This first spring in our new home has been a busy one. Dave and I have begun the work of transforming our yard into our own personal paradise. Whenever we have a few moment and the weather cooperates, we’re in the back, diggin up sod, shifting rocks, weeding and dreaming of our finished garden.
We’ve done this before. When we moved into our last house in 2005, our back yard was boring. The previous owners had four small children and two dogs. Gardening was not high on their priority list.
We had a shady patch of grass with a couple of mature trees, all surrounded by a cedar fence. As always, Dave had a vision and in five short years, with hours of labor and sweat, we had transformed our bland patch of green into a beautiful garden with plenty of color and life.
This time of year especially, I’d love to take my morning coffee out into the yard and make my rounds from bed to bed, looking for the daily changes. One morning there would be a new shoot of green popping up through the mulch; the next day I’d find a new bud or even flower. Our garden was exciting and energizing. It is the one thing I really miss about my old house.
Our new yard is not the blank slate our old one was. There is plenty already here.
Almost half of the back is wooded with mature oaks, cedars, maples, pine trees and even a dogwood and carpeted with fallen leaves and acorns. Unlike our flat coastal plain yard in Virginia Beach, here in the Piedmont, our yard has a slope which is both beautiful to behold and challenging to mow. Because of this, we are departing from the goals of former settlers who cleared the land to plant lawns and fields. Instead, we have decided to systematically increase the size of our wooded and natural area to decrease the amount of mowing. I could fib and declare we are doing it to save fossil fuel as a commitment to green living but in reality our goal is to save our own time and energy!
I do love my new yard. It is one of the things I love the most about my new home. I will even love it more once the digging is done and the planting begins. I’m anxious to see the little green shoots popping up from the mulch.