Sunday afternoon Tom, M-M, and I got on our bikes to pedal to several local gardens highlighted in the Decatur Garden Tour. Now, I haven't ridden a bike in years. When we lived in Minnesota, we loved biking on the rails-to-trails pathway from Carlton to Duluth, but I get anxious biking in automobile traffic. Years and years ago when I was an undergraduate at Texas A&M, I biked to campus from married student housing until I got tired of running into pedestrians. Well, I think I might have bumped just one or two pedestrians, but maneuvering through the crowded campus made me so nervous that I finally resorted to walking. I don't know why I get so nervous while biking and having to watch for traffic--pedestrians or automobiles--but I do. However, I've decided to overcome that nervousness and to try pedaling more frequently. I'm becoming more and more green conscious and feel I must walk the walk if I'm going to talk the talk--or put the pedal to the wheel if I'm going to live like I feel. Or something dorky like that.
Anyway, we decided to begin the tour with the garden that had been most recommended to us: Ryan Gainey's garden on Emerson Avenue. We arrived with little difficulty, though I was a little slow in re-acquainting myself with gear shifting on my bicycle. I think I ran only two red lights. Tom and M-M were much more circumspect.
Ryan Gainey is a nationally-known gardener. His personal garden covers three city lots, or two acres, and is a lovely, whimsical place, with numerous outdoor rooms. Although the Atlanta metro area is under water restrictions because of severe drought conditions, the gardens looked great. 
Halfway through our tour of the garden, I watched a water hose being pulled back into one of the green houses, water dripping from its end spout. Curious, I followed the disappearing hose into the greenhouse to discover Ryan Gainey on the other end. Two women already there also noticed him and began asking questions about the guest house. "Do your guests stay in these rooms?" one woman asked.
At first, I thought Gainey wasn't going to answer; he was silent for a bit. Then he cordially said that the rooms attached to the green house had once been part of the original barn on the place. A staff member lived there for fifteen years, he said. "When I have guests," he added, "I allow them to stay in my house."
Later that afternoon, I found out that we are now under a complete water ban--no outdoor watering whatsoever. I wonder how people such as Ryan Gainey cope with such restrictions. Since his gardens are part of his business, part of his "livelihood," Gainey probably gets different watering guidelines than the general public as ourselves. Thus, when Tom and I created a flower bed around our mailbox later on Sunday afternoon, we didn't plant the native grasses and verbenas we had bought, opting instead to wait until we get some rain. We didn't want the neighbors turning us in for violating the no-outdoor-watering restrictions. One neighbor walking his huge, black Great Dane stopped while we were digging to tell us that neighbors had rushed out to warn him of the ban when he was washing his car. It was the first he had heard of the new restrictions. Previously, our addresses determined the watering we could do: even-numbered houses such as ours restricted to watering Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays between midnight and 10 a.m..
I'm all for water restrictions in drought and for careful water management even in years of plentiful rainfall. So we're going to create a front yard of native grasses, shrubs, and flowers--with a few herbs and vegetables--that will not require watering once they are established. But we've got to get out of this drought first.
I read an article recently about how large cities--such as Atlanta--create their own weather. The heat from dense buildings and hundreds of acres of pavement actually affect the weather of the city. Thunderstorms that form on one side of the city sometimes divide, going around the city and meeting up again as one thunderstorm on the other side of the city. I've noticed recently that thunderstorms approaching Atlanta from the west will result in just a sprinkling of rain in our area while areas east of us then get lots of rain from the same systems. Other articles describe how this heat-effect from cities can create rain. Well, we desperately need that rain now if our garden is to look as good as the ones we viewed on the Decatur Garden Tour. 
M-M took the photographs I have included with this post, most of which she took in Ryan Gainey's garden. To view a larger version, click on the photograph. Note, especially, that bee reaching for a flower!
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