I'm doing 36 things
I’ve lived in this 12-unit vintage 1930 apartment building for three years now. I absolutely adore my apartment. It’s perfect in almost every way, and I don’t anticipate moving any time soon. But the tiny back yard was so plain and barren and neglected that for three years now looking at it has just made me sad. My dining room windows looked out it, and that made me sad too. The yard was plain grass, one slowly dying small flowering tree, a scattering of overgrown forty-year-old hostas, and three empty flower beds that were nothing but dirt, weeds, and rocks. Oh yeah, and in lieu of actual flowers, there was also a bizarre collection of assorted concrete garden ornaments: an owl, a raccoon, a giant mushroom (same size as the raccoon), a huge ugly gray gnome, and some other odds and ends I don’t remember.
Then when the new landlady moved in two years ago, she said that she planned on doing some landscaping back there, and I cheered. It’s such a small, 3/4 nclosed space, I kept thinking that just a little bit of effort, a couple of gracefully placed plants here and there, and the whole yard could be transformed from sad to charming. The new landlady pulled out the statuary and planted some ground cover, but then she stopped. The building needed a new roof, then there was something wrong with the heating system, etc., etc….. Understandably, gardening kept getting pushed kind of down towards the bottom of the her list of priorities.
Well, after three years of just griping about it to my friends, this summer for some reason I found that I just couldn’t stand it any more. I have never done any gardening in my life. I haven’t the remotest clue how one goes about it. But I just plowed right ahead and I asked the landlady if she minded if I did a bit of gardening in the back yard at my own expense. What, she was going to turn down free landscaping? Of course, she said “go fo it!”
So, I’ve been going for it. I’ve been at it for about three weeks now, and this is what I’ve done so far:
A friend had some pavers she was giving away, and I put them in a circle around the little tree. Then I planted two flats of impatiens, a salmon-colored outer ring and a deeper red inner ring, around the tree. I weeded the larger of the three flower beds, got some shepherd’s crooks and hung some baskets of petunias, lobelias, and other stuff I don’t even know the names of (instant garden!) Then I planted some pansies (in the middle of June!) because I didn’t realized they are early spring flowers. Everybody told me as soon as I had them in the ground. Oh well. Too late. This is how we learn, isn’t it? I put up a little bird bath, but the birds don’t seem to have discovered it yet. I got some ferns, but I haven’t planted them yet. I’ll have to dig huge holes for them, so I want to make sure they’re in the right place and the soil is properly prepared before I invest the effort. They were expensive! Two little bitty ferns, and they were $15 each! But the yard is on the north side of the three and a half story bullding, so most of it is in the shade, and what I’ve had in mind all along is a kind of woodland shade garden thing. The smallest flower bad is also the shadiest and, at the moment, the most barren (95% bare dirt), and I keep seeing a luxurious clump of ferns there. But I found out that ferns are very particular about the Ph of the soil, so I have to do my research to match up the right kind of fern with the soil that we have. You can’t really tinker with it too much, because your water will tend to make it revert to what it was originally. At least, that’s what I read. I want to use some native plants, too, like meadow rue and solomon’s seal. But so far I’m having a really tough time finding them locally.
Well, I have lots of plans and visions for this space. It’s going to be my gift to the building and to my fellow tenants. I’m really excited about what I’ve done so far. One thing is for sure, looking at the back yard doesn’t make me sad any more.
