"How My Garden Grows..."

Now that we have reached the present, allow me to tell you what has been happening in my Garden these past few months. It has become home to rabbits of all sizes, a few squirrels, a pair of groundhogs, a big fat chipmunk, and many varieties of birds, including a bluejay and a pair of cardinals. I now have four birdfeeders, which always seem to be in need of refilling. I buy bird seed in 25 pound buckets. I also put in a small bird bath which the birds seem to enjoy. Watching over my Garden is Francis of Assisi, the patron saint of animals.

Occasionally I put out an ear or two of corn, or a handful of nuts, for the squirrels. The rabbits take care of themselves, with a liking for my flowers. I really wish they wouldn't eat them though. Perhaps I need to plant a little patch of clover for them. The ground hogs take care of themselves, too. They rarely venture out in the daylight so I don't see them very often. They are quick to run for cover when I do happen to enter the Garden. I believe it is a rare privilege to have a mating pair of these timid creatures making their home in my Garden. The chipmunk is a secretive little fellow. I only get occasional glimpses of him.

A recent inhabitant in my Garden is a field mouse. I saw him quite by accident one day as he was poking his head out of the wood pile. I do hope he stays alert and exercises care when he ventures out, because there are several cats which roam the neighborhood at night.

But to get back to my story. I ended last season having added fill to the low areas of my Garden and smoothing out the grade a bit. This past spring I had a load of topsoil delivered. I spent several weekends spreading it out. I used some of the topsoil to create a raised bed where a weed-choked bed of irises had been before. I had hoped to salvage the irises but the rhizomes were so chewed up by grubs and so entangled in the roots of the weeds that they weren't worth saving anymore. So I decided to rebuild the bed from scratch. I decided to make it a raised bed which is easier to care for. The overall effect is rather pleasing. The 4x6 landscape timbers set it apart from the rest of the area. The intention is to plant crocus, tulips, hyacinth, iris, daylilies, and other bulbs in this bed. It will hopefully be in bloom from early spring (crocuses and tulips) to late summer (irises and daylilies). I will fill in the open spaces with annuals.

I added some topsoil around my firepit and seeded it with grass seed, making it a much nicer area in which to sit and relax. By the way, the firepit was one of the first improvements that I made to my Garden.

The remainder of the topsoil was used to cover the filled area. I seeded part of it with grass seed, leaving a strip along the edge of the dropoff which I seeded with a variety of flower seeds that I had accumulated over the years but had never got around to planting. The idea was to create a prairie effect.

The overall concept of my Garden is to create "rooms" in the style of the formal English gardens without the formality and sans the dividing hedges. My intention is for visitors to my Garden to be able to move freely from one room to the next without major obstacles. The main portion of the Garden is approximately 150 feet long and between 25 and 30 feet wide.

Follow me as we take a virtual tour through my Garden. We will enter the Garden at the southernmost, or street, end. As we enter we pass the front of my house which is complimented by a sea of color and textures. This is the Cottage Garden. In it you will find many old standards such as pansies, petunias, geraniums, peonies, mums, moss roses, bleeding hearts, plus many more. This "room" is intended to impart a nostalgic feeling in those who view it, bringing back memories of the flowers gardens their grandmothers had.

Let us now enter the Rose Garden. Here you will find roses of many varieties, sizes, and colors - including wild roses, climbers, old garden roses, rugosas, hybrid teas, ramblers, floribundas, and grandifloras. Breathe deeply of the rich, heady scents. Revel in the beauty of the blossoms, and take delight in the wide variety of colors. This room is meant to create a visual impact of Nature's astonishing beauty. This "room" is the most visible part of my Garden. It can be seen from all directions, including from across the railroad tracks, where a large office building stands. Hopefully the people who work there will look out of their windows from time to time and enjoy the beauty of my roses. Maybe it will even brighten up their day a bit.

