Just a couple of notes on Dirt's gardens (from really a non-gardener):
She plays "plant tetris" in absolutely unimaginable ways. How she packs the x, y, and z axis like she does baffles me.
But the result is what I like to call "fireworks in slow motion". The first blossom last year (foothills of the rockies) was a crocus in January - and thanks to a late fall, we had some viable purplesomethings blooming in December. It's almost a different garden each week...and surely each month. One year, I'm going to take a weekly, fixed shot of one of her gardens and animate it - to show the stop-action fireworks show.
The other thing with the plant packing and plant tetris is that each garden seems like its own little ecosystem. Plants competing for resources - pushing and pushing back - getting snipped and clipped and relocated - it's remarkable to me to watch the lifecycles of the various individual members of the system - and seeing the system work within itself to try to find and maintain equilibriums. I love that so much more than the industrial, box-store-petunias-and-marigolds-in-a-row-and-at-right-angles-at-the-doctor's-office kind of gardening.
She's got both an eye for it and a love for it. And I just get to keep getting amazed by the art that she makes in and with her gardens.
