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05/19/2004 5:27 PM
Gardening Challenge at Serendipity Shore
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Serendipity Shore, Kaitlyn, is the name of grandmother’s new home. Her old home was named Critter Cove and grandmother wrote a book of the same name. It has never been published but you may read it someday if you’ve a mind.
I called the new abode Serendipity Shore because a)it’s near the shore and b)the purchase of the new home, the sale of the old one, the transition of jobs and property-all went fluidly and as if pre-ordained. The nasty neighbors on either side notwithstanding, Kaitlyn.
The lawn beckoned before me, Kaitlyn, and at the time the entire front yard was but a big gully with dirt piled everywhere. This is because the septic field went kerplooey in the year prior to our purchase. The sellers had to fix everything before Billy and I purchased the property but I did not insist on repair to the lawn landscaping.
This is because grandmother had great plans for the grand front yard to include using the dismayed land to install a garden on two.
Which I did.
However, because I was in the process of moving, came the time for me to put down grass seed, well I was not around to properly water the fresh seed as often as required. Hence the front lawn at Serendipity Shore became a mish-mash of grass and weeds that defy description.
This year, Kaitlyn, grandmother has to make sense of that front lawn. For while my gardening and eco-system self has never been a slave to lawns, the complicated system of weeds interspersed with rare stands of grass that comprises our front lawn is not acceptable.
So grandmother schlepps to the hardware store to see what she can find. Kaitlyn they sell bags of stuff that only have to be strewn across the landscape. The bags contain grass seed, mulch, weed killer and fertilizer. One application and the lawn becomes one suitable for the glossy magazines.
God Bless America.
Okay, so it hasn’t been quite that simple and grandmother’s husband is the lot’s main mow guy and is horticulturally challenged.
“You mean you just lay the stuff down and it kills the weeds and not the grass?” Billy asks with an air of disbelief.
Like I said, God Bless America. For the stuff has yet (it’s been a week) to make stands of waving grasses on the fruited plains. It has, Kaitlyn, killed every damn weed on the landscape.
I don’t know how it knows to kill weeds and not grass but it does and now the front lawn is void of weeds and only sparsely populated by grass. It’s enough for grandmother, Kaitlyn, because if nothing else those weeds will stop springing up overnight and immediately after a mowing. The whole effect was one of the proverbial urban corner sandlot.
Besides the lawn issue there’s been many garden challenges as grandmother learns and studies the new eco-system so different from Critter Cove.
Two beautiful bushes, Kaitlyn, bushes I’ve yet to identify but in May they’d hang heavy with pretty pink flowers. Both of them died, boom, may they rest in peace, over the winter.
Grandmother hung her head in shame. One year in the new eco-system and grandmother kills two beautiful bushes.
Amazingly, the seller of the house had the entire front professionally landscaped, including, get this, an underground watering system.
“Just turn this on once a day,” the seller told me with pride, “and it will water all of your bushes.”
“How long do I leave it on?” grandmother asked, never once owning or even imagining owning, a complicated in-the-ground drip irrigation system.
“About four hours,” the seller told me.
The landscaping around the house is lovely with a handsome assortment of bushes that mostly thrive when not outright dying. Burning Bushes line the porch front. There a gazillion lovely hostas that open their precision leaves gracefully every spring. Grandmother could never have hostas in Critter Cove, Kaitlyn, because of the slugs. There are a slew of azaleas, all a pretty vibrant pink that are mature and perfectly sized. Rose bushes, lilacs, and a huge honeysuckle vine, Kaitlyn, line the fence.
Here’s a promise, Kaitlyn Mae. When you are, oh about four years old, grandmother will make you a honeysuckle ice cream. I made them as a child and yup, you actually suck on the stamen of the honeysuckle.
While it might all sound lush, well not quite. The landscapers installed Clematis which tried to grow but did not. The rose bushes placed alongside the fence need more sun. They’ve all shriveled up with the ubiquitous mold throughout Delaware. A lone rhododendron managed a few weak blooms. I don’t know what those landscapers put along that fence but grandmother had to rip them all out.