Follow me now as we enter the Apple Orchard. Here we have several venerable old apples trees that have survived the ravages of time and a sometimes harsh environment. These trees have stood there as the old steam locomotives passed by, pulling long strings of cars laden with all sorts of freight. They stood regally as the last car, the caboose, passed by. They witnessed the transition from steam locomotives to the modern diesel locomotives. They were there as the trains grew shorter and less frequent. They stood sentinel as the caboose passed into history. These old trees have seen much, and if you listen carefully, you can hear them whisper their stories to you. Sit down on one of the benches, rest for a while. Enjoy the sunshine. Relax and let the world pass you by for a few moments.

As we proceed onward, we enter what I refer to as the Sanctuary. This "room" has been designed with the birds and other small Garden Friends in mind. You will note the bird feeders, bird bathes, bird houses, and the brush piles here. Even the flowers and shrubbery are intended for the enjoyment of the birds and butterflies. In spring the bushes burst forth in fragrant blossom. As the seasons progress they bear fruit for the birds to feast upon. At the very edge of this area you will note a narrow strip of flowers. This is my Wildflower Prairie. Its primary intent is to attract flutterbies and hummingbirds. Unfortunately, as long as we are present here we won't see much of our little Friends. They are best observed from a distance. So let us move on.

As we pass the wood piles we enter the Fire Pit area. Here is where my Garden Friends can gather on a warm, starry night and sit and relax around a crackling fire. Here is where one can seek friendship, good times, and spiritual renewal. It is a secluded area, hidden from prying eyes by wood piles on two sides, a fir tree and several lilac bushes to the east, and a wooded space to the north. Also on the eastern side is my Workshop. Here is where stories and tales are told, ideas are exchanged, conversations can be had, or quiet reflection while watching the flames if that is what you seek. It is a peaceful, private place. The fire pit was one of the first features that I added to my Garden when I first moved in. I first learned the secrets of the Fire Pit several years ago when I had the opportunity to share a friend's cabin in the Northwoods. We spent many nights around the Fire Pit at the cabin. Sometimes we talked, other times we just sat around and watched the fire. It was a most peaceful and relaxing experience, a time that I needed to sort out things for myself. So I knew that when I moved into my Garden, a Fire Pit was a necessity. An added bonus in this area is the beautiful hawthorn tree which serves as the visual centerpiece for this area. The only things that I really miss as I sit around the Fire Pit are the songs of the whipporwills and the call of the coyotes.

Between the Fire Pit area and the northern boundary of my Garden is an area that I have designated as the work area. Here is where I do most of my wood cutting. There is not much to say about this area. It is what it is. However, there is a small honey locust sapling that is struggling to grow here. I try to nurture it along as best I can. Hopefully someday the tree and I will be successful and it will become a wonderful addition to my Garden. This is also the area that I am using as a nursery for some white fir seedlings that I bought. Once they get a little bigger I will move them to other parts of my Garden.

Another addition I intend to make is the addition of some sumac trees. I know where I want to put them, in the Sanctuary room between the big brush pile and the woodpiles. I just haven't purchased them yet. I developed an appreciation for the all-season beauty of the sumac when I was growing up. As a young lad I used to spend several weeks each summer on my grandfather's farm. There was a splendid, venerable old sumac tree growing in front of the farm house. I loved to watch as it changed appearance from season to season. Now that I have a Garden of my own, I intend to recapture some of the memories of those days long ago. The spot where I intend to plant them is directly in line with a window in my den where I have my puter set up. I will be able to enjoy and appreciate their beauty as I sit by my puter.

But I digress. Back to the tour. The northern boundary of my Garden is a wooded area that I started cleaning up this past summer. It was strewn with garbage and the debris of yard work done by my neighbors, all of which was overgrown with burdocks and other undesirable growth, including the nefarious Virginia creeper. It looks better without the trash but it still needs more work. My intention is to turn it into a more park-like setting which in turn will be more visually pleasing.

