Weeds (Not the Kind on Showtime)
It was perfect timing, in some ways. In May of’06, the backyard looked like crap, and there’s no mystery as to the reason: We took possession of the house on the same freakin' day that M started law school in 2003. We hustled over the course of about ten days to get the interior into presentable shape (Mom, Phil, Steve, Ron, Aaron and Jill will recall hours upon hours of painting), but once school got going, we didn’t have tons of time to devote to the backyard.
You can’t tell the extent of the crappiness from this photo, but dang, the backyard was pretty bad: random elevated concrete pad by the backdoor, chain-link fence all the way around, a big-ol’ clothesline kinda thingy, and as I mention above, lots and lots of weeds encircling the whole shebang.It started out bad enough (the house had been sitting empty for four months when we moved in), but over a few years, the boring expanse of unleveled grass that was the yard become absolutely surrounded a border of gargantuan weeds. Ugh, I feel bad for our neighbors at the time!
Gardening as Therapy
As you may know, 2006 was also the year my job became so stressful for me that I quit in September without having another job lined up. (It’s all worked out really well, by the way, but the summer leading up to that decision was hellacious.) At some point when we were putting in those four tomato plants in May, something clicked for me. This activity had that same relaxing/energizing yin-yang quality that I’d found in dance class. Plus, it included all those things that your mother always advocated when you were a kid wanting to hang out inside and watch cartoons. You know: fresh air, sunshine, yadda yadda. It felt great.
Between loving the therapy of dirt between my fingers and the fact that the yard needed all this work, I was thrilled to throw myself into it. I had no clue what I was doing, but I dug up lots of sod (with Mason’s help), stuck stuff in the ground, asked a ton of questions at the nursery, and learned by reading and doing. In addition to making lots of mistakes, I also encountered some wonderful surprises:
- The Edins, who lived in the house for about 50 years before we bought it from their estate, had planted a number of things that hung in there despite our neglect of the yard, including two beautiful and well-established peony bushes that have probably been there for decades.
- There was no denying the eyesore of the chain-link fence, so some of my earliest purchases were perennial vines, like parthenocissus quinquefolia and tricuspidata (that’s Virginia creeper and Boston ivy, but I’m working at learning all the botanical names). However, it turns out that annual vines are a wonderful way to speed up the process, and three thunbergia alatas (black-eyed Susan vines) did a terrific job in making the fence much easier on the eyes.
- Surprises in the form of gifts, item 1: My dad had given us a very generous Lowe’s gift card as a house-warming gift in ‘03. We’d been hanging on to it for a while because Lowe’s wasn’t yet in Minnesota at that time, but they’d announced that they’d be arriving soon. Lowe’s and behold: the Shakopee location was open by last summer and I turned that gift card into allllllll kinds of wonderful backyard tools and toys, my favorite of which has got to be the hammock.
- Surprises in the form of gifts, item 2: M’s parents, the ever-awesome Ds, had been asking us for some time what we’d like for a wedding present, and we never had a great answer, although we vaguely discussed patio furniture. Eventually, they gave us a very nice check in a card that read, “Happy Wedding! Happy House! Happy Patio Furniture! Happy Everything!” We took it to heart and got a fantastic wrought-iron patio set.
- Another great surprise: M got pretty excited about the whole backyard makeover, as well. Granted, he wasn’t quite as interested in what was rapidly becoming a perennial border, but he relished the opportunity to blow off steam by installing a truly beautiful patio with our dear friend, Ron.
By late September, the backyard was glorious, just in time for summer to be winding down. We enjoyed every last temperate outdoor day: lounging in the hammock, watching the birds and butterflies feast on everything in bloom, having weekend-morning coffee on “the veranda” (which used to be a concrete pad but is now quite stylish), and having the cool new neighbors over for dinners on the patio.
Of course, the more I learned, the more I realized how much I did wrong that first year. And so, it continues…
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