As you may know I enjoy one Country Inn Day each and every week. These are days I escape from life’s usual demands and do only the things I love. Because I love Country Inns I like to imagine my 1853 Jeremiah Brown House is a Country Inn on these Country Inn days and I take on many roles. I’m Inn Cook, Innkeeper, Inn Gardener, Inn Maid, but of course, most of the time I’m Inn Guest. And there are many kinds of Country Inn Days too – Culture day, Spa day, Nature Day, Tea Party Day, Adventure Day, so many more, but today is a Gardener’s Day. For a large part of today I will function as the Inn’s Gardener.

After some morning coffee and a delicious brioche bun I write a letter. This I do on every day, Inn day or ordinary day because I am a Lady of Letters. I then put on my garden attire ready to work, but before going out, the Inn Cook (me again) has prepared a nice eggs benedict for my morning pleasure. How nice. But now I really am ready to work, but wait! What’s this? RAIN? Oh my, what’s a gardener to do when on Country Inn Gardener’s Day it starts to rain and the rain keeps coming? Answer. The gardener goes shopping. I had noticed there were a few bare spots in the border garden and the circle garden could use a few more roses too, so on this rainy Gardener’s Day I will purchase all the things, or at least more of the things, my garden desires.

Sometime later in the day

What fun I had shopping. Girls just want to have fun you know, especially on a Country Inn Day, so strolling around hundreds of beautuful plants was the perfect thing to make me feel deleriously happy. I would have gone crazy buying lots more than I bought, but I am limited by what my small BMW can hold. Darn. But actually, it is amazing how much I can squeeze into that vehicle.

I got a Shrub Arbusto. It’s name is Summer Wine and it’s a Ninebark. It will have pretty pink flowers.

Then I chose a few Pygmy Barberry to add a little more accent color to the garden . They’re a pretty crimson. I have quite a few of these plants around the property and no animals bother them because of their prickly leaves.

I know hosta are a favorite food for the bunnies and deer that live near me and visit my garden all too often, but there was a sale on the Minuteman variety. This variety has very pretty dark green leaves with pure white edges. I couldn’t resist them. My deer and rabbit repellent seems to be working on the hydrangeas so hopefully it will protect these hostas too.

Next I found some shrub roses in the prettiest, soft pink.

They’re called easy elegance and they’re disease resistant. I do have luck with roses and I absolutely love these.

By the way, if you ever want to send some gorgeous , fragrant roses to a friend I suggest you google Grace Rose Farm in California. This farm is amazing and you will love the choices they have in color and style of bouquet.

But back to my shopping trip… I also bought a few more deep pink double knock out roses for my circle.

I have light pink shrub roses and boxwood at the edges of the circle, but inside the circle are herbs, knock out roses and tree hydrangeas. The circle is one of my garden’s success stories. When I moved to this property the circle contained an old, diseased apple tree and a mess of weeds with a few perennials mixed in. It took quite a while, but the circle became quite a lovely thing if I do say so myself.

Almost done shopping . . . I really wasn’t looking for a climbing rose, I have a red one by my entrance door,

but when I saw this Arborose Quicksilver I couldn’t resist it. Its flowers look like cabbage roses, and the cabbage rose is one of my favorite rose varieties.

They call it purple, but it’s really a pinkish purple. It will look fine by the entrance to the sun room, sitting across from some pink Japanese Anemone.

That’s almost it except for a few more pots of blue Laguna and pink Aromance. These little gems join my pink and white geraniums in the outdoor flower boxes.

It was a wet and messy shopping trip but I battled the raindrops, packed all my pretty though drippy new plants into the car and off we went. I hope my new beauties will like their new home in my garden. I am so happy to have them. My flowers and bushes are all my friends. (Spoken as any true gardener) I talk to my plants and they bring me so much joy. Don’t you talk to your plants too? Plants are great. Nature is great. It soothes the savage beast in us. My time as Inn Gardener has been very productive. Of course this is only the beginning. Another day the actual planting will begin and so it goes merrily on and on and on and on.

There’s a nice dinner later and then some spa time – a bubble bath with champagne and candlelight. Country Inn Days are full of all the things I love. Work and worry can be put off till tomorrow as Scarlet O’Hara would say. Actually, why worry ever?

We create our life experience. Sure, there are things we have to do, but I think it’s also important to create pure days of delight. Country Inn Days are such days and though I’d love to tell you more about them I’ll do that in the book I’m writing.

Now I have a date with Barbara Pym, an author, and her most delightful book, Jane and Prudence. Barbara will wisk me off to a quiet English country village and that’s where I’ll be having my afternoon tea with her delightful characters in their charming gardens. Ah books! Ah, to have an imagination!

So till we meet again. I do hope you live richly with all your favorite things and with much imagaination too. Imagination is a terrible thing to waste. If you haven’t been using yours start now. Let me know what you come up with.

Love to you from me, Carol Ann