About four years ago, we felt we needed to find a sport which we could do relatively easily now as well as forty years from now. After much searching we settled on purchasing flat water kayaks, since we have a lot of lakes, streams and rivers where we live here in Northeast Pa.

Today, was the first opportunity this year, we had to get our boats wet in a local reservoir. Recently the Corp of Engineers have decided to raise the water level in the lake by about 50' which would allow releases during the summer for whitewater enthusiasts down stream, while still maintaining a large reservoir which could manage flood flows.

We had never paddled the lake when it was at this level. Two pristine world class trout streams/rivers feed this lake. Paddling up one of the rivers we soon realized that raising the water level added about 3 miles, one way, to our paddle. We have always paddled up the streams until we hit whitewater and then turned around and paddled back to the put in.

Well, today as we paddled away from the shore, I asked Cheryl, "What do you think we are going to see today?" Every time we paddle, we have the ability to interact with nature on a up close and personal scale. However, today was special. We could tell we were coming up to the end of the river where we would be able to paddle, when we saw signs on the trees along the river cautioning to stay in the river and do not disturb the wildlife area.

And then it hit us, this is where the Bald Eagles are nesting on this river and sure enough there was a large male perched on the tree about 200' in front of us. We pulled over to the side of the river and sat and exchanged glances with the Bald Eagle. He dipped into the river and sat in the reeds, I can only guess while he enjoyed his fresh catch. We saw him majestically take off and circle up to the tree tops and disappear.

As we paddled and sliced our way up the river on the far side of the sand bar.......there it was about ten feet below the top of the 70' White Pine. A nest the size of a Volkswagen and a couple of Bald Eagles sitting in the nest. We thought we had seen eaglets flying overhead and I guess they use the nest as a base of operations.

Still glancing back at the nest I was now hugging the side of the river as it narrowed to a stream and right there, ten feet in front of me on the marshy edge of the stream was a gorgeous heron. I backpaddled to the other side of the stream and watched as the heron meticulously crept up the side of the stream looking for his lunch.

As we paddled upstream as far as we could go, our last interaction of the day was with a mother Cormorant and about 6 little, well I don't know what you call them but duckling size Cormorants...We took a break on a large boulder in the middle of the stream with our kayaks safely tucked on shore. The water cool and gin clear felt good, as we dangled our legs in the water.

As we slipped into our kayaks for the 1.5 hour paddle back to our car, we floated by the still stalking heron and nest of eagles which had a truly birds-eye-view in an environment free from any sounds other than the water flowing over the rocks and through the reeds, the sound of water dripping from the end of our paddles with each stroke and the warm sunny on our bodies.

Now, you may say, Hey! What does this have to do with gardening? For me, it is when we truly engage and experience nature in it's most natural setting that I get inspired to create gardens, ponds and waterfalls for our clients. Although these ornamental gardens may not be inhabited by Bald Eagles and Herons and we cannot kayak the water features, they will support Hummingbirds, Koi, frog, salamanders, tadpoles and Downy Woodpeckers.....close enough for me when I can't go out paddling!

This photograph was taken in a 4200 sq. ft. perennial garden on one of the estates, for which we provide landscape management.

After my meeting with Hoichi, I have begun to look at our gardens in a different light. He is right, we Americans are more involved with now, bigger, better and faster and infrequently wonder how the gardens we love, developed. Our clients want to see the gardens now when we install them, when in fact, true American style gardens take 30-50 years to begin to show their true colors.

This particular section of the gardens we work in was begun in 193o and was originally a vegetable garden. The owners of the estate at the time, brought in teams of horses and handlers to remove the rocky soil to a depth of 2' in this part of the three acre property and replace it with loose, rich friable soil. There are no pictures of the garden at that time, however, local history tells us that the area was heavily logged at that point in time.

Now in 2007, the garden is surrounded by 70 foot tall, towering Norway Spruces which must have been planted about the time the garden was started. These towering Spruces offer protection from both the drying summer winds and the intense winter winds, while providing shade for the garden about 30% of the time during the day as the sun traverses the sky. Ideal growing conditions for the resident perennials such as Butterfly Weed(Asclepias), several varieties of Poppy(Papaver)Knockout Roses, Butterfly Bushes(Buddelia), towering Dephiniums, Sedum, Sea Holly(Eryngium), Mountian Bluet, pictured here(Centaurea), Black-eyed Susan(Rudbeckia), Iris, Anemone, Yarrow(Achillea), Stella D'oro Daylily(Hemerocallis), Climbing Hydrangea(Hydrangea petiolaris), Clematis, Baby's Breath(Gypsophila), tree and shrub form Peonies, Mt. Pinks(Phlox subulata) and wild Foxglove(Digitalis)

I love to work in this perennial garden as the color, fragrances and textures change each and every week. In fact, when my sister passed away two years ago, upon my return from Denver, I worked in this garden for about a week straight. The owner does not visit much in the fall and with the sound of the adjacent dam and creek filling the air with the soothing sound of rushing water, I had time to reflect on both my sister's life and mine.

