Aaaaand... it's the rainy season here in Northcentral FLA.
Landscaping currently, or very nearly currently, consists of overgrown azaleas (thanks, azzies, for staining our house!), overgrown and crowded spirea/hydrangea/rose/bleeding heart vine/yellow-berry-plant-whose-name-I-can't-remember MESS, fire spike, mondo grass, insane invasive ferns, 4 o'clocks, wisteria, and a humongous sweet viburnum. Those are all along the front of the house and fence. At the edge of the property by the road, starting at the parking area, we have a sickly cassia, a crepe myrtle, our mail box (I'll need to reserve space for a path to this serviceable device), two baby azaleas, a baby Chinese elm, and an ancient Sweet Gum tree that kindly provides shade and plenty of Spanish moss droppings. The overgrown azaleas recently received a good hack job in preparation for painting the house. They shall be transplanted (staining!). An old and sunken brick walk leads from the porch to the parking area. My focus here is the front yard from the walk to all points to the west on our .33 acre property.
You may ask why, with all those huge and looming projects, would I even begin to consider a garden transformation? I thank my husband, Logan. He broke our lawn mower on the Sweet Gum roots that have spread out across this part of our yard. I also thank my FitBit, for which I thank my husband again for giving it to me for Christmas. Because of my new walking habits and my desire to save future lawn mowers as well as my sincere wish to preserve Logan's sanity during lawn mowing times, all in addition to my love of gardening, the idea to create a strolling garden formed in my mind. I spent hours walking on top of the roots, forming paths and flower beds in my imagination. I got in a TON of steps during those evenings.
Here's one of the smaller roots. I should really take pictures of the larger, knobblier, more interesting ones.
I took a notebook out with me when the path structures finally became clear and I drew the root system. I am no artist but it gave me a good idea of the layout for when I was back in front of the computer, Pinterest garden photos on the iMac screen. I added plants to a board that I plan to transplant and plants I'd love to buy, take cuttings from my kindly neighbor, or plants I happen to like. It's just an idea for a starting point because part of that non-artist thing means my drawing is not to scale.
Since I started to write this post a couple days ago, Logan chopped down a tree that provided morning shade. That's fine with me because it was a naughty tree that dropped its tiny fruit balls (berries?) on our cars, and then birds would poop out the berries (?) onto our cars, too. I have no idea what kind of tree it was but it grew crazy fast and tall in a short time. So now there's a portion of the yard that gets full sun until late afternoon until that bright Giver of Light and Heat sinks behind the Sweet Gum. I'm thinking that's where my herb bed will go, for the most part. I'm also in love with purple Muhly grass at the moment, so I'll have to plop one of those in the ground there, too.
I have two barren, piece-of-crap peach trees on the other side of the property. I have tried everything, including begging, to get them to bear fruit. I had them professionally serviced and the man guaranteed me fruit the next season. Oh, I got fruit, all right-- if one could call it that. I got 5 peach pits covered in green fuzz for a few weeks, and then they all dropped to the ground. Fine, I don't care, I give up... plus... I kind of want a circle drive on that side of the house. Nothing fancy, mind you, like the cobbled paver driveway I had priced out at $10,000 (OMG), just another grass and dirt driveway which is prevalent in my neighborhood. We have a sidewalk on that edge with two driveway entrances, so it is perfect for a circle drive! It will save Logan a lot of mowing. So the barren, POS peach trees shall also be chopped down and I think I'll use the branches to edge my new flower beds in the front. I have a story about those peach trees.... I was out on a walk with my neighbor-friend one day and we ran into somebody she introduced as our neighbor from further down the street (she couldn't remember her name!). I reached out my hand and said quite cordially (IMHO), "Hello, I'm Missy." She took my fingertips (I HATE THAT) and said not her name, but this: "Oh, you live on THAT side of Denise. I eat the peaches off your trees every year." I countered her fingertip grab with a snotty remark something to the effect of "those trees haven't produced an edible peach in the 10 years I've lived there." She had the guts to argue with me about my own freaking peach trees. Finally I grabbed Denise's elbow and said that we needed to keep up our pace, and moved away from the horrid woman, who will probably continue to indulge in ghost peaches from my soon-to-be ghost peach trees.
Here's a picture I took in the evening of the space I'm talking about. There are massive roots off picture right, at the far edge opposite, and then there are two shoots angled straight for the corner of the house and another straight at me. The large, dark green mass at the edge of the yard is the Sweet Viburnum, and the 4 o'clocks are just below. You can also barely make out the area where I tried out some house paint colors.
And here's my lovely drawing. The more time I spend in the yard, the more I realize my drawing doesn't help me at all due to its terribleness.
I have so many ideas! But so little time to think and shop and work on them. Did I mention that I have two beautiful Appaloosas who call me Mom? Yeah, I spend a LOT of time with them, too. Oh, and I have a full-time job that oftentimes requires extra time spent working at home, like right now when I should be preparing a talk I'm giving over Skype to a university in Canada next week.... Oh boy. And the rain, oh, the rain.
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