A Garden

I have been plotting a clever post about my newest obsession: the unreality of the Real Housewives of New Jersey and Orange County (it's a guilty pleasure to watch them and provokes a need to remind yourself how much more real you are than they are). But, I planted some plants to fill in holes in the back garden today and decided that the joy I get from gardening and plants is really more interesting than my clever sarcasm about strange ladies with strong personalities and a lot of cleavage.

Our backyard is very small. Our lot is odd for a older suburban area: it's on a bend, and we have a large front and side yard. Our backyard is kind of like a courtyard because there are garage backs on two sides. When we moved in it had a very old and ill honeysuckle that took up about 20% of the yard. We had some orange daylilies and added a kiddy sandbox. There were no real plants to speak of. Oh, and on the side of the garage there was a Japanese knotweed jungle. Japanese knotweed is in the bamboo family and had at one point taken over the space by the garage (I'm talking a grove of 20 foot tall stalks), behind my other neighbors garage, and into the yard of the 3rd neighbor. I literally spent 2 years eradicating the bamboo. It spreads by underground rhyzomes and the roots can be 3 inches thick. It cannot be dug up. I used round-up. A lot of round-up. Over and over and over, every time a little plant came up, I sprayed it and waited for the next one. At the beginning of the 3rd summer I planted groundcover and some native wildflower seeds.

Slowly I added plants: liatris (aka gayfeather or blazing star) from bulbs, coneflowers, and hardy geraniums. Some annuals along the way. Then we did construction and our yard was totally destroyed, but at the end the honeysuckle (which had some odd fungal disease) went. We got new sod, and a few foundation shrubs, and trellis at the garage with clematis.

Cut to today: I bought some Stella D'Oro daylilies and mountain garlic (a kind of allium) and planted them in some of the holes (I planted other things earlier in the summer.) I love the kind of wild prairie or English garden look. After I was done, I sat in a chair, turned on my little fountain, and realized that I really liked how it was shaping up. And even more importantly, that I had created it. That I had planted most of the plants myself, had decided where to put things, had pulled out 16 gazillion violets and other weeds, triumphed over the bamboo and made a space I love.

Even though many of the plants are young and have been under seige by the chipmunks and rabbits, I have a feeling that it will be the garden I want it to be, and a quiet space that I can love (and the garden is the view from the window at the sink where, of course, I spend too much time!). A place to sit with a glass of iced tea or wine, or a book or just to sit and think. What a nice realization on a Friday afternoon.