Thursday, February 19, 2009

From Lemons Come Lemonade











From Lemons Come Lemonade-nothing can ring more true than the birth of Hydrangea Row. It is a small gardenscape on the east side of our house that borders our neighbors. It used to be half-dead hedge, which my husband hacked out and planted lush, green grass. It made a lovely little path around the side of our house & we planted some old fashioned perennials up against the house. We bordered the garden with landscape timbers. Our two kittens used to love to walk on them like a balance beam.

I was moving craft supplies around the basement and notice a nasty-looking brown liquid seeping from the foundation. It had not been raining recently and there was no snow-melt. A quick phone call to the plumber solved the mystery of the brown gunk-it was a crack in the sewer pipe-which turned out to be the original terra cotta pipe of indeterminate age. They arrived the next day with a Bobcat and proceed to dig up my lovely yard and garden. It is February, but the temps were above freezing so I dug out all my plants to relocate after the plumbers were through.

My lush green “carpet” is now nothing but mud. But when life gives you lemons…as the saying goes. I called my friend who had just moved into her grandmother’s house. Her husband had just dug up & thrown out all the hydrangeas her grandmother had planted because they were all highly allergic to poison ivy and it tended to co-habit with the hydrangeas. They were all laying, bare-root, in a pile waiting for trash day. I lugged them all home-and the rest is history!




Day Dreaming of Spring










It is cold & blustery-(as Winnie the Pooh would say) here today. It in turn has been sunny, snowy & even hailed! I am day dreaming about Spring & how I will plant my garden this year. Last year my color scheme was coral & apple green. Sweet Potato Vine has become a favorite of mine-especially that shocking apple green color. I also like all the variations of Coleus on the market. I have found some interesting begonias as well. They are more exotic & tropical looking that your average wax variety. I also like to use Patio Fuchsia. As we have lots of shade its temperament is perfect for us. Here is a sampling of my garden in the past. Remember it started out as a tangle of ivy.