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Standing on front sidewalk. Larkspur bottom left, New Dawn rose
on arbor. old-fashioned yellow iris further back, then a hint of rose |
Pull in the driveway, park,
open the car door, get out, walk diagonally about 20 feet across the lawn, past
rosemary and roses on the left, and on the right, lemon grass and tomatoes
(everything depends on the season – like right now the only things blooming are
daffodils and rosemary, so you wouldn’t even see some of what I’m writing about),
a big sprawling hybrid musk rose (Buff Beauty, first bred in 1939) and Texas
mountain laurel, and here are the steps, with more roses (Maggie, found rose,
no date; Zephirine Drouhin, a bourbon rose dating from 1868; and New Dawn, 1930)
and also Confederate jasmine with sweet-smelling flowers perfuming warm late
spring nights with fireflies all around.
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Larkspur and CK |
The jasmine blocks the main
front door, so go to the right, past the Buff Beauty that blocks the far edge
of the porch, under the arch (four arches on this porch; how cool is that; it’d
be insane to glass-in a porch like this), past the mailbox and various potted
plants here, there, and everywhere, past the big hundred year old egg pot that
a man at a Vietnamese store gave me, past the table I made >40 years ago,
the one that David wrote his name on (which irritated me at the time, though I
didn’t say anything and now, of course, I treasure it), past the bench to the
door, first the screen, the one that Buddy busted through a number of times,
now the door, with little double happiness characters taped to one of the 15 panes
of glass and on another pane, a no smoking sign that I put there when my Mom
died from lung cancer in her groovy little house behind ours. Looking through the glass the view into the house is
blocked by Cambodian silk.
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Texas Mountain Laurel. A single Buff Beauty rose peeking through... |
Coming from the front/street,
walk between two big clumps of lemon grass (again, everything changes with the
seasons), past old-fashioned larkspur or Mexican tarragon or cilantro, past another
old garden rose with small white flowers with a tinge of pink (Marie Pavie, a polyantha
rose, 1888), past iris given to me by Don Lambert, jewels of Opar (a native perennial,
named after a Tarzan book!), walk under the arbor overgrown on one side with a
large climbing rose with fragrant cream/pink flowers (New Dawn, 1930) and if it’s
night the many-colored lights on the arbor are sparkling, past wood sorrel
(oxalis) on one side and on the other side, a red fragrant rose (Archduke
Charles, China, before 1837) and then a fragrant apricot rose (Perle d’Or,
1884) and across from them the old-fashioned yellow Dutch iris that a long time
ago the old woman at the Washington Place Projects gave me from her little
garden beside her front stoop, past mint and rosemary and now we’re at the
steps again.
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Standing on the porch, looking back at walkway |
Look sharp and see crystals
hanging from oak tree branches and temple bells hanging from the roof peaks…
Here is a cottage garden webpage I put together sometime around 2006-2007 and have not updated in awhile: A cottage garden is what I’ve been describing in this post. Not all the neighbors think it's a good idea... one person said, "Interesting."
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New Dawn (front door far in background) |