How Does Your Garden Grow??

Yippeeeee! My first perennials of the season have come up. A bunch of baby daffodils have made their annual appearance this week. So proud of my lovelies.




I have a very tiny garden in our yard between our smaller deck and the fence. When we moved it was home to a dirty flea infested mattress (not ours), old clothes that had likely fallen off the previous tenant’s clothes line, junk and garbage, garbage, garbage. It took our whole first summer here just to clean it out. And then every year for six years I tried and tried to turn that thing into a nice little garden.

Second year I planted wildflower seeds with the hopes of a wild English garden. It came up really patchy and sparse and most of what grew didn’t even flower. Sot it looked like a whole lot of weeds.

Third-Fifth year I put in a little herb garden, planted a fair bit of perennials, moved in some orange tiger lilies that were growing wild in the lanes, put in some ferns and Rich laid rock and riverstone along the deck side and planted small trees.

Although it’s an incredibly tiny and more than manageable size, it has still been a rough ride. I love the idea of a nice garden but I’m just not very good at it. Things don’t grow for me. Things die easily. Squirrels come and dig up and destroy anything that actually had a fighting chance. I’m not the best at keeping up with it either. I start off strong but lose interest fairly quickly. I’ll find any excuse not to tend to it: “I’m too busy, I’m too tired, It’s too dark, There might be spiders…” My biggest excuse (and I still vindicate this as a real reason versus an excuse) is because we don’t have an outdoor water hook up. I don’t have a hose in the front or back. So, that means about 12 trips up and down the stairs with a watering can, filling it up in the sink, going back out and leaving a trail of water and muddy shoe marks in your midst. Imagine 12 trips. Yeah.

We can water the back by hooking up the hose to the kitchen sink, running the dirty thing through the kitchen and outside the side door (then mop the floor afterwards). I’m mean Jayzeus, who wants to do that on a week night?

But, blog readers, there is progress. This is a blog of love – my garden has appreciated my efforts and is finally doing what it’s supposed to! Sixth and now seventh year, things are coming up like clockwork. Bigger, prettier, taller and fuller than the year previous. Something is flowering throughout every part of the season.

Now I just need to figure out what to do with our front yard. Last year, I spent some good time and cash fixing it up. But when the roofers came this fall, they cut out two of my front shubs, drove their truck straight up on my front lawn all the way up to the front of the house. They parked their garbage container on the lawn for two days so when they finally moved it, they had to blow off all of the small debris that had ‘missed’ the container. They brought out this huge air compressor and blew off not only the debris, but all of the bark chip I had bought (10 bags at $12 a bag) as well. Gone. All of it.

Just before I go, please take a look at my sweet kid.