history-December 2007

Christmas was particularly joyous this year, with a new nephew and my whole family setting up camp around the tree in our living room. Snow began to stick on the 13th.

history-August thru November 2007

While I continued watching and living out the autumn in my inherited garden, the exterior of our house came down around us. Nearly 170 years old, she needed a *little* work, and only a fraction of it could be accomplished before Thanksgiving. I amended the soil in a three foot wide stretch along the west fence, which uncovered a ton, literally, of beautiful but heavy fieldstones. Broke one spade in the process and did my best to remove all gravel, tree foundlings, aggressive periwinkle and a whole manner of other wild things from the new bed.

Pulled as many of the daylillies in this swath as I could stand, worrying the whole time about 'wasting' a flower and planning to transplant them somewhere. This was before I realized that these little firecrackers were nearly impossible to wholly remove from their birthplaces--any little piece of a root will produce a new plant. I later learned that some people consider them weeds. Perfect, I thought, for the bed on the east side of the house that gets completely ignored. I put them in the wheelbarrow and forgot about them until January. Frozen, flooded, and left for dead, they would magically send up new shoots when the weather warmed. I tucked them under rocks and clay in the unamended east bed, with due respect.

The fence bed now cleared, in went 14 Endless Summer and Penny Mac hydrangeas in a line to the barn along with some compost and granulated sulfur. They immediately drooped under the strain of terrible powdery mildew. One 'organic' home brewed baking soda concoction later, I had succeeded in completely defoliating all of them. Thinking that I had killed them. I left them to overwinter and planned to cry about it in the spring.

In the interim I planted 80 triumph daffodils in between their dead bodies and a few hundred darwin hybrid tulips in the rear. I wanted something to look at in when warmer weather came besides these 14 dead sticks.

I tried to tuck some bulbs in the front too, but quickly realized that they had little chance of survival with all the commotion out there. I saved what I could, moved the azaleas and roses and a few other things to the rear and left the rest to the mercy of the sand-blaster and heavy boots.

history-July 2007

We moved in June a short way up the Hudson River to a walkable town on a hill. All things said and planned and reasoned, it was quite sad to see Brooklyn go. The promise of some true soil that didn't come in plastic bags and reside in pots on the fire escape offered some solace. Many weeks and three pairs of gloves later my hands are cut up and the weeds are still winning. But I uncovered many lost souls: sedum, snow-in-the-summer, and several opportunistic strands of sweet-autumn clematis. I planned to mostly let this garden breathe a bit, and to see what comes up this season. Started a compost pile, which brought with it an irrational amount of satisfaction. John had vetoed my vermicomposting hopes while we were in our apartment (with reasoned aversion to a tiny kitchen full of worms), so this was a dream finally realized I suppose. My folks rescued an old rusty push-mower from the garbage on a drive down to visit and it found a spot next to a boulder in one of the beds. There are a lot of rocks here. A lot. I tucked in some white impatiens in the interim. Debating what to do with several bleeding hearts. Pouring boiling water on the brick patio in increments to try to kill the crazy dandelions. The earth worms don't like that. I feel for them. They are my friends.

history-May 2007

As closing approached, we returned again for a second look. It didn't seem as overgrown then as it had in the listing. Compact dirt and gravel were more evident though. And little did I know that a crazy labyrinth of woody roots were lying below the surface, waiting for the beginning of sumac season.

history-April 2007

The spring before we moved in. The back yard leading up to the garage was being used as a parking lot. Problem #1: compact soil. (Oh, and house is falling apart.)

history

With our first house, I inherited an overgrown swath of dirt from gardeners past. It was small, I guess--a little over 1/10 of an acre--but for someone coming to it from a 4th floor Brooklyn walk-up it was vast and full of promise. In back, among the towering sumac, bindweed and norway maple seedlings, old stands of knotty irises, spotty daylilies and rampant widow's tears were happily running wild. In the front, two beautiful azalea bushes suffered quietly from rust and crowding beneath a canopy of upstarts. And a pair of fuchsia climbing roses languished under a broken downspout, almost completely defoliated by blackspot. There were forsythia growing in locations I didn't understand, and tiny plastic toy soldiers abandoned in weedy patches waiting to be discovered. An ancient wisteria, romantic and stately and crammed into a corner behind the shed, served as a silent marker of this garden's untold history. (photos from house listing)