The part of our visit that most resembled a formal tour began with the flower bed in front of Bren’s house. It was instantly apparent Bren’s garden plan preserves habitat for felis catus, the domestic cat.
If you spend any time online and you’re serious about gardening, you’re likely to have heard of Brenda Haas. The curator of #gardenchat, Bren is a garden photographer and a social media guru.
I got to visit Brenda at her home earlier this year and I wrote about the experience in a post titled Visit in Brenda Haas’s Garden. There you’ll find information about #gardenchat and how to participate. Here, you’ll learn just a bit more about Brenda.
Garden Tour through the Lens
One great joy of visiting with a fellow gardener is the inevitable garden tour. Bren’s garden didn’t disappoint. We spent several hours, and I captured many, many photos.
To celebrate Brenda’s birthday (December 2), I selected from those photos a set of distinct images that get to the very core of Brenda’s motivation and inspiration.
I hope you’ll have a look and celebrate Brenda’s birthday with me. Happy Birthday, Bren!
A theme quickly emerged during out garden tour. Bren has 70 or 80 cats (she told me a number, but I can’t remember), and the cats have assigned one the job of monitoring humans… or, perhaps on this day a particular semi-rock-colored cat drew the short straw.
Semi rock-colored cat? This intended to be a photograph of delightful ground cover… I suppose it does capture ground cover.
We might have stumbled into a part of the garden visitors aren’t supposed to see. If this cat is deep in thought, I’d hazard the thinking is about injustice, spite, revenge, or all three.
When Bren and I reached the pond I was pleased to see our shadow cat inspecting one of the lounge chairs. No way would a cat lie down under a defective lounge chair.
Bren’s garden features a strategically-placed bird bath.
Bren and I were chatting in her vegetable garden. I looked away down a row of tomatoes and when I turned back, there was a cat! Despite much coaxing, the cat refused to look at the camera—or was it turning an evil eye on the horse next door?
For 10 minutes or so leading up to that photo of Bren and cat (above), there was caterwauling at my feet. These were the loudest meows I’ve ever heard in Ohio. I used my cell phone to record, and I ran the meows through Google translate. Google failed to auto-detect the language. I guess they’re still working on that feature. I’m sure if her cat spoke Human, it would say, “Happy Birthday, Bren!”