The Garden Jones

I love owning my own home - even with all of the issues of fixing this and replacing that and plumbers and contractors and electricians (ok, headache now) - but it's this time of year, for the last two years that my heart breaks and yearns for my old house. It was a 3 flat that my former in-laws owned. Even after my divorce from Ex, I lived there (for a disguting pittance of a rent, really nice). The yard and garden were MINE. I had total control. When I was going through my phase of really hating my marriage and pondering the divorce, I relandscaped the entire garden - nothing fancy schmancy, but I did it and it was beautiful. I had a grand design in mind that would require years of care and patience and love, but it was MINE. I started under the lilac bushes (grown into trees) with, what I lovingly deemed Daffodil Hill. A friend of mine owned a gardening business and so I ordered all of my bulbs through her. I loaded this mound of dirt with several varieties of daffs, knowing that they would be fruitful and multiply over the years. I wonder what it looks like now.... I can just imagine...I don't remember all the names, but yellow on yellow daffs, white with pink daffs, white on white with frilly fringe daffs..never particularly fond of orange on yellow, but that was just me...OH I'm jonesin'!

To the right of Daffodil Hill, I had a rose arbor on which I was growing clematis. I know I thought about starting a climbing rose on the other side, but I don't recall getting around to it. ANYWAY, I had a little walkway through it along which I had teeny tiny little species tulips. If you're not familiar, they look kind of like pointy crocuses. Itty bitty little tulips. The images in the picture above are mayyyyyyybe 6 in. high. Most of the ones I had were this color, but I had some that were a fuschia with a purple stripe (where the red is in this picture). They were so dainty and petite. I had planted some in the front yard, too, around my tree, and as a border in my front garden. The downside was that with their size, they tended to get trampled - but they were really pretty while they lasted.

My pride, was my roses. I only had a few bushes and one or two climbers, but I LOVED them. They never failed me and did not require the gazillion hours of upkeep and maintenance that I hear people talk about. I fed them, but not traditional rose food...oh, sure, every once in a while I would spoil them with some miracle grow but mainly, a big ol' bulb of garlic planted at the base at the beginning of every season and then, again, about half way through the season. It kept the bugs away, it kept my roses happy. OH...and I fed them banana peels. LORD did they love banana peels...maybe that's why LargeBoy has such a distaste for them, because I made him eat so many so I could have the peels! LOL My roses made me happy, gave me a sense of calm and serenity. Taking care of them, watching new buds spring up, pruning them....I loved them so!

TULIPS!!!! Wherever I could place them I planted. I have a special place in my heart for tulips. They ARE spring. They are new life. They are sunshine. They are happiness (good grief, I'm starting to sound like a cheezy 70's song). I could never have enough tulips and I never really got to the ones I wanted. I had, in the front of my house, 30 or so tall pure white tulips with the pretty fringe edges - not the parrot kind, nothing gaudy , either, but a pretty fringe. I had planted these on - get this - New Year's Day (keep in mind I live in Chicago). They were phenomenal. It was a beautiful little pond of white and green. Someone on my block had taken a picture of them and had given it to me. It now sits in a frame in my living room over my piano (a true place of honor). I had a great many tulips, but only the basic ones. My grand scheme was to build my garden with early to late blooming tulips, short to tall and sleek and, ultimately, to get some of the gorgeous, elegant, black tulips and the deep deep purple ones. Never got there, though.

I have a garden that I "developed" at my new house. I dug up the ground,killed the grass around the area, dug up the walking path. I transplanted what I could from my old place, including my rose arbor. Sadly, roses don't transplant well, so I had to leave them behind. My friend transplanted some things from her garden as she readied her house to put on the market - she brought me some GORGEOUS daylillies, some bearded irises, and a few other goodies. I've got my stepping stones in place, I've got clematis, I'm grooming a new climbing rose, planted some baby narcissus....but it's not the same. My garden cannot thrive. The soil is different because of our location (in the same neighborhood that was home to a petroleum plant many decades ago), PLUS, my spigot doesn't work. No, not a simple fix either (why would it be). When I moved into my house, it was on the coldest day of the year - I believe it was a record low. The underside of my house, above which is the kitchen, is not insulated (long story for another blog), so the pipes froze. The rest of my house recovered without doing much more than requiring a warm up, leaving the water drip overnight, etc....the pipe to the spigot wasn't as lucky. It broke. This leaves me to have to water the entire garden using the old fashioned fire line system...empty milk gallons, pails, water buckets, etc....not easy to do when you have minimal time.

I miss my old garden because of all of the hours of work and love I put into it. It was HUGE with lots of room to grow. I know that this one will, someday, show that love also, but I find myself kind of heartsick for that one. I have a hydrangea that I need to plant, I'd really like to put in some more perennials, but I have no way to water regularly....need to replant my grass too...HAH! Can't run a sprinkler! I pray that some of you out there have some suggestions??????????