The Real Green Thumb In The Family – Hometown View

Occasionally I will be outside when someone will walk by our house and complement me on its appearance in regards to the flowers, plants and general overall landscaping.  If I’m watering at that time, like late yesterday afternoon they probably assume I’m at least partly responsible for how nice things look and I usually correct them right away.  Truthfully outside of very minor contributions it’s all a credit to my wife Jane who combines hard work with a very green thumb.

The front yard is nice but it’s the back that has become an oasis and a place where we like to escape with this being the best time of year.  Let’s face it once we get into the heat and humidity of summer it’s tough to sit outside but now, especially in the early evening, I love to relax and read while listening to the sounds of the waterfall running in my Koi pond.

Wait a second that is the one thing I do with regularity…I feed the 20 or so fish and clean the filter so I deserve credit for that.

However everything else is Jane’s doing and I have to admit it’s rather spectacular for a modest home.  She does almost everything on her own and weekends in May are pretty much dominated by her planting and re-potting.  She is great at finding little knick-knacks and has a real talent for seeing things that I view as basically nothing and working them into the yard and garden like they belong.

She especially loves “Recycling the Past” which is an architectural salvage business on Route 9 in Barnegat.  Here you can find just about everything and anything from iron fencing, stained glass, old doors, statues and antiques which truly define the expression, “one man’s junk is another’s treasure.”

So at least I have come clean publicaly by praising my wife for her talent, time and hard work .  Later this morning when this is posted on our web site I will include some pictures because as the saying goes “a picture is worth a thousand words.”

In a totally unrelated note:

Toms River’s Todd Frazier got the shaving cream pie last night after hitting the first walk-off homer of his brief major league career.  Frazier, who has been slumping of late, belted an opposite-field homer with one out in the bottom of the 9^th to give the Reds a 2-1 win over Atlanta.  It was his 4^th home run of the season.