Today Ace Hardware sends me a message reminding me that it is time for fall clean-up. This morning it feels like fall. Cool breezes accompany us on our walk about town and the dogs have a spring in their step. Yesterday I began cleaning out the flowerbed and, overcome with heat, dreaded the mountains of tree trimming and weed pulling that waited in the wings. Then unexpectedly there is this gift of cool air and suddenly this morning feels like a good time to work.
Saturday we are leaving for a ten day trip. Garbage pick-up is tomorrow, which here in Augusta includes yard waste. So whatever I do after tomorrow will sit in a pile, out front, until next week. Anything I don't get done will be waiting when we get back. For me that is the greatest motivator of all; I will have a much better time knowing that I am not coming home to this jungle.
Like most of the southeast, Augusta has been inundated with rain this summer. Many of our drought tolerant plantings of the past few years have been drowned by the incessant rain; they need to be pulled up. The more tropical plants have grown unlike anything I have seen in the near thirty years I have lived here. However now that the daily torrent has stopped many of those plants are dying for lack of water. It is not feasible to continue watering to the degree that they have become accustomed. So more dead things to pull up or cut down, prune or just pray over.
The first order of business, after getting tools out of the garage, is to clean up dog poop. With two dogs, that can take thirty minutes, invariably piles will be missed and I will step in them. My husband doesn't believe in cleaning up after our dogs, he thinks the nutrients are good for the soil. I think it is just an excuse not to do it.
This morning, like any time we walk the dogs, Snook immediately has to poop. Snook is Al's dog and being under good voice control, she walks without a tether. My dog is Ginger; she is more rambunctious so on city streets I keep her leashed. I also carry clean-up bags. Usually Al ignores the dog's business and walks on, but this morning an owner pulls out of his driveway just as Snook is doing her thing and confronts Al with the clean-up question. It is the first time that I have seen Al pick up after the dog, with my bag. Today I decide to forego the clean-up process and ignore the well fertilized yard. I am on poop patrol strike. If he can pick it at the request of a stranger Al should be able to pick up poop in his own yard. Enough on that subject.
It is my understanding that years ago, upon completing construction, the backyard was pretty much laid bare with the exception of some trees that ringed the small property. In the intervening years Al has added an assortment of trees and shrubs, and a small lawn with little design in mind. In the time since we have been married I have had a couple of different gardeners draw designs which will give shape to the area but they all tell us to remove the very old, dying wax myrtles. This is where my husband draws a line in the sand. No tree will be cut down unless it falls first.
This is my second marriage and although I don't have a lot of experience with men and yards, I find it unusual that both men I married have an inordinate attachment to anything growing in the ground; volunteer or otherwise. For example we have two vitex that Al planted in the corner of the yard. They are essentially trashy trees. There is nothing attractive about them, they are scrubby and awkward looking with limbs growing at odd angles; for some reason Al loves them. The wax myrtles, while also somewhat trashy, have very sculptural trunks that add depth and interest as well as shade. I could make a case for saving them if they weren't already dying and loosing limbs on a regular basis.
So, like my ex-husband, Al never wants to get rid of anything. But unlike my first husband who loved yard work and really could not bear to pull even the most pitiful volunteer tree or shrub out of the ground, I surmise Al's reluctance may stem from his dislike of yard work. Al does not believe in yard work, or at least any that requires his participation. He is a gentleman gardener.
Every year Al turns the earth and amends the soil to make ready for the planting of tomatoes. And peppers. And eggplant. He spends days getting ready, sometimes getting the soil analyzed to determine the necessary ingredients to nurture the little seedlings. And every year we have a bumper crop of peppers, nobody could eat the amount of peppers we harvest, and very few tomatoes. And by this time of year, as the plants are dying, he eyes them longingly, hopefully, refusing to pull them up..
It is important to explain why the tomatoes need to go. When you walk in the front door of our house there is a view straight through the living room and dining room to the kitchen, wherein the ceiling is vaulted two stories with eight foot long windows framing the view. Through those windows one can see three old, graceful ligustrum behind which grows lush, very dense, bamboo. In front of the ligustrum, in a brick raised bed are tomato plants. Old, gnarly, yellowing tomato plants. And they will stay there through the first freeze, which comes sometimes in late October, or late November or even into December. This means we will be looking at those nasty plants unless I sneak around and pull them out one at a time. Which should be easy, because at some point Al starts avoiding the garden and I am the only one out there working; however our driveway is off an alley behind the house. Every day we enter through a gate and walk past the vegetable garden to get in the house.
Lest I sound ungrateful or complaining I must say that Al hires yard workers who tend the grass and edge occasionally and even blow the leaves away. Today as I write someone is outside blowing the first layer of leaves that have fallen from the tulip poplars that tower over the front of our house. However, despite the fact that my husband is willing, it is almost impossible to find someone to prune trees, pull weeds, trim shrubs; in other words to garden. If you do find this mythical worker the cost will either be exorbitant or you will have to direct their every move because your worker will have less knowledge of gardening than you do. So, I am by default the gardener and it is with this authority that I called in yet one more landscaper to discuss our back yard.
The plan was drawn up this spring but it needs some tweaking. I think it may be too formal but at least it has good bones design-wise. There is variation in shape, color and form; repetition in species and size. There is movement, drawing the eye around the landscape, inviting investigation. There is attention to detail in every bed and walkway. And finally, there is a husband willing to concede the loss of the wax myrtle and the vitex.
So as I sit here writing the vitex is no longer. The two trees were cut down limb by limb and the remains dragged to the street for tomorrow's trash run. The bamboo is thinned and offerings made to friends in need of water loving plants. The oak leaf hydrangea, that has been clinging creepily to the windows on the west side of the house, has been pruned letting in light once more. There is still work to do but there is space in the yard that wasn't there yesterday and I can breathe a little easily just knowing that. Now to clean my shoes.
No comments:
Post a Comment