Olympic View - From Small Farm to Garden

of a single specimen surrounded by nothing but bark, I am reminded of this. Plants look so much better in mixed company. After the Rhody Phase and overlapping with it, came the Rose Mania. I particularly loved ordering from Fred Edmunds¹ Roses in Oregon (they are a great company). We had the orchard planted and fenced from deer by then and I had the roses along the roadside of the orchard. When the deer fence finally rusted away, the roses had to be relocated. This necessitated moving some of my favorites to the South side of the house, where ! they are today (fronted by a shorter metal fence...ugly, but it does the job).

It was when my children were all nearly school age (we have six...two boys and four girls ranging in age from 23 to 13), that the garden really began to take shape. It was very soothing to get outside in the fresh air, listen to the birds and dig in the dirt. While I was focused on beautifying the yard, my husband had been remodeling the whole house (a small house fire is tucked into this history, which threw a monkey wrench into his plans a bit). Living and working in the upheaval of remodeling with six kids could get rather stressful and the garden was cheaper than therapy! The house was pretty much out of my control, but I COULD make the yard a place of beauty. I was now ready to plant more color in the form of perennials. What started out as one perennial bed on the West side, eventually took over numerous spots all over...meaning the removal of lawn...sound familiar? My second boy actually wrote a humorous paper for his English class about the battle in our back yard betw! een the grass and the perennials!

Because of my frequent visits to the perennial section of a nursery and the numerous questions I would ask the manager, I was offered a part time job there (I was also reading any book about perennials that I could lay my hands on). When my youngest daughter entered first grade, I was ready to give that a go.The only problem with working at a nursery in the spring to summer is that you get very BEHIND in your own yard. I had created a behemoth of a garden in my enthusiasm and it was now becoming a monster during the four seasons I worked part time. At the end of the fourth year, the nursery was suddenly closed. I

Go To Page: 1 2 3 4

Articles in this Topic    Discussions in this Topic