The Promise of Spring

This is the year. I'm ready to give up on past failures and disasters and start my garden over. Right back where it began. Almost to the centimeter. Maybe I had it right back then...

the 7th of 20 trees...

I should back up a bit. We've lived in this house for 21 years. We have about a third of an acre and I am it's sole gardener. When we moved in my dad warned me that all the trees the previous owner had planted were 'trash trees.' They were too short lived and I should dig them all out. At 28, having never owned a house, I knew far better than my father who grew up on a farm. I mean, I listened a bit, digging out about 20 in the first five years, but the rest were so pretty and placed so well I let them live on. What could it hurt?
Turns out, pretty much everything. Just when I would get one area to a mature, beautiful garden with well- balanced garden beds full of perennials, the major tree would die and all the flowers around it would slowly get smaller and smaller because they had too much light. Even after transplanting them, most would die.

Okay, so this one is from a hiking trip in Red River Gorge
but I didn't get a picture of the dinosaur garden.
It was better than this...

The worst was when the dinosaur garden died. It had hostas 3 feet tall and five feet across with large ferns shooting out between. It looked like a set for The Land of the Lost or Jurassic Park. I loved it. Then we had a wet summer where the drainage from the neighbors house killed off the enormous pear tree that sheltered it. I was so busy taking care of the wreckage of the tree (and others that died that year) that I didn't think about all the perennials. Next year only a few came back. The year after, none.
There was also our neighborhood. In the summer of 2001, due to a combination of a local business strike and their dislike for how we raised our children, all of the neighbors stopped talking to us. Most went out of their way to make sure they didn't see us. This meant I could here people laughing and talking, enjoying one another, while I worked alone in the yard. It felt better to stay inside.
Between my neglect and the continual die off of our trees, the gardens suffered. They never looked awful, but they surely didn't look good. Over the past five years I've been taking the yard back, one small section at a time. The final truly awful spot is right beside our screened in porch.
Fifteen years ago it was the butterfly garden with lilacs, butterfly bushes and butterfly weed. There were red honeysuckle and dutchman's pipes vines. Over the years our neighbor's three foot trimmed hedges grew neglected, eventually reaching over eight feet tall. They shaded out, then eventually killed all the plants on our side. Even after she cut the bushes down to sell the house, all the new plants I tried there died tragic deaths. Depressing. I'd just leave and go work on other areas of the yard where things grew.
Early this January the promise of spring began to grow in my heart. I saw the problem in a different way. What about trying something completely different, or rather, why not go back to the very first garden I ever put in?

The hell strip

When we first moved in, I longed for a huge garden where we could grow all our vegetables. My children would thrive on the produce I grew. (Ah, innocence was bliss). My husband built a beautiful square foot garden box. We put it on the south side of the house for loads of sun. Filled it with the best growing medium (even parts compost, vermiculite and peat moss). Built a trellis out of conduit all by myself (still proud of that one).
My gardening successes were matched by kitchen failures. We discovered that my husband has a food sensitivity to Swiss chard. Of course, since it grew in my garden, I tried to disguise it in smaller amounts in dishes like stuffed shells. Didn't work. Let's just say, he has an amazing Swiss chard detector. Then there was the time that I served him a slug. Not kidding. Alive and moving in his dinner salad.
I became a confirmed flower gardener for many years, strongly encouraged by my husband, the only edibles were basil, cilantro and the odd tomato plant.
This year things are different. These vegetables will be just for me.       Oh, I'll give my husband some if he wants, but it's not a crusade to fix anyone's health or create something beautiful for the neighbors. It is to give me the great pleasure of working the soil and living in the sun.

the square foot garden box is built, but not filled
Who cares, it was fun.

     After a cold winter, today I finally get to sweat in the heat amid the screeches of the mating starlings.
Each little spot gets loving attention, healing the hurts of the past. In the hell strip we created when we wrapped the deck to keep animals out, I get the privilege of nurturing an herb garden. The dead spot from the old bushes, that gets a square foot garden. Things come full circle and I bathe in the eternal sunshine of a spotless mind.