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Tuesday, November 9, 2010

It's a Terracotta Day


It's been a beautiful Fall day. We had a hard frost a couple of weeks ago which turned the potted annuals to green mush. Now they were dried out and I took the opportunity of the warm weather to dump the soil out. Terracotta is just dirt, clay which has been formed into pots, dried in the sun and then fired in a kiln at a moderate temperature. The result is a good looking porous pot which breathes so plants don't get water-logged. Most of mine are from Italy, but it's getting harder to find them. There are a lot from China and Korea now. They look the same, but they tend to break over Winter. Actually none of them can handle freezing very well if they are wet. Supposedly the pots from Impruneta, Italy weather better. They are a beautiful soft pink tone, but a little out of my price range. Every Spring I have to throw a couple away and I swear I'll buy fakes that will last forever, but somehow I never do.

The garden in Fall is subtle and textured. It's not slam-bang flashy like high Summer, but still pretty damned fine.

And the brick path, just because it's more clay.



2 comments:

gabriel said...

It has always amazed me how the many values of greens and tertiaries always seem to work together so well, unlike any other colors. I always surmised it was our experience in nature that has accustomed us to these combinations. your photographs illustrate the beauty of these subtle variations.

Gunnar Berg said...

Absolutely. Ya got any idea what a small percentage of the population have any idea what tertiary colors are? But, as you say, instinctively deep down inside, most of us find them pleasing. It's that subtlety of color and texture we're looking for in gardens. In the words of Henry Mitchell, if it was only color we were after, we would just paint the sidewalks orange.