This blog has evolved organically — no pun intended. Now it’s not just a gardening blog, but a chronicle of our old house and its long, and perhaps not-so-storied, history.
I’m always seeing things that suggest a former plan. That crazy detective tendency, or just too much time with my own thoughts and imagination, or a romanticized belief that it couldn’t have always been this wild. Not just in the front, where we now know there was a plan (thanks to the remnants of the landscape design at the historical society), but in the wide expanse of our back woodland and borders.
Is it my imagination that grape hyacinth seemed to emerge under one of the maples? Not at all, and the renewal of the beds seems to have given them new life. And the new area next to the house has some random bulb leaves that did not appear when it was grassed over.
In the back, I keep seeing peeks at something that may have been. A clump of daffodils. A flowering shrub in the woods. A stand of ferns not too far from it.
An enduring garden takes forethought. The ability to see not just the dimensions, light, and conditions today — but how they will unfold as things grow, mature and change — in a year, in five years, in a decade, and beyond.
Likewise, this detective work takes an ability to look deep into the chaos and wild and see the bones of a design.
And sometimes a stand of daffodils — or a fern — are just someone’s Easter basket that they planted out after the flowers have faded. Or a seed blown by the wind or carried by a bird, that took root.