When my yard grows up it wants to look like Sacred Sister's

Shit maybe it just wants her to move in and me out so it can have a better steward.

I have yard envy. I want Sideon’s morning glories (I drool for those morning glories so splendid on their matching trellises. Sun kissed petals of deep
blue and violet purple.) And I want Sacred’s hollyhocks.

They don’t have to be black, but they must be singles, gorgeous pinks would be wonderful. What do I have? Rust bitten, spindly doubles in white. Well once there was a pink and another time a burgundy. But while everyone else’s hollyhocks are blooming splendiferous – and each and every year - mine are waiting there on the stocks like plump berrys with no cool whip.

I have owned my house for twenty-six and a half years. I bought it February 19th of 1981 in partnership with my now ex-second husband. Who, believe it or not, just quick deeded the whole thing to me when he left. Now is that a guilt buy out or what? I should have seen it coming. His idea of landscaping was green painted cement. No flowers, no ornamental trees, no up keep.

When he left I really wanted a yard. So I tried and failed miserable and hubby #-3-2-B, took pity on me , married me, and gave me a yard. This is a guy has to mow every weekend or life as we know it comes to a screeching halt. His summer is not complete without a sunny box of petunias growing outside our dining room window. For years it was a running joke between my mother and Ducky that she would give him “real flowers” each year for his birthday. His favorite flowers are petunias, tulips and Asian lilies. Thank goodness I don’t kill any of those.

Before we built the new room and deck I would grow this awesome petunia patch. Lush and colourful, and so full it could take me up to a full hour to deadhead them each weekend. Now a room and deck stand where petunias once flourished.

Every year Ducky and I have chosen a portion of the yard or house to finish. First he dug up the old stumps in the back yard and we planted lawn. Then we built a fence. We re-roofed. Put in a flagstone patio – in the front yard where grass refused to grow.

We built a new room and added a covered deck. I have one section of yard we’ve never worked on. Ducky began building a short fence in between our dead lawn and the forest to the south. It’s a three-year process, because he sidetracks very easily. As in, “look power tools to the left.”

I’ve have decided that in front of Ducky’s short fence will be a lily garden, planted with a varied and profuse arrangement of lilies to the back, maybe some daylilies and lavender in the midst, Russell lupine, gay feathers, columbine to the forward, and petunias to the front in summer and fall, tulips in spring.
I am keeping the grass (I can’t call it lawn yet) next to the flagstone and dividing the two areas with a walk…that is taking me four weeks and a year to build. I cut it out last autumn before the rains came with full intent of finishing it.

Then somebody yelled, “Snake.” And that was all she wrote.

So my path way is now half way done. I should have it complete in a week or so.

For years at the end of our sidewalk the city, contractors, and err, um, the people who live in our house have piled their crap. What a friggin’ eye sore. I was going to clean it up one day, until one of the new neighbors made a comment. Seriously, that day! But the guy and his wife walked by, commented on the beautiful job we were doing, “And we need to get rid of that eye sore there.”


I let it sit for two years more, because I’m bitchy and self-defeating like that.

But this was the year. I went out and bought extra




compost and rich potting soil. A four pack of lobelia, two six packs of petunias, and a six-pack of nasturtiums and planted to my hearts content. I hope the city doesn’t want back their cement boxes.