Like a Virus

Like a virus, my front garden has infected the small street where I live. Or now that I’ve thrown my own garden party, everyone wants their own fete. Or choose your own terrible metaphor.

You may recall from the My Moriarity post, that my garden is greatly influenced by a neighbor on a nearby street. Via neighborhood gossip, I learned that my neighbors to the east of my house really liked my terraced garden, and had hoped to emulate it. And they did, creating a lovely cottage garden, which is a nice contrast to my own xeriscaped landscape.

Just last week, my neighbors across the street to the south removed the sod from their front yard and added plants bought on clearance or procured from one of those temporary parking lot nurseries that sell trees and shrubs at great prices. I overheard my neighbor to the west of our house ask my southerly neighbor if he was trying to create a garden like mine. Mr. South said, “I sure hope so.”

You can see the beginning of Mr. South’s garden in the photo below. His yard will look fantastic next year. Now there are three houses on my street wearing fancy pants. (Another bad metaphor.) Who will catch the bug next?

Also featured below are front yard blooms for your viewing pleasure. Note the “Big Blue” eryngium at the end. My mother-in-law, Judy, helped me pick out at the Salem Art Fair and Festival. (You may remember her as one of the artistic geniuses in my family from an earlier post.) It looks like “Big Blue” wants to hurt you, and it does, but it was too incandescently blue to pass up.

One Raspberry, One Smoke Bush, and Blooming Hebes

So I planted a raspberry bush last year, and it started growing vigorously this year, becoming very bushy. In fact, it became so bushy, it was covering the nearby lithodora ground cover and killing it, which is par for the course for me. Yet no flowers ever came.

As you know, flowers precede the fruit. Raspberries typically come in July. The whole point of planting the darn thing was so it would bear fruit, which I would happily eat. What’s a woman to do?

I cut the bush back to spare the lithodora, and I found one ripe raspberry! And three more on the way. Woohoo! What a bounty.

In other plant news, my burgundy smoke bush is looking amazing. It was planted by my predecessor, and originates from the southeast United States. Our neighbors who preceded the current cottage gardeners (see the post “My Moriarity”) disliked it because its spreads a mini type of tumbleweed everywhere including their property. I couldn’t blame them for disliking the floral litter, but I really don’t mind it too much because it is my floral litter.

In what may have been a plot to eliminate the smoke bush, more like a smoke tree, my prior neighbors planted a stick of a maple ludicrously close to it. Perhaps the idea was that it would grow immense enough to overshadow the bush, which would either eventually die from lack of sun or need to be removed or block the cursed tumbleweeds. Five years later, the neighbors are gone (sadly, the husband, a very kindly man, died of cancer) and the maple remains…a stick, albeit slightly larger.

Between the two driveways, the established smoke bush, and all the other plants, it hasn’t quite taken hold yet. I wonder if it ever will.

Below are snaps of my one ripe raspberry, one blazing smoke bush, and blooming hebes. I’m sorry that one is out of focus, but it is too late to take another picture. The blooms have faded.

My Moriarity

When I first moved into this neighborhood, I found myself mesmerized by a nearby garden. I would slow the car down every time I passed. I gawked like a love sick teenager. I began to copy the owner’s plant selections. This mysterious person was the demigod of gardening.

Frank, of course, noticed this admiration, and when we passed he would shake his fist at my “enemy” gardener. Soon, I followed suit, and we’d make rude Italian gestures every time we drove by this garden paradiso. The garden god morphed into my Moriarity, forever my foe in landscaping. It was a day of great pride when my gardening buddy, Nadene, said she liked my garden better than the garden of my Moriarity.

Then, the lovely young couple in the house next to us got into the gardening business, turning their front yard into a gorgeous cottage landscape with heirloom roses, foxgloves, salvia, lamb’s ear,and more, which came into full bloom this year. All I have to say in response is “KHAAAAAAAAAAAAN!!!!!”

The pictures below show Moriarity’s garden in winter and summer, followed by mine, and my neighbor’s. Cue the Spaghetti Western soundtrack of Ennio Moricone. Enjoy the showdown.

Ground Nero

Let’s see what becomes of my hellish, windblown landscape this year. May the best plant(s) live. Let the Garden Games begin.