The Garden Tour

The weather couldn’t have been more perfect last Friday for the Concord Museum Garden Tour. Over 500 tickets were sold in advance and many more on the day of the event. It certainly seemed as if every one of them came through my yard! People looked at the chickens. They said hello to the goats.

They marveled at the Beast.

It was a lovely day.

Saturday was not lovely. It rained. It poured. It drizzled. It was cold and damp and miserable. But, still people came.

Sometimes I think that gardens are even more beautiful in the rain. The colors, without the glare of sunshine, are deeper. Water shimmers on rocks and glistens in balls on leaves. After the last visitor drove off, Steve took video of the garden and we put together a rainy day garden tour.

Sunday was overcast, but the chickens didn’t mind at all. As promised, I let them out to free-range.

The garden is fully mature, and it took them a bit of looking to find dirt to scratch in. They wandered about, eyeing the flowers and pecking at the grass. They enjoyed themselves immensely until a hawk swooped low. I hustled the girls back into their secure pens. They’ll get to finish their tour another day.

Comments:

  2. Terry,
    What a beautiful home and “farmstead” you have. When was your home built?
    I’m jealous of the rain, it’s been over a month since we have had a drop.
    Darn hawks, they’ve ruined more than one outing of my hens as well.

    • Ken, the house is 9 years old. I designed it. When we bought the property a developer had scraped the entire backyard bare. It was gravel and poor dirt. What looks like natural plantings to the left of the small barn were all planted (for that I had professionals with strong backs, thank goodness!)

      • I thought you would have said 90 instead of 9. I love it. It’s what I have envisioned when I retire and move further from urban/suburbanization.

  3. SO beautiful! I marvel at all you do, Terry! In addition to keeping your animals (family too!) all healthy and happy and being a super cook and maintaining that lovely garden AND you designed your house too! You are my nominee for Wonder Woman of the Year!

  4. Looks like it was a great success Terry! Your garden looks beautiful and very English! Hope the boys behaved and didnt butt anyone and Candy didnt give anyone one of her stares…… :o)

  5. Gosh..Steve made an amazing tribute to all the hard work of the Golson Family. Rain or shine it just spills over with love and affection for natural beauty. I so enjoy checking in at Little Pond …thanks for all you bring to us for our viewing pleasure!

  6. Loved your Garden Tour, Terry. Our compliments to Steve for his fine work in putting the video together. We wonder if you can tell us what the music was that went with the tour video. It really enhanced the tour.

    • The music is copyright free provided by iMovie (the software I used to make the video.) It did fit perfectly, didn’t it?

  7. I looked in on Friday and saw some of the visitors greeting the hens. When I saw the rain on Saturday I wondered if many would show up. Hope they didn’t do too much damage to the lawn. Looked pretty good in the video. I would say it was a great success. Good show!!

  9. Lovely!! What a wonderful way to start my Monday at work :)

  10. LOVED the video. You live in a small piece of heaven. For those of us homesick for New England, I hope you will consider fall and winter editions as well. Thank you for sharing!

    • Remind me this fall and I’ll show you our New England colors. By then, if the critters don’t eat them, my veg garden should be surrounded by sunflowers.

  11. I’m so glad the tour was a success, even in the rain. Your house and garden are SO lovely. Thank you for this post and photos. And thank you, Steve, for the beautiful video. I LOVED it!

  13. Did you get any bored kids who perked up when the saw you had chickens and goats, and a rabbit ?

  14. What a beautiful yard and garden. It looks so green and the colors are so vibrant. Everything stands out so bright and crisp. I’m sure all the visitors enjoyed seeing your garden as much as the animals enjoyed their visit. I see the goats were showing off on Friday.

    • I had a sign up “Please do not feed or touch the animals” so the goats did show-off but were quite perturbed that they didn’t get rewarded for their antics.

  15. Absolutely beautiful! I called hubby over and we watched the video together and it brought tears to my eyes.
    How many acres are there? And do you mind saying where you purchased the chicken pots?
    Wow and wow!

    • We have two acres, but a big chunk is in woods at the back. It’s a narrow lot and that meadow is actually the septic mound, so I don’t have any space to add pasture (sadly, no room for donkeys!) The chicken pots came from a store in Cambridge, MA, called Nomad. The pots were imported from a small, isolated town in Mexico and are no longer available.