A Quick Tour of the Old Neighborhood

Last week, I was home for a quick visit--just two short days, punctuated by a visit to the funeral home and some maintenance on the car. Visitation was for a family friend who succumbed to ALS, and whose husband carpooled with my father to work for many years. Ron would come in almost every Friday after work to enjoy a beer at our house, and sometimes he would light up his pipe while he sat and spun yarns. I love the sweet tobacco smell of pipe smoke, and it reminds me of Ron every time I smell it.

Speaking of smoke, in front of my parents' house there is a huge, beautiful purple smokebush, cotinus coggygria. It's been there since I was a kid, and at one point a sucker from it was nurtured along so that I could plant it at the house I bought with my former husband. That never happened, so each corner of the front yard now boasts one of these mysterious beauties that beg you to take a closer look:

One year for Mothers' Day, I helped my Mom plan a little garden in the leftover square where the back patio, Dad's new shed, and the garage all met. I always think of this as "Sally's Garden," because the yellow rose at its center was planted in memory of my aunt Sally who died of breast cancer. Al and Sally had bought her parents' old house when their kids were still pretty young, and they faithfully tended her father's (Clarence's) roses there.

Mom and I did a fairly good job of picking out the plants for this garden, I think: lamium, coralbells, dianthus, euonymous, spirea, and gold-edged hostas. It's very low-maintenance, and even when things aren't in bloom it looks pretty good. And when the roses are going, it's even better. I can see why the yellow roses were Sally's favorites :

I have to confess that I did not ask permission to take or post the next set of pictures... but the gardener who lives here told me at my brother's wedding that she sometimes reads my blog. So if you recognize this garden as your own and you're not happy with me posting pictures here, just let Mom know and I'll take them down. (But Mom thought you'd get a kick out of seeing these here, Renee! *grin*)

This gorgeous white-painted metal arbor is beautiful already. Can you imagine what it's going to look like when those climbing hydrangeas scramble to its top?

There is a matching arbor in the backyard as well, which made me doubly jealous. But there's something even more interesting going on in this picture. Look closely at the little purple-leaf "tree" to the right of the arbor:

It's a purple ninebark (probably 'Diablo') trained into a small tree form! I have never seen one pruned like that before. Renee has great plant taste, doesn't she? And she must take care of them well, as you can see by how healthy this beautiful corkscrew hazel looks in her garden:


I know Renee shops at Beining's Nursery in Ottoville, which is also a favorite of Kylee's, to find interesting new plants. I think I need to swing by Beining's next time I visit NW Ohio. But before we leave Renee's garden, check out the itea that she planted in a half whiskey barrel. I love how the barrel elevates the status of this cute little shrub:

Time to leave Renee's pretty yard and move down the road a little bit.

A short walk from my parents' house, just across the highway, is where my Aunt Becky (my godmother) and Uncle Don live. They met at the hospital where Becky was a nurse, and Don often delivered flowers for his job at, as he calls it, "the flower shop." The rest is history, and we ended up adding a wonderful uncle and 3 very fun cousins into the family. And as far as I know, Don still brings Becky home a single flower every Friday, as he has every week since they've been dating. Isn't that sweet?

When Becky moved into her first house, post-divorce, she was a single mom with a little girl and had little extra money for gardening. So she took cuttings and started lots of things from seed, and ended up with what I remember as a beautiful, exhuberant backyard. At this new house, she and Don work on the gardens together. Here is one of last year's big projects they completed, an "entrance" to the backyard from the side of the house:

Maybe I shouldn't say it's finished quite yet, though, as Don seems pretty adamant about wanting to put a wooden footbridge across that strip in the middle. Becky is digging her heels in a bit on this one for some reason, but I think it would be a fun idea. So let's keep our fingers crossed that Don wins this round, shell we?

Their second big project from last year was this "living fence" bed:

The bench is supposed to be on the ground in front of the bed, but they had just mowed recently and left it up. I didn't notice it before I snapped the shot. (That's what happens when you sneak over to someone's house to take pictures without them being home!) The evergreens in this picture are going to be topped off at about the height of the tallest one now, which should make them thicken up a bit and offer additional privacy. Very fun.

The main focus of their backyard, however, is this amazing pond:

They started out with a small pond at first, but a couple of years ago they widened and deepened the pond, redid the rock edging, etc. The lighthouse at the top of the mound behind the pond lights up at night, and water cascades down the stone steps constantly. And they have lotus that bloom, too!

If you look closely at the front of the pond, you'll see some randomly strung line crisscrossing the water. This keeps the herons out, and Don is happy to report that it seems to work as well as netting does, while being much less obvious. This spring they have had some trouble getting the water clear in the pond, but it's starting to look much cleaner now and I had a very clear view of all of the fish. I decided I like the shubunkins best.


The third big project of 2007 can be seen in the picture above. They created a little deck that meets the edge of the pond. When you walk out the sliding glass door onto the deck, you feel like the front of the deck must be anchored in the pond--it's that close!

I was tempted to stick my feet in, but I didn't think that the fishes would like that. Actually, they would probably have nibbled at my toes, as they flock to the deck whenever they hear footsteps on it. Someone might be tossing out fish food, you know!

The other thing I love about Becky & Don's garden is that they always have some beautiful, unique plants there. This Brazilian jasmine/mandevilla vine was so full and lush in its pot that I had to touch it to make sure it was real. Their garden was the first place I saw both the annual Mexican heather, and tricolor sweet potato vine, several years ago.

And this time, I got to go home with my own treasure. Years ago, they took home some tropical smokebush plants, euphorbia cotinifolia, that were going to be thrown out. They need to be overwintered inside, but they're so pretty--their leaves look like the regular purple smokebush leaves, only in miniature! Since a few other plants are starting to get larger and they were worried about having room to overwinter everything this year, they offered me one of their two pots of tropical smokebush... and I was more than happy to take it off of their hands, as you can imagine.

But pictures of that will have to wait, as it's dark outside and I am sleepy. Hope you enjoyed the mini-tour of some of my favorite gardens "back home!"