Borrowed from Tom's blog, pictures and all

Meanders

Posted on June 4, 2011 by Tom Scharbach

I’ve been spending my time on planting and mowing this week, with a couple days of brush cutting at the railroad.

The railroad is in good shape, in terms of brush and grass, at this point. Roland and I spent most of Tuesday and Wednesday hacking back the brush along the side tracks, and Carl and Steve have been mowing the side tracks. I blew the leaves and springtime debris off the track yesterday, and we are good to go for the next month or so, anyway.

Around here, I’ve been working on gardens, for the most part, when I’m not mowing the grass. Garden-building, like nation building, is a slow task, particularly since I’m trying to use native species and “found” plants — plants and cuttings given to me by neighbors, gleaned off abandoned farmsteads, and so on — rather than the usual “buy it and stick it in” method of garden development.

I’ve been creating meander lines along the natural topography of the land, trying to “layer out” — clean and lawn-like near the house, more and more natural as the perimeter moves out. The line in this photo marks the boundary between lawn and woods, and consists of iris and about five different variations of the old-fashioned day lilies found along the roadsides in this area, planted long ago by folks now dead and naturalized. As I find more old plants, I’ll keep extending the line along the boundary.

I simplified the area along the front walk this spring, removing a number of plants, adding more rock — that’s something I have no shortage of, to be sure — and trying to keep it a bit more kempt. We’ll see how the line along the walk and in front of the house fares this summer, as the dry and the heat hit hard in a few months.

I put in a new garden this year, east of the house, after Bob Kelly took down a few scraggly trees. The plants in front are wild roses that grow in the woods. I found a few of them growing in the clay in the immediate aftermath of construction, and I’ve been nursing them along for the last five years. I cleaned up the area this week, added a few patches of day lilies and slow-growing phlox that Peggy gave me, moved in some bleeding heart seedlings, and demarked the boundaries between the plant groups with logs.m Now I’ll wait and encourage it to grow in for the next five years.

The shrubs in back of the house are finally growing this year, some approaching mature height. The back of the house is a slab, with a deck, and needs the softening of shrubs. I’ve tried to pick varieties that attract birds, because the feeder is in back of the house, and I like the show. I think that I’ll be in a position to start trimming this fall.

Gardening is as much a matter of patience as it is art.

Michael laughed at me last night, saying that by the time I got the gardens the way I wanted them, I’d be ready for “Our House”, a local assisted living facility. He’s probably right.