Gardens – A Constant Evolution

There has always been this weird place in our front lawn, and living out in the country in the middle of nowhere we have a huge front lawn.  In actuality the front lawn is as big as wherever you decide to stop mowing and let the field take over.  This particular place just off our front porch, was an impossible place to mow and really just an eye sore.  Off to the side also, there is a concrete slab that has been there as long as I can remember, at least fifty years, to which on one side an old root cellar was connected.  It is long past gone, but the slab remains.

When Chris came along we started a small garden there.  The soil in this spot is clay.  After a year we decided to expand our garden and move it over into the field on the North side of the house.  Our vegetable garden over the course of our nine years together has now moved a couple of more times to the South side of the house, finally where we want it.

But, back to the original spot in the front of our house, which faces East.  With the removal of the vegetable garden, this was even more of an eyesore.  I decided it could be a good herb garden.  The

following year I thought a little pond would work well there.  I don’t have pictures of this particular progression.  Over the next year I asked my dad if we could have this big concrete slab structure that I thought might work well there.  Chris hauled it

over from his house, 3 miles away, very slowly, with the tractor, with me following.  There are two pieces to it.  Originally, we just used the bigger piece trying to make a fountain area.  Last year, near the end of the year after fall was sitting in I wanted to redo the whole thing – a redesign, making a bigger water area and moving the concrete slab all together.  At this suggestion, Chris’s eyebrows raised.  I think this is the first time he every really said no to me.  I didn’t push it.  It took a hoist and the tractor to move it into place, and getting it back out of place and into another would be another major operation.  I never brought it up again.  He just more or less decided on his own we would go forward with it.

All I can say is this project is always evolving.  I put in a picture of the concrete slab to the right of the area.  My dream for there is one of those double glider covered swings.  I’ve asked him to build that for me for my birthday.  I’ve wanted one every since I was a kid.  I’m thankful my husband is such a hard worker, without which none of this would be possible.