I Love New York Travel

Another garden photo! I just love the colors in it. Enjoy.

SPRING AT LAST.

My daughter snapped this photo, of our yard. She was disappointed with it, because the background turned out blurry. But I said I loved it– the photo gives a bug’s eye perspective of the grass and the yard. Those purply things in the foreground are the violets. The yard is filled with little violets, and some other blue-purply types of flowers. They look a little like Forget-Me-Nots, but they are not that. The yard is filled with the growth– a mass of tiny lemon-green plants with light-blue flowers. I hate to cut the grass, because it’s so pretty and fluffy.

Gardening is a wonderful hobby. I never appreciated the joy of growing plants until I bought my own home. Despite the world swirling down the toilet drain around me, the hassle of bills and credit score rates and expenses, gardening helps me to get away from it all. There’s something thrilling– almost ecstatic– about planning and building flower beds and watching them take shape year after year.

This little tree is my pride and joy. It’s a Red Oak.

I got it bare root from the National Arbor Day Society. I can’t remember how long ago, perhaps 6 years ago now?

According to very old photographs, my property used to be filled with trees. They were all cut down in the 1950s and 60s, I suppose. Some of them were the mighty Elm trees that were decimated by Dutch Elm disease in the 60s. What a shame. The entire neighborhood, once rimmed with gigantic Elms, was completely barren by the late 1960s. I’ve seen photos of before and after, and the streets look so thin and empty without them. I hate bugs like that, they are so destructive. Trees don’t need best weight loss products! But the property owners here never planted more trees to replace the Elms. And there have been consistent water problems here since then.

So I’m planting trees. It’s bee a tough project– between the deer that find them delicious, to the neighbors who are antagonistic to anything I want to do around here, I’d say only 1/3 of the trees I’ve ever planted have survived.

But this Red Oak has been through it all, and is still alive and kicking! The trunk is thick and shapely. The tree does not have a “leader” (a single center stalk) because deer chewed it down for a few years. But the tree is strong. I look forward to hanging a swing on its limb when it’s old enough.

My apologies in advance– you will be seeing a lot of gardening photos for a while! I am NUTS about my gardens. Never used to be, had no interest. But since owning land (and sending endless hours mowing vast expanses of turf lawn), I love my flower and veggie beds. This photo was taken a few years ago, 2006, I believe. It was the most beautiful garden I’d made up to that point. Unfortunately, it and my other beds were wiped out during severe flooding in June and July 2006. I’m sure you Central and Southern New Yorkers remember…. *sigh* Several people died, houses were ripped from their foundations, and yards looked like walk in tubs (mine, anyway). We had 3 feet of water in the basement and yard that year. I hate flooding.

Anyway, here’s hoping that wet decade is over. I’ve never experienced so much rain as we did in those years, NEVER. It was crazy! So far this year, very little sopping wet rains. Thank God. I still get that butterfly feeling in my heart when I hear the rain come down hard….

I found this in my archives a few days ago. Isn’t he precious?

We were building a property-line fence around the front yard that year– must be 8 years ago, now! Oh wow. How does time pass so quickly?

Well, we dug holes 2 feet deep all around the border and side yard: 25 posts. Oh my word it was probably the hardest thing I’d done. The ground was literally FILLED with stones. It took us quite a few weeks of post-hole digging and then shoveling or troweling out the enormous stones from these holes. Talk about how to lose weight quickly. It all came back, though. :-p

My son was intrigued with the holes. He wanted to test them. The fence still stands, and is in good shape, so I guess we passed the test.