Temporary quarters In the Living Room

We had an exciting Saturday night/Sunday morning. Maxwell, my 22 year old son, as though he doesn't have enough medical challenges, passed a kidney stone in the small hours. He reports that the pain is pretty much as advertised, 10+ on a scale of 10. We had no idea what the problem was until we went to the emergency room at Holy Cross. After a CT scan, several doses of morphine, a prescription for Oxycontin (and the consumption of several of these), and the passing of the stone, things settled back to normal.

It seemed best that Max not landscape today, so his brother Pete, obligingly did twice as much work for monetary considerations and Max and I spent the day together. I had to finish up a design today, so I moved a small drafting table into the living room and worked there. Luckily it was overcast most of the day so I was able to see the screen of my laptop and access photographs of the clients' garden. Its a pleasant place to work; I can see lots of birds; wrens are nesting in a terra-cotta globe hanging from the soffit just out of the picture , hummingbirds visited their feeder all day, again just out of the picture. The flamingos, visible in the background, were well behaved, barely moved in fact. The base of a Psychopsis orchid is visible on the shelf behind the laptop; it has a flower on top of its perennial flower scape.

It was a fun design; for a medium-sized lot in North Hills, Md. (in the NW corner of Sligo Creek Parkway and Colesville Road). The clients have already planted a number of edible native woody plants, so we'll add a few pawpaws and such. They were interested in a "little bit different" selection of plants; that's always good. They visited public gardens including the Zoo and the Arboretum and came up with a list of plants that they liked including Poncirus trifoliata 'Flying Dragon', which is of course a great plant and Rhapidophyllum histrix, the native Needle Palm, and some others equally interesting which makes my work even more enjoyable.
It all has to fit around a very nice addition with enough glass to bring the outside inside.

Max started out groggy and uncommunicative, but as the day wore on he came around to the point where he seems perfectly fine now at 6:00. He did miss the Baltimore (oops Northern) Oriole I saw about 11:00. The house next to ours has an 80' tall cherry and every year the Orioles come. I can see the red fruits from my chair and every once in a while the brilliant orange and black male, or the more sedately colored female. Its a good place to work.