A (Sort-of) brief History

We moved to this townhouse in October 2001. One of the many things that drew us to it was the beautiful pear tree in the front yard. To have a tree seemed very important to me for some reason, perhaps because I had always had one to look at right outside my bedroom window as a child. The fact that this particular kind of tree would shower us with lovely, red, leaves in the fall, and delicate, white, petals in the spring was a bonus.

After having lived in an apartment for six years, I was very eager to get my hands in the earth and make something of it. I managed to restrain myself long enough to get the necessities of daily living unpacked, and my children's rooms painted. As soon as I could though, I got started making over our little bit of land out back. This little bit of land is actually a 18 square foot, 80% deck, blindingly sunny backyard. The previous owners had left us with two beautiful clementis, and a very vigorous row of irises. These were in a 1x12 foot planter on the east side of the deck. On the west side of the deck was a 3 x 12 foot gravely area that had been the home of a rabbit hutch in time gone by. In the far west corner, was a patch of good soil that had previously been used for a vegetable patch.

The first thing I wanted to do was to remove the gravel so that I would have more room for plants. The ground below the gravel was in very poor shape, and extremely difficult to dig. After a lot of digging and a fair amount of mulch I felt I was ready to head to the store for bulbs. I ended up planting 50 pink and white tulips, 25 daffodils, and two peonies that first fall. The following is a picture of the result the next spring. (The daffodils have already died down, and I added a dogwood tree and four rose bushes).



When my tulips began to die down that spring a mother rabbit and her babies graced us with their presence for a while. They seemed to love eating the fading tulip leaves. They weren't interested in the fresh ones to my relief, so we got along quite well.

I wanted to make a try at growing sweetpeas and lupins. This was a really bad year to try it, but who knew in the spring... The summer of 2002 was very hot and dry. We lost the dogwood tree and two of the rose bushes. The sweetpeas only grew a few inches then died, the lupins never sprouted at all. The peonies came up, but they were very small and had no buds. Due to the lack of rain, I decided to get a bird bath for the back porch. It got very little attention form the birds that year, but a little chipmunk fell in love with it. The bath was already rather low to the ground, but I put a stone beside it so that the little fellow could sit comfortably while he drank. He had tumbled in one time before I did that and didn't seem to appreciate the wetting very much at all. He seemed to understand what to do with the stone right away, and know that it was his. He would spend quite a bit of time sitting there even when he wasn't interested in drinking. In the fall I planted a few more tulip bulbs (some lacy edged purple ones).

2003 was extremely wet. I decided to try adding another rose bush, a rhododendron, and a small cypress tree. All of these have survived very well. I tried again with the sweet peas and lupin. I also tried to grow some cone flowers to attract gold finches. The lupins and cone flowers never showed themselves, the sweet peas grew fairly well, but produced few blooms. The robins discovered the bird bath and promptly took over. I haven't seen the chipmunk since. As an after thought late in the summer I stuck a half dead miniature rose bush in the corner by the air conditioner. I figured I would probably be digging the poor thing up within a very short amount of time. I was mistaken however!

So far this year the plants have been putting on a spectacular show. My roses are already covered with blooms, including the little one I thought would die. The larger of the two peonies is loaded down with buds, and just today is starting to open its petals. The hostas are huge and rapidly taking over. I think I will transplant some to the front yard in the next few days. We planted a large number of seeds this year including sweetpeas, lupin, canterbury bells, and cone flowers. We also planted some squash, cantelope, and a surprise for William.