Friday, March 07, 2008

You got to have a dream.
If you don't have a dream,
How you gonna have a dream come true?

Bloody Mary in South Pacific


The first house Dave and I bought back in 1982 was at the edge of abandoned railroad property. Nothing was behind us but a field and woods. Pretty trashy rocky woods. But to me it was an undeveloped garden. I had plans for this land, even though it wasn't mine.



We rented a tiller and dug up a long rectangle and put in fruit trees, and veggies and produced a lot of cucumbers, zucchini, tomatoes and green beans, as I recall.
Way too many cucumbers. . .


even though we had cucumber wilt and various other pests, I ended up burying 83 cucumbers.
I won't even mention the zucchini. Don't leave your car unlocked in August if you live near me.
I deposited grocery bags full of ripe tomatoes at the back door of our favorite Mexican restaurant, anonymously, several times that summer. Abundance was an understatement.


Then in the winter the damn rabbits ate the bark off our fruit trees, killing them. We learned too late to protect the saplings with plastic sleeves.


And then the drought hit. Three summers in a row. The buds on the flowers never opened.

I can recall the last day it almost rained. Mother's Day, May 11.

The gardening ended, I got a job and in 1989 we sold our house and moved to Cary.
The Cary house had no flowers, no garden and lots of grass. It stayed that way for a few years as I put my energies into business. But can a house be a home without a garden?


Little by little I found spaces to put in plants and in a few years had decided that raised beds were the thing and had those built and filled and blooming, mostly while I was out of town. But then I read that treated lumber is filled with arsenic or something equally as deadly so no more veggies in those beds. Boohoo. A potted patio tomato is not the same, so I put just one plant in the ground and took off for my next trip.
As my business got more and more demanding, I had less time to garden and when I came back from a trip, my tomatoes were drooping from underwatering or even worse, toppled over into the mud, rotting on the vine.
It was the business vs. garden and the business won.


Then Dave retired.
Aha! Someone who was also interested in a nice looking yard...things looked up. He landscaped, and mowed, and mulched and weeded. He sat in the shade by the garden. He basked in the fragrance of the lilies. I had a partner. So wonderful.
And then we gazed over our completed garden and put the house up for sale.

Which brings us to today. At five am I woke up, turned on the computer and ordered more plants. I have a dream.

8 comments:

  1. And here I sit waiting on more snow...drat. I love watching your garden dreams evolve! Someday when I retire I hope to get a good deal of landscaping going on here. Right now every vegetable and flower bed we plant turns into the Bunny deli. They are such devious little critters!

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  2. Anonymous5:35 PM

    2nd try,
    I was saying such a lovely 'life of gardening story', but that I'd have trapped the damn rabbits and filled my freezer with rabbit meat!

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  3. I would think that Tennessee should have a wonderfully wide range of plants that call it home. I can't wait to see what you do with all that water and space with the woods as the backdrop. Yay, gardening!

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  4. There is a time for everything in everyones life, now is the time for you and your garden, enjoy.

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  5. Anonymous8:45 AM

    Girl after my own heart! I had a postage stamp-sized lot in Calif., but grew flowers like nobody's biz! Now we are on 2.5 acres, but can't grow much a/c high winds... I will enjoy gardening vicariously thru your posts!

    Judy

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  6. Wish I wasn't so allergic to everything out in the garden. Mine is filled with perennials that bloom.

    Yours is going to be beautiful!

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  7. I am looking out my bay window at the 6 inches of snow that cover where I would like a beautiful garden in my backyard. Wait--- here comes my 4 deer friends that come to visit everyday. I have rabbits in the spring but we have a family of hawks every year that take care of that problem. I have a glorious population of squirrels that take care of my tomatoes. So animals or veggies and flowers?? I will try again this year to live in harmony with all. Good luck with your garden. I will be watching.
    Bren

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  8. Anonymous2:36 PM

    Well, the bunnies have eaten all the trees I planted last fall except the ginko. I have LOTS of flowers- most of which bloom after I leave for Nova Scotia (except the tulips which I love). My flower beds in Nova Scotia (same planting zone- 4 but with salt spray from the ocean) are virtually empty so my goal for this summer is to get them filled to over-flowing with perennials.

    Thankfully there are plenty of "truck farmers" in the Valley (Annapolis Valley) who come to our area daily to sell their produce, most of which is organic.

    Yep, I'm ready for spring.

    teri

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