It's Finally Time to Garden

My Fantasy Garden 2011

I’d like to take a moment to remind all my maniac master gardener friends who feel June 20^th might as well be as late as November for taking the first trip to the garden center or placing the first flower in the ground: While all of you were busy in early May picking the perfect geraniums or splitting your hostas, I was busy waging an all-encompassing war to take my lawn back from the offending armies of dandelions, clover and sticker weeds.

And in great news, after one chemical bomb application of weed eliminator by the Dandelion Slayer, and Jim and I following the maintenance plan to the letter, our lawn is almost completely without the offending weeds, freeing me to move on to the more enjoyable task of shopping for colorful outdoor embellishments.

As July 4^th marks the seventh anniversary in our Plainfield house, Jim and I spent the first two summers un-landscaping the house, pulling out beautiful yet dangerous rose bushes, over planted flower beds and shrubs that were more brown and dead than lush and alive, and generally ugly perennials that had outlived their beauty.

With every summer we ‘completed’ one side of the house, planting hundreds of tiny perennials and re-establishing flowerbeds that were all well researched to benefit from the varying pools of sunlight and shade around our home that faces east/west on a pie shape cul-de-sac lot.

Oh, and let’s not forget the mulch, the bags and bags of chunky cedar chips. I hate the colors, shapes and SMELL of standard mulch, never liked lava rocks or quartz stone, and one summer I fell in love with cedar chips when I saw how beautiful it looked (and smelled!) in an East coast bed-and-breakfast perennial garden.

So after the slight time delay of the dandelion slaughter, Jim and I are ready to finally finish the fourth side of the house. As I have a horrible habit of losing spatial perspective the moment I walk into a garden center, prior to ever picking up my car keys I pick up a tape measure and sketch-out an almost scale drawing of the area I’m working on.

For some reason the former owner stopped the house-flanking flowerbed ten feet from the end of the deck on this side (?), so I will be spending some time digging out grass and completing the flower strip. In lighter news (pun intended), as this is the side of the house that bakes from sunup to sundown, I’ll have an almost unlimited selection of perennials to choose from and fill the space.

As the weather does not look too promising in the days’ ahead, I may spend my time outside in short bursts, trimming tree branches and shrubs and digging out the single shrub we lost to last winter’s piles of salty snow.

Regardless, I know the next two weeks will be busy, both inside and out, as we prep for our family’s annual 4^th of July party when we celebrate Jordan and Jim’s birthdays (as I have always believed, if you really want motivation to finish honey-do items around the house, throw a party).

And while I logically know I won’t have time to strip and paint our pathetically peeling backyard deck prior to the party, I’ll instead try to steer everyone’s eyes upward with a series of hanging baskets, party lights and fireworks, complemented with VERY small pools of light provided by citronella candles and torches.

Who wants to see everyone else’s feet, anyway?