Gardens truly have the power to heal both the body and the soul.

I can't believe it has been since February when I last posted. We have been extremely busy with garden construction this spring and 12" of snow in late April did not help our already packed schedule.

Our podcasts have been doing very well in itunes(TM) and that has kept us busy producing these biweekly episodes. We are in the progress of upgrading to a Macbook Pro so we can produce both audio and video podcasts....with maybe a little background music and the ease of transferring our digital interviews to our podcasts. If you do not have itunes you can download directlty through this link.

This past weekend we were able to tour the outstanding Anderson's Japanese Gardens in Rockford, Illinois and have a couple of great conversations with Hoichi Kurisu who designed and built the gardens for Mr and Mrs. Anderson.

This garden has evolved from 1978 to it's current 12 acre site with the completion of an outstanding visitors center which includes a corporate meeting facility, year 'round restaurant, extensive gift shop, volunteers break and education room all of which is enveloped in this beautiful work of Japanese architecture.

Our upcoming podcasts will include our extensive conversations with Hoichi Kurisu who designed and built the garden and Tim Gruner who has been the Horticultural Manager for 18 years.

Cheryl and I left the garden both inspired and humbled by the mastery of Hoichi and his crew in the development of this garden.

Well, we have decided to take our blogging journal one step further. In the winter, is when I usually upgrade our software so I have the time to learn any new add-ons to the software. Last fall we finally purchased ipods(TM) so we would have exactly the right music we needed when we were on the elliptical.

This lead to our discovery of itunes(TM) and ultimately podcasts and podcasting and the unlimited potential of how this could be applied in gardening. So, after a lot of research and a learning curve, we started to podcast and now you can access our podcasts in two different ways.

You can access our podcasts on itunes(TM) at http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=215207014
or at http://www.gardenhaus.libsyn.com/rss our goal is to provide horticultural news, education and entertainment through stories and humor.......

We are excited where these podcasts will lead and the many applications they have for the gardening industry.......so subscribe to our podcast and every two weeks we can take a stroll down the garden path.

I love this time of year.....the last two weeks of each year are one of my favorite times of the year. The pace is slower and I can reflect on what we enjoyed, what we did right and what I would like to improve upon. I am not big on New Years Resolutions, I would rather improve on an ongoing basis like Dr. Demming professed.

It has been about a year and a half since my sister passed away and 2 and a haf years since my father-in-law passed away and if you have read our previous posts you know that these events have had a tremendous impact on our lives.

Gardening has always been a passion of mine, starting off with cutting yards at the age of around 10 years old.....now you would need a work permit, a helmet and a liability release form to allow a ten year old neighborhood kid to cut your grass. Life needs to be simpler.

I love technolgy, computers, Ipods, XM, cell phones, flat screens and the like....but I also love the serenity of a garden and fortunately for us that is how we make our living. We closed our retail florist because it demanded too much of our time and limited our ability to travel to see family.

Our landscape construction business keeps us very busy from March through late October and our gourmet gift baskets keep us busy in November and December, although we do ship them year round.... these changes have allowed us time to enjoy life and run our business instead of our business running us.

The business world is always about bigger, more, better, faster, volume, branding and merging. Fortunately for us, our profession has been the same since the Hanging Gardens of Babylon or older. A Birch tree has always been a Birch tree and there is not a latest 5.0 version or style or fad and it does not become obsolete in 90 days. The only thing that changes in our business is the technology and equipment that we use to run our operation.

This allows us to stay small in stature while allowing us to create great gardens for our clients. We don't even see some of our clients for years, since they have second homes here and we may not be around when they are. But we email them photos of what we have done or what needs to be done and send invoices the same way. So blending the old and the new seems to work well for us.

Blogs like this allow us to share information about gardening with clients in ways we did not even think about ten years ago. We also share information with electronic newsletters. I like to look at the world through the eyes of a kid and be amazed at how changes effect our lives....both good and bad......that person in the restaurant gabbing on the cell phone to a friend about nothing in general.....hey! turn it off!

So having had a year to reflect on the conscious decisions we made to improve our lives, I think we made the right ones. As much as is possible, we now have better control over what we do and when we do it, while still making a living and having time for each other and our family. I think my sister and Cheryl's dad would be proud!

The local birds are enjoying the fermented berries and this time of year you will hear or see a lot more birds FUI....flying under the influence. Each fermented berry they eat is liking doing a jello shot.....

