the environment, no, they’re based on abstract ideas. In the second iteration the ideas stay, but now there are materials and protocols that better match the abstract designs in my head.   — the before and after —

In the new renovation, the emphasis was on digging deeper footers for the walls, creating a solid foundation for the pavers and sealing the the surface to minimize weeds. (The first renovation was done by a group of amateurs who put down a layer of sand to rest the bricks on and who drilled rebar into the wolmanized 6X6 ties to anchor them into the ground.)

How long before I have to say good-bye to all these rich early fall colors?