Paul’s Nasturtiums – In Our Living Room

Our friends Paul and Lana Jane Brent are arriving this morning to go on the Music in the Gardens Tour with us.  I am sorely tempted to hand them blinders as they get out of their car – blinders to keep firmly in place as they pass by our south garden on their way into and out of our house!  As one of our near neighbors so aptly put it a few years back, “Sydney and Nyel’s garden is under stress.”  And that’s putting it mildly after being gone for most of the past month and with our few at-home days being rainy and not conducive to mowing, trimming, digging…

Paul is an artist. Google him; if you don’t know his name, you will recognized his work!  It is everywhere; he is the King of Branding!  Lana Jane is the retired CEO of a string of family-owned grocery stores in the south.  The Brents divide their time between the coasts of Oregon and Florida.  When they are here on our side, we try to manage to take several ‘field trips’ together – thrift store excursions, picnics on the beach, steamer-clamming on the bay – sometimes at their end, sometimes at ours.

Paul and Sydney Replete, 2014

Seeing the world through their eyes is always fun and enlightening.  Who else but Paul would see a stuffed moose head (or was it an elk) and consider buying it as a present for his son in Chicago?  Who else but Lana Jane could look absolutely regal and ravishing at a dinner party with strangers and never-mind-the-bay-mud-where-she-had-slipped-and-fallen (miles from a change of outfits) only hours beforehand?

Today’s Garden Tour promises more adventures – music, art, landscaping with water features!  Oh my!  And did I mention that the Brents’ garden in Seaside is spectacular in its own right?  Seeing Peninsula gardens through their eyes is bound to give us ideas to dream about and a goodly dose of Garden Envy (in a good way).  I can scarcely wait for the fun to begin!