My back yard

When I was in my 20s, my boyfriend and I moved from one house to another at least once a year. There was always a reason — a job change, our rental being sold, or we’d spotted something we liked better. The decision to move usually seemed to be made right after I’d just planted a bunch of daffodil bulbs, bareroot rosebushes, a vegetable garden or something else that wouldn’t pay off until we were gone.

I remember always thinking that one thing I wanted out of life was to have 10 years in the same garden, so I would have time to make it perfect and see the results of my efforts.

Hah! I’ve lived in this house for 24 years, and one thing I understand now that I didn’t then is that a garden is NEVER finished, never perfect. I felt like it was almost complete in 2003, when the photo at the top was taken. I’d quit working full time the previous year and worked obsessively for a full year to make it ready to be included in a local garden tour.

[nggallery id=5]Click a photo to start the slide show of garden photos from 2003

 

After the tour, I was completely burned out and did practically nothing to maintain or improve it for at least a year.

What a mess! But that year of doing nothing and watching the results probably taught me more about gardening than anything I’ve ever done. I saw what thrived (weeds, weeds, weeds) and what didn’t do well without a lot of fussing. Those gaps in the flagstones turned out to be the perfect environment for weeds, and an invitation to spend my summers on my knees on the rocks (weeding, weeding, weeding). The cottage garden in the front of the house with all the disease-prone roses and (spreading) grasses looked like crap without daily grooming, weeding and deadheading.

Much has changed in my garden since then, although much remains the same. I’ve established a few rules for myself, although I’m often not very good at obeying my own rules.

Tomorrow, “My Gardening Rules…”