The Reluctant Gardener

I lived for 25 years in a small raised ranch on a 200x300 foot rural lot. In all that time, I never mowed a lawn, pruned a tree, or planted a petunia. That was all my husband's bailiwick (along with electrical and plumbing repairs, car maintenance, and power tools in general). Oh, I might thumb through the Burpee catalog and point out a flower or two that I thought might look nice. But it wasn't me that ordered and planted the seeds, transplants, or bulbs. And to be honest, I didn't give a rat's ass if the lawn grew up to my knees. It just wasn't on my radar.

Fast forward to October 2003, when I signed a mortgage that I'll be lucky to live long enough to ever pay off and became the proud if befuddled owner of what was, in a very real sense, "my first home." Oh yeah, I was the co-owner of that raised ranch, not to mention the elderly home we owned for a year and a half in downeast Maine, but this was different.

To be more specific, this home was not equipped with a resident gardener (or plumber, electrician, carpenter, etc.). Of course, at first this didn't particularly effect anything, since the landscape was pretty much dormant by the time I moved in. It wasn't till, oh, about March 2004 that the grass started to grow, and the trees and shrubs started to put out new growth, that I gave said landscape much thought. Turns out that, while I may not give a rat's ass about the height of the grass, both the City of Virginia Beach and my homeowners' association do. So I became the proud owner of a spanking new Black & Decker electric mulching mower (and a 100-ft exterior extension cord), and mowed a lawn for the first time in my life. Followed by the second time, and the third, ad nauseam. I'm looking into groundcovers.

And then there's the shrubs and trees, which appear to have been totally neglected by the previous owners in the area of pruning. I mean, look, never having picked up a pruning implement before, even I could tell that they needed help, whatever they were. (Except for the hollies, I hadn't been able to identify anything.) Not to mention that I wanted to replace the 4-foot fence with a 6-foot fence in the back yard, necessitating some considerable hacking of overhanging branches. Before I knew it, I had acquired a pair of hand pruners, then loppers for the stuff too big for the pruners -- and finally, a reciprocating saw for the stuff too big for the loppers. Yes, for the first time, I owned a power tool that even my ex-husband, a woodworker by trade, has never owned. I think he is jealous.

The recip saw's kind of fun to use. Just last year, I think I must have taken out a third of the total branches of the photinias in the back (yes, I finally figured out what they were), as well as a low-hanging branch of a very oddly-shaped crape myrtle, and did a little cleanup on the shrubs by the driveway. (I think they're ligustrum, or privet, but I'm still not entirely sure.) And today, I took a couple of good-sized branches off the Bradford pear in front (with a little help from Tim, for which I am grateful). Kind of hated to take off perfectly healthy limbs, but when they extend out so far that it rains and they droop down on top of the foundation shrubs, they've gotta go. Besides, I'm sick and tired of hitting my head on them when I mow the grass. Another good argument for non-grass groundcovers.

Now I've just got to get those azaleas and the hydrangea and the columbine and dianthus and salvia into the ground. If I can just decide where they should go. Somehow I seem to have become a gardener of sorts.