There is one "room" yet that we haven't visited. Let us backtrack a bit past "Old Blue", my 1970 Ford pickup parked next to the Workshop. We now enter what I call the Lilac Room. The reason for this is readily obvious. There are eight lilac bushes growing in the area which is sandwiched between my Workshop and my house. There is a cluster of four, with which I have been experimenting with a "sculptured" look. I prune away the new growth from the lower trunks and shape the upper area into a more rounded appearance. The results are rather pleasing. These are the lilacs that separate this "room" from the Fire Pit area. The focal point of the Lilac Room is an old lilac tree that grows about twelve feet from the house. It is an ancient tree, with a gnarled and twisted trunk. It stands a good twenty feet tall. I can only guess at its age. It has been growing here for as long as the house has been here, and the house is over 100 years old. I do very little to this venerable old Grandfather except to prune away new growth from around the base of the trunk.

There are several other features in this "room" that deserve mentioning. One of them is another venerable old tree known as a Trumpet Vine. This gnarled old relic had been growing on the fence line, intertwined in the mesh of the fencing material. When I removed the old fence it was necessary to cut away parts of this old tree. It had suffered from many years of neglect. There was a lot of dead, decaying wood and some winter damage as well. So I cleaned all of that away and what remained has not only survived, but has thrived. I can attest to that because the Trumpet Vine reproduces by sending out underground shoots. I am constantly pruning away these shoots as they pop up in places where I don't want them, such as in my flower beds. It can be quite invasive. Every time I cut the lawn I'm chopping off shoots that grow in the lawn, some as far as fifteen feet away.

Another feature of this area is the raised bed that I created where an old bed of irises had been. Again, this bed had been neglected for many years and had become choked with all sorts of undesirable plants. I had originally intended to dig everything up, remove the tangle of weeds, and then replant the irises. But as I started digging I discovered that the root system of the irises was all chewed up and rotting from grubs. So it became necessary to remove everything and start over. I added some 6x6 landscape timbers around the perimeter and then backfilled the area. I left the bed mostly unplanted through the summer, using a corner of it to plant the overflow from the bedding plants I had used in other areas. I planted purple petunias and red and pink geraniums in here. It provided a nice splash of color throughout the summer until the first killing frost. I planted a variety of spring-flowering bulbs in this bed this fall and hopefully will have an abundance of color come spring. I planted tulips (of which I only had two in the entire Garden before), crocuses (one of my favorite spring flowers), daffodils, and a few other varieties of bulbs. This raised bed is an ongoing project. I will continue to add new bulbs of different species and also a wider range of colors, as I find them. I also intend the replace the irises that I lost. Hopefully I will be able to make this a bulb bed that has color in it from early spring until late fall. Between this raised bed and the Workshop is a row of peonies(another species with childhood memories). Eventually I plan to move these to the Cottage Garden. At the eastern end of the raised bed is a cluster of rose bushes. They also need to be dug up and cleaned out, and then replanted. But that is another project for another time. A few feet away from these roses is a beautiful climbimg rose. I had to replace the old trellis with a new one and now I get great pleasure from training it to climb only on the trellis and enjoying the abundance of fragrant flowers that it produces.

The final outstanding feature of this area is the old apple tree trunk. I am hesitant to remove this old tree because I believe it contains the spirit of my Life Mate's grandmother. She was the previous occupant of this Garden, and that old apple tree was her pride and joy, as well as her nemesis. Grandma always complained about the falling apples and kept it pruned back severely, but she would never have considered cutting it down. When Grandma passed away the apple tree died too. So it stands as a sort of memorial to Grandma.

And so concludes the virtual tour of my Garden. I hope you enjoyed your visit, and I hope you come back often to share it with me again and again. Remember, a Garden is a place that is constantly evolving.

Just a short note before you leave. Parts of what you have just read are real time and part of it is based on my plans and dreams. But perhaps that is the charm of my Garden. You never know what you will find when you visit.

NormGnome's Garden

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