Thursday, April 30, 2020

The Great Garden Expansion

One of my favorite things in the world is working in my garden.  I find it meditative, restorative, therapeutic, peaceful.....

When Annie was little I could barely keep my gardening head above water; the weeds got me every single year.  I was generally overwhelmed.

Now that my children are older, I've found that it's much easier to take care of my garden.  I have committed to mulching every year, and trying to keep ahead of the weeds--much easier now than it was even 5 years ago! We have flower beds all around the perimeter of our home and they include hostas, coral bells, peonies, ranunculus, azaleas, lilac, hydrangea, irises, Solomon's seal, artemesia, Jacob's ladder, ferns, Japanese silver grass, roses, tulips, daffodils, hyacinth, lilies, coneflowers, Shasta daisies, sedum, bleeding hearts, morning glories, lily of the valley, and more....and our newest flower bed, which runs alongside the patio we had built in 2017, contains rosemary, blue false indigo, Veronica speedwell, a dwarf butterfly bush, and my dear little lavender plants.

And it's good that I'm in this manageable place, because new things are coming here on the farm.

When my mother built this house in the early 1990s, she decided to fence in only a portion of the 1.25-acre lot that she owned.  She thought that mowing such a large piece of land would be too much for her (she used a push mower!).  So for over 25 years, we've had about half--maybe less--of our property fenced in as "yard," and the rest is just cow field! 

My husband decided that it was time for us to change the fence line. And that means my yard will grow from being maybe half an acre to being over an acre.  We had a surveyor come out last week and confirm the property corners, my cousin is going to put in the corner posts soon, and he'll get the fence changed as soon as he finishes haying.....

Our new yard (!) will include a portion of sloped, grassy land to the southwest with no trees, and then a steeper-sloped, rockier portion to the northeast with a couple of beautiful (blooming right now!) black locust trees. When I was young and my mother built the house, my room was the only room that faced these trees, and I romantically--I have some Anne Shirley in me--called it the "locust grove" and used to gaze at it out my window, imagining it as a romantic fairyland.

My cousin knocked down a couple of these mostly-dead fairyland black locusts last week with the tractor in preparation for the fence work, but we should be able to salvage two of the remaining trees; one is quite large and still very healthy; I need to check on the other one.



{the view from our front yard out to the locust grove. those peonies are so close to blooming in this photo--they just began yesterday!  the fence that is pictured will be gone soon....and I love the way the locust trees look when they are blooming!}

So I'm starting to look at these areas every day on my walks, trying to catch a vision for what to do with our newfound land. The ideas swirl! I know it will take me a while to create a vision and begin to implement plans; Finn and I signed up to take an online landscape design course to further our abilities in this department.

 It will be a long process; this year my sole goals are to have the new fence installed and to clean the brush and junk out of the fairyland, and get a feel for what I want to plant where, and when.  Next year, Lord willing, I hope to start planting in the fairyland.  The children and I walked out there yesterday and discussed it: our goal is to have a secret garden where we can sit and relax, and where no other house, structure, or human thing can be seen--just the long view across the fields, valley, and distant mountains.  That will involve planting a few hedges.  And of course, we want it to be pretty.  And peaceful.  And fragrant!

Will the new plan for the land involve cherry trees? A grape arbor? A greenhouse?  Will it involve a wildflower meadow?  An archery range? More lavender plants?  Shall I plant spirea, more hydrangea, quince? Should we expand our potager (this is what you call the vegetable garden when your son is a French scholar :))? Install a wisteria arbor?

Suddenly, an acre and a quarter seems way too small!

4 comments:

  1. Polly,
    Thank you for your sweet note about the past comments. I am very glad Sarah stepped in and informed you. I must say it was in the back of my mind that perhaps you were not getting them. But then I thought maybe you had turned off comments for a purpose.
    But I do like this way so much better😊.
    So much here reminds me of my days when I was closer to your present age. We had a farm and I dreamed, and we were by God's provision able to make many of those dreams come true. We had a place of redbuds we called "Redbud Lane" down by the back pasture. The children and I would walk back and forth through this overhanging garden of redbud trees every spring with sheer delight.
    Today, I still dream, and with God's provision we are able to make many come true with additional gardening and such. Though I am still waiting on getting some hollyhocks planted and flourishing in one of my potagers. We should never stop dreaming, nor stop asking for His dreams. He is so very good to us.
    Paschal said, "Man was lost and saved in a garden." I chew on that as I garden away...

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    1. "Redbud Lane" sounds so delightful!

      Yes, I so agree about dreaming. And oh, that quote from Paschal is such a good one to ponder--thank you for sharing it.

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  2. I'm so happy for you! I'll live vicariously through your secret garden, et. al. We had just under 3.5 acres in Texas, and I LOVED them--but I have to say, Texas is a hard place to grow beautiful flowers because of the heat and seasons of drought. Now I live in a place so easy to grow amazing hydrangeas, lilacs, and the like--but my yard is tiny! So I'll live through you . . . I can't wait to see how your new acreage blossoms!

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    1. 3.5 is a LOT!! Last year we had discussed offering to purchase about 3-5 more acres of this back pasture from my family who owns it, but decided against it for various reasons: one of which was the very practical problem of taking care of all that! I have had lots of good luck planting dwarf lilacs and hydrangeas--my house is so squat that I don't want anything large next to it, and the smaller shrubs tend to just work much better. But I'll probably go bigger farther away from the house. We'll see--right now I'm thinking about the 2-5 year plan. It'll take awhile!!!

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