Yesterday I was sitting in my office working on my computer listening to my iPod with my headphones on and I still heard a whop on the sliding glass door. I opened the door and found a male Junco had hit the window and was lying on his back on the deck and appeared to be gasping for breath, but otherwise motionless.

Our Golden Retriever had followed me out into the gardens, so I took him back in the office and about five minutes later came out to check on the bird. At the time he was now lying on his stomach and appeared motionless. I went back inside to grab some paper to pick the bird up, so I could take him out and bury him and was explaining to my wife what had happened.

As she followed me out to the back deck, we opened the door and stepped on the deck. As I stepped onto the deck, the bird turned over onto his feet and flew off to perch on a nearby tree about 20' off the ground........

Either that bird experienced some sort of divine intervention or was simply knocked out cold from his FUI and just regained his senses as we stepped out onto the deck......perhaps he is just up in the trees somewhere, leaning up against a trunk, trying to sleep those last few berries off.....

The two pictures above show the beginning of a 110' long stream, which we recently completed for a new client, with a 15' drop from top to bottom. The 10,000 gallon per hour pump fills the 4' wide stream with a water depth varying from 3" to 8".

The sound the rushing stream creates as it flows over the streambed and between the boulders varies from a soothing trickle in the small pool areas behind large boulders to a deafening rush as it drops 8' in a distance of about 30' .

The soft lighting on the stream and waterfall dramatically light the pondless waterfall allowing the clients to sit outside at night and relax to the sound of the water. The location of the waterfall and stream in front of the house certainly creates a unique approach to the front door.

There is also a large Koi watergarden located immediately adjacent to the back of the residence which is a wall glass.......
This picture of the rapids was taken the same day we turned the pump on, so the filters had not removed the quarry dust from the water. After about 3 days the water runs crystal clear as you can see in the picture of the waterfalls on the right above.

Every day this November has been a gift for us, in regard to making the completion of our garden construction projects much easier than if it were cold and blowing here on the Pocono Plateau.

This past October we were able to dedicate the first garden that http://www.healinggardens.org was involved with from beginning to end. If you have read previous posts, you will know what and why we started the healinggardens.org website. The dedication day was overcast and chilly, however, it was a great celebration of life and closure for me on the passing of my sister. It was difficult (not necessarily in a bad way) for me to work on the garden, I just shed a lot of tears as the garden came together. I found tears running down my cheeks as I drove the skid steer back and forth between the garden and the pile of large boulders I was using to create the structure of the garden.

Now, that the garden has been completed, I am keenly aware that what I do on a daily basis (create gardens for our clients) can have a significant impact with the development of healing gardens on others who are not exposed to gardens and gardening everyday. They discover the serenity of sitting in a well designed garden and simply relaxing or reflecting, if just for a few moments.

We are working with a couple of other groups in the area to see how we might help them develop healing gardens at their sites and perhaps also develop horticultural educational programs upon the completion of any of these gardens.

Here we are in the middle of June and the gardens are lush, and I find it very relaxing to sit in our gardens after working out early in the morning to cool down and start the day off calm and relaxed. At the end of the day, I stop and take another moment to smell the roses.....or whatever else is in bloom.

The challenges I faced last year have certainly had a beneficial effect on my life this year. I have lost 40 lbs. since the first of the year by simply shutting my mouth and working out......what a concept :)

This weekend we are having an Open House at our design/build construction office. We are here to answer your gardening questions, guide you through our gardens or simply let you wander. So please stop by and enjoy our gardens as much as we do.

If you have a perennial garden or for that matter any garden, I would suggest that you try a drip or micomist irrigation system. When installed with a timer, your gardening gets a lot easier. You can also add an in line fertilizer and turn your irrigation system into a fertigation system. When you can consistently and efficiently water your gardens, the difference in the health and appearance of your garden is amazing. The plants are not stressed and if you water early in the day the water is absorbed into the soil and does not evaporate.

Avoid watering in the evening as the water will stay on the leaves and may cause fungus and other health challenges for your garden. Micromist or drip systems in vegetable gardens will help you grow an abundance of tomatoes, lettuce or whatever your choice is.

When we water, we generally will water once or twice a week for an hour. This deep root watering will help develop a healthy root system. We also use a beneficial bacteria which we mix into the soil prior to our planting. Most of these additives will also contain a starch-based polymer gel which does a tremendous job with maintaining water in the root zone. We have dug up plants to transplant two years later and the gel is still active in the soil.

Another great aspect of these sytems is, they are very inexpensive. We use Antelco brand since they can be controlled at every sprinkler head and now have press in place heads for easy removal or changing of heads.