The front part of my house gets no sunlight in the summer. I have a pretty large tree in the front yard, such as it is, and another tree right next to it. And because I don’t really have a house but rather a condo, I therefore don’t really have a yard so much as I look out on the common areas of the property.
Don’t get me wrong, the condo property is beautiful, the trees tall and gorgeous, especially during the Fall, and I don’t miss mowing the lawn or shoveling the walk. But I can’t do much about the trees.
Because of said trees, I have a helluva a time getting anything to grow in the small patch of land I do own, which is the garden in front of the house. I plant flowers and bushes that are partial or all shade, but sometimes they last and sometimes they don’t, and then the winter comes and the snow and ice tumble off the roof and crush anything that had only the slimmest hope of survival. It gets so bad that my wife jokingly refers to it as the “Addams Family patch.”
All this said, about every five years or so I have to yank everything out and start all over again. So part of what I did over Memorial Day weekend was tear up the front garden, till all the soil, and replant just about everything. The only things I left were two hastas (cause nothing seems to kill them and my daughter begged me to keep them) and a few day lilies (which I love to see bloom for literally the one day per year they do so). Which means the garden went from this:
to this:
PS – Every single rock you see lining the garden came out of the garden throughout all the times I’ve tilled the soil. It wasn’t until I started tearing up the garden the first time ten or so years ago that I understood all of the farmer walls in New England. Honestly, how did anybody grow anything here when they first settled?
Scott C Lyerly 