Regular Joe's Remarkable Garden

I love to visit other people's gardens, and no one I know has a more idyllic backyard than my cousin Joe. He lives in Eastern Washington in Wenatchee where I went for a family reunion last weekend, and while that is a little far afield from the Olympic Peninsula, he grew up in Shelton, so I'm including him on my blog because it's...well...my blog, and I can do whatever I want.

Washington State, for what it's worth, ranks first in the U.S. in apple production, and a majority of those apples come from the Wenatchee Valley which is the state's largest producer and exporter of this fruit grown on over 170,000 acres of orchard there.

As a matter of fact, Joe, who was recently unemployed like myself, just took a job at a fruit processing plant. Me, I just got a part-time job at the local food co-op, too.

I'd never been to Joe and Pat's house before, so I had no idea what to expect. All I heard was "they have a pool." I'm not much of a swimmer, so the pool itself wasn't much of a draw, but by the time the weekend was over all of us cousins who used their place as command central were ready to move in for the summer.

So here's some serious garden porn to gaze upon. This first picture is an arbor that leads into a circular hideaway enclosed by greenery. My cousin Victoria said it was the perfect place to take a book and read.

Through the hideaway, on the other side, is Joe's vegetable garden patch including a chicken coop with six Rhode Island Reds. Over to the left of here is a raspberry patch which he generously let me pillage and bring home about half a gallon of berries. He let me take some rhubarb, too.

This being Wenatchee, where summer starts earlier than on the Olympic Peninsula, his bean teepee is further along than mine. Or, who knows, maybe he's just a better gardener than I.

Joe uses black plastic ground cover and those water-filled plastic greenhouse deals to keep his tomato plants happy and going strong.

Another arbor covered with Concord grapes leads back to the main yard from the vegetable garden. Note the rockery. Joe is a serious rock lover, and he has collected all of the rocks you see from various places he's been and has incorporated them into the landscape.

Near the pool was a mound that was created when the pool was excavated. Rather than level it, Joe dug into it and built an octagonal, underground sauna. I was very impressed by that, and since I have a similar mound of dirt leftover from digging the foundation of my house, I'm planning a root cellar.

These two pictures are of it from two different angles, the yellow flowers being your point of reference.

Finally, on the patio, he had made a wood stove fireplace which we used to keep us warm as we stayed up late and entertained ourselves with family stories and even a bit of singing.

There is a lot more to Joe's yard that you don't see here. He has a hot tub, hammock, two large willow trees, and a playhouse for their grandkids, too. The front yard, accented by a small stand of Quaking Aspen trees, is equally beautiful.

Joe is truly one of the nicest, regular guys you'd ever meet, which isn't all that surprising if you knew his mom and dad, my Aunt Lois and Uncle Joe, who raised two pretty nice daughters, too. I think he is incapable of being mean, which is likely why he's been married to Pat for over 30 years. On Friday when we were there, he went to work at 5:30 p.m. and didn't get home until 3 a.m. because this is the busy cherry season. Then, on Saturday, he was up around 9 a.m. and cheerfully went to the park to help his parents set up for the reunion picnic. When he isn't out in the garden, he helps out at a soup kitchen in downtown Wenatchee. I am really proud to say he's a relative of mine.

Here he is in the middle of this photo relaxing by the pool. Using a kit for one chair that he bought for a pattern, he built the other wooden chair you see. I told him he really should go into business creating paradise in other people's yards. I wish I had taken a better picture of him, but I wasn't really thinking about blogging, just having fun with my cousins.

The result of spending the weekend there was receiving the gift of motivation to come home and keep laboring to make my own backyard a haven like Joe's because it's guys like him that make me want to work hard, not to mention be a better person.