I'm thinking, perhaps erroneously, that a web site might be the easiest way to track and maintain my flower beds. I'm tired of pieces of paper scattered all over the place and trying to correlate notes from various years about the same bed or plants—not to mention the Excel files, Word files and other files I've started. I'd like to know if the weather conditions in the yard are changing and what time plants flower from year to year. Only time will tell if this web site plan will work or not.
So why The Back Forty? Well it's a family story. This is my third garden. The first was in Zone 5, the second was in Phoenix (I can't remember the zone but it was really different) and now Zone 4. I must admit I prefer northern gardening to southern.
In Zone 5, Aunt Fern and I had a house with a small yard less than a block from my parents. We had a raspberry bed, a back side shrub bed, a wildflower bed under a pine tree, a garden, two front island beds, two front house beds and a front side shrub bed. The beds were a mix of bulbs, perennials, biannuals and annuals. Aunt Fern and my mom grew up on a dairy farm and I think this was a saying from the farm. Anyway, Aunt Fern would say, "let's tour the back forty", meaning, let's tour the yard and see what's going on. I lived there for about 10 years and had those beds whipped into pretty good shape but I wished I had a bigger yard.
In Phoenix, the yards are really small, but I did xeriscaping (no grass) and had some some really interesting plants. I went to all the botanical garden sales to find unusual stuff. I planted a variety of wild flower seeds, which did very well—I usually had a couple hefty patches of lupines. The lizards and Gambrel's Quail liked the yard. But the irrigation system was a real drag. Something or other was always breaking or leaking or otherwise not working very well. I really hated growing peas and tomatoes in the winter; it seemed too weird. And hibernating during the summer was bizarre. Not to mention no trees (hence no real shade)—palm trees are not REAL trees. Besides, it's unnatural for people to wear heavy duty parkas when it's a mere 40 degrees out. I had eight years of no corduroy, pullovers or winter coats. Well, I returned to the north at last.
Now I have a yard in Zone 4 and it's about 3-4 times as large as my first yard. Now if I can only live long enough (or have enough energy) to dig up the grass (patch by patch), I might be able to have all the plants I lust for. I hate large sweeps of the same plant (might look nice but I'd need an even bigger yard to have all the varieties I want); I'm an accumulator of plant varieties. What can I say, the urge to collect can manifest itself in wacky ways. I'm accumulating a collection of clematis, daylilies, peonies (to some extent) and iris. I also like woodland and prairie natives. Of course there are some intriguing hellebores not to mention hydrangeas and daffodils.
In August I start making plant lists. In October, I start yearning for plant catalogs. In November, I tear up the August plant lists and start new ones. In December, I drool over all my clematis books making more lists. In January I start haunting plant catalog web sites. Catalogs arrive and I make my decisions (which I regret later, like, I spent how much? Why did I order that? Why didn't I order that?). The web sites finally come on-line and more orders spew out (of course those clematis lists are torn up again). Then the long wait begins. I stare longingly out into the barren yard week after week (if I'm lucky it's deep with snow so I can't imagine a green season). We get a few sucker warm days in March but the frozen tundra still exists. Then, sometime in April, there's a certain smell in the air, the ground starts to soften and a few green shoots appear, mostly snowdrops and some crocus leaves. Suddenly, we mostly skip spring and it's summer or something very close. Oddly enough, mysteriously in May, often late May, we revert to spring again (or even winter) before summer is full bore upon us.
Plant addiction is a terrible thing.