Grandmother brought a little bit of Critter Cove with her, Kaitlyn, and crossing fingers, so far the results have been spectacular.
Beginning with the hedge roses. Ah, yes, Kaitlyn, grandmother loves roses and these guys were the only kind that would grow at all in the very shady Critter Cove. The gardens here at Serendipity Shore are all mostly in full sun. I transplanted every hedge rose then growing with only a mild enthusiasm in Critter Cove. In the new garden carved out square alongside the driveway I planted those buggers, all scraggly and tired from the long trip from Merryland to Delawear. This year they are filled with buds drooping heavy on long green and happy rosebush limbs.
I brought every single whiskey barrel planter from Critter Cove to Serendipity Shore and yes they were a pain of the highest order to transport. But along with the containers came every bush I'd planted in them. Of course I had to make some changes in the combinations and permutations but so far so good.
The peonies have always been in a container and that’s because I heard it was impossible to transplant a peony. So I figured I’d plant them in a container then move the container when and where I wanted it. There’s a reason, Kaitlyn, that peonies are hard to transplant and it’s because it would take two sticks of dynamite and a mortar round to get those stubborn roots out of that container. I have two peony bushes in containers, one a whiskey barrel planter and the other a decorative resin thing. Since the peonies won’t go to the soil I had to put the planters where the bushes would normally grow directly from the land.
The whiskey barrel peony always did sport big fuschia colored triple/quadruple flowers but this year, Kaitlyn, aided and abetted by the full sun it never got in Critter Cove, the thing blooms outrageously and shamelessly.
I now have another problem with the happy peonies in that back in Critter Cove, when it would produce one, perhaps two, enormous but vibrant flowers, I would stake them proudly. This year I have used every stake used for the errant fence garden, once used to hold dying clematis and moldy roses, and still those huge blooms droop like a blowsy bunch of pretty ladies what had too much to drink. There’s something inherently suspect about a flower bush that cannot even bear the weight of its own bloom.
If I had it to do over I’d leave the peonies to the gardening matrons.
I moved the hydrangea OUT of the whiskey barrel and planted it alongside that ugly fence. I also went out and purchased a bunch of bushes, little things but as I envisioned it, they would grow to leafy abundance and soften that fence. If I was lucky I’d never have to see that awful neighbor again. This is when I made my second big mistake, Kaitlyn.
For the landscapers had put down at least a foot of mulch when they put in the inappropriate clematis and rose bushes alongside that fence. Dumb grandmother dug a hole for the new bushes but never did dig down to the actual DIRT. The tiny bushes did survive but for a while I wondered why everything I planted there kept dying. Or looked like they were dying, because the new bushes and the transplanted hydrangea are now all happy and growing guys.
I discovered that whatever those pretty bushes were that bloomed last spring and died over the winter, they are evidently not hardy in this area. I noted during a drive down the road that a few other folk had these big dead things in their yard. In fact, Kaitlyn, grandmother did save part of this pretty bush by lashing the thing directly to the house. The warmth from the house likely kept it alive. Not that I knew what I was doing, but I could see ugly dead brown limbs and I know dying when I see it. So I acted to save one bush but frankly, now, what’s the point of any bush or plant not appropriate for its environment?
An eco-system must be studied, Kaitlyn. The landscapers had a standard set of bushes that, through study and experience, they knew most homeowners with no love of gardening would appreciate. And that three feet of mulch all over the place drives me nuts. Even the dumbest should know not to plant clematis and rose bushes under a big nut tree of some sort and a huge towering pine wasn’t smart. The rest of that front yard, Kaitlyn, is filled with sun. They put the plants requiring the most sunshine in the one shady area of the lot.
As for that drip irrigation system, well it’s been disconnected. Grandmother doesn’t want to sound old-fashioned but the notion of turning a faucet on then four hours later turning it off doesn’t seem quite right. I have no idea what bushes and plants are getting watered, or how much, or if it’s enough. Besides, watering a garden with a hose in hand is, for grandmother anyway, one of the more pleasant of gardening activities. I have control this way is what I’m saying here, Kaitlyn.
There’s much more but as of now grandmother is studying the eco-system and given time, will do a much better job than the professional landscapers.
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