Sunday, May 30, 2010

The yard

Yesterday I took the girls to the my favorite place to buy plants: Hinsdale Nurseries (which of course is not in Hindsdale, but that's another story). That place is truly a candy store. They have more perennials, common and not, than I've ever seen. I don't even go see the acres of shrubs and trees, because I don't need any. Anyway, I needed a hosta for a specific spot (which of course, now I'm worried is too sunny), and came home with that, plus a whole lot of other stuff. I love that the girls want their own spot in the garden, which we've found. So after getting home, we planted their plants, plus the others I'd bought, and I thought about next steps in the garden (because there are always next steps in a garden).

When I first had a house I was afraid to do anything in the garden. I knew nothing about gardening. I tried a vegetable garden when I was 12 and got one 2 inch cucumber. I never tried again. So my first forays were in cutting things down and dividing hostas. I then moved on to very hesitantly planting perennials. When we moved to the house we live in now, it had 35 year old overgrown landscaping. No flowering plants (except for about 1000 old fashioned hostas lined up everywhere). It took 6 years, plus an addition to finally give me a yard I love. There is much of it I've done myself (a little every year) and then last year, with the addition at the back/side, we had professional landscaping done. Removed the hideous 8 foot yews in the front of the house and the very odd, little round yews at the side of the house. The woodland plants I had slowly been planting near the huge oak trees, now look like a woodland garden. The backyard which was grass and a huge sickly honeysuckle is getting close to my envisioned cozy courtyard feel. The little hardy geraniums I planted my first year here remind me of how I started back there.

And where I planted the girls garden behind my garage, well, what you don't see there is my biggest accomplishment of all. It was a jungle of 12 foot japanese knotweed...an evil evil invasive monster. It took me 3 years to get rid of it before I ever planted anything. I was out there every day for a couple of years, looking for new sprouts which I then attacked with round up. Religiously. I still have to do that in the spring, because it stills tries to pop up.

I love being outside, digging in the dirt, getting hot and sweaty. I love watering (feels kind of zen to me), and I love waiting for the flowers to start blooming (there's a lot of that right now: coreopsis, stella'oro daylilies, and the prairie plants like blazing star and coneflowers).

It has been a slow process of wanting to know more, getting out there and trying, and then feeling confident and proud of the results.

Hmmm. Sounds like a recipe for a contented life. Getting past the need for knowing it all, feeling like I'll ruin it by not doing it right. Feeling good about what I can do, rather than bad about what I can't. I think I'll go out in the yard and meditate on it all.

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