After a bit of research and recalling several happy memories, I have decided to plant a garden! Or rather, reclaim several of our gardens. Today when Mom got home I asked her for my "bit of earth," to evoke the Mary Lennox image, and she agreed to help me plan! There are many obstacles to our plan and process, but thanks to work my mother has done over the years, I am fairly certain that we'll be okay.
Allow me to tell this in story form (because my two year olds at Sunday School just don't appreciate storytelling yet):
Once upon a time, there was a little girl named Kate. She loved looking at plants -- flowers especially -- and had wonderful experiences getting pansies from the local market and planting them with her mother.
But then one day Kate's family moved just a few miles to the south, less than five, but even at that short distance everything changed.
Kate's mother and father labored to make the garden beautiful, but the land worked against them. The men who built the house had buried extra concrete in the yard, forcing Kate's father to dig deep holes throughout the front and back yards. The house was at the bottom of a small hill, and the first time it rained, water rushed in through the front door. Bulldozers had to be brought in to change the level of the ground, and still water pooled near the door. Worst of all, the soil was nothing but red clay and bedrock. Kate watched as her mother and father chiseled through the earth with their shovels and barely made headway. Kate even tried to help by jumping on a shovel, too, but she didn't weigh enough to drive the shovel into the clay-filled ground.
Kate's parents struggled to make the yards beautiful. They staked trees and dug deep trenches by the house, replacing the clay with good soil. They bought books and went to seminars. They tested soils and finally brought the garden to something they could enjoy until they could really landscape it. The whole family often spent whole days in the yard, spreading fertilizer and planting flowers, weeding and edging and mowing. They were happy days of not knowing what was contained in fertilizer until after her little brother played in it, of picking out what they wanted to grow that year.
And then things began to change.
The garden went into disrepair because no one could tend it any longer. Kate's mother could no longer shovel for long periods of time, nor could she be in the sun. Kate went to college and missed prime planting time for the spring. Other things came into priority over making the yard beautiful. It saddened Kate, remembering happy times in the garden, planting and getting splinters from woodmulch, and the excitement of planning and arranging plants.
So when Kate came back home, she developed a plan: SHE would bring the garden out of its slumber. She had experience enough and her mother had knowledge. She and her mother planned a large shrub that would block the light from coming through the window on her mother's side of the living room so she could join the family downstairs at other times than night. She would plant herbs or berries by the water spigot and make a cutting garden in front of the dining room window. Along with that, she would clean up existing plants and garden areas so that her front yard once again was a paradise that would encourage her to venture outside with a book.
And to combat the harsh growing conditions of her Zone 8 Texas Climate, she would plant all hardy, native plants. This would save water and keep her extra work to a minimum. All organic materials would be used. No chemically treated fertilizer (as she read that it actually inhibits plant growth along with causing runoff pollution), no pesticides (she would do her best to use companion gardening and invite good insects to combat the bad ones), no growth syrum, and she would use her compost pile for topsoil.
Kate decided as well to invite her blogging friends along with her on her journey, especially those with experiences gardening in Texas (a hostile environment for many a garden!).
To Be Continued!
So the plan so far is:
Cutting Garden:
Dwarf Dahlias, Zinnias (I'm not sure what species yet), Coneflowers, and Cosmos, along with the irises that already live in the garden, but will be transplanted (some of these are antique bulbs...apparently you can't get the bulbs that yeild peach colored irises anymore).
Shrub:
I'm thinking about forsythia. Does anyone in the South have experience with these in the middle of our ridiculous summers? Do they really turn in the fall or is that only up north? I'm also thinking about Texas Sage, which is pretty and attracts butterflies.
Herb/Berry garden:
Berries like Texas heat, but we don't want to deal with animals stuck in thorns. So we may grow strawberries or blueberries. I want to grow comfrey, coriander, and fennel as well, but I will have to do some more research in companion gardening as fennel tends to not like certain neighbors. I'd also like to grow some peppers since I seemed to buy them all the time over the summer. Basil does well here (and I know from experience it does well in our garden), and rosemary can take over anything.
We also have a tiny triangle of land next to our driveway that holds a tiny crepe myrtle tree that needs to be hedged in so it stops scraping cars, and the trash scrub needs to be taken out of the soil there. We may plant small flowers there, too (which would recieve absolute full sun all day).
I will keep you updated, post pictures frequently, and try to talk of nothing else (how's that for sticking to a theme????).
Talk to you soon!
