Digging in the Dirt
Spent most of today on some long-delayed gardening-type projects in the front of our house. We have a very small dirt hill next to our front walk/front steps, and a very thin strip of dirt between our driveway and the neighbor’s driveway. Last year we had our retaining wall replaced with a new brick wall, and we were very happy with the results. But we never got around to actually doing anything to the small dirt areas inside the wall. So today we went out and bought some garden soil and some flowers and set out to try and neaten things up. We still want to get some small garden stones for some of the areas, rather than plant there.
I truly have no idea how people with larger houses maintain large lawns and gardens. I appreciate the aesthetic appeal, but it is such a time sink. Then again, several years ago my brother was talking about the type of house he’d one day like to have, and mentioned that he probably had different goals than me. “I mean, not everyone needs a lot of land. What’s Dave gonna do with land, anyway?” There was absolutely no malice there, just a recognition that, yeah, Dave isn’t much of an outdoors type.
Still, it was nice to add some color to the front of the house. Now let’s set the clock running and see how long it’ll take for the neighborhood rabbits to come and make off with the flowers. If it weren’t for them, I probably would’ve just set up an herb garden and been done with it.
About Dave Thomer
Born and raised in Philadelphia. Studied philosophy at Fordham University in the Bronx, where I made many great friends and met my wonderful wife. We moved back to Philadelphia, where I studied philosophy some more and became a teacher. Online and off, I'm looking for ways that we can be better citizens and build stronger communities.
Sunday, May 6th 2007 at 2:11 pm |
Not being much of gardener myself – I had to keep asking Dave why we had to plant the flowers so far apart, the whole root thing never occurred to me – I’m pretty proud of what we’ve done so far.
Flowers are pretty and all but I’d really like some herbs to I don’t have to pay the grocery store for wilted springs of parsley anymore. But, as Dave mentioned, our street seems to be Bunny Rabbit Central for Northeast Philadelphia. We’re going to put up planters with herbs next week but I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if we came out the next morning and found empty planters and a note that read:
“Hey,
Thanks for the salad!
Love, Bugs”