the sunken gardens of shannon November 20, 2006
I have been meaning for a long time to do some gardening for Shannon. For years, Thierry fought a losing battle with the out-of-control banana plants they inherited. He tried chopping, poisoning, digging and everything else, but as soon as they turned their backs, the banana leaves were back, all over the back yard. Last summer, he ripped them out again. Thanks to the flood and the subsequent two or three weeks of no rain and scorching heat, this time they stayed ripped out.
The nasty flood water brought old junk from under the house and from who knows where into the yard. They pressure-washed the main brick patio, but there is another brick patio in the back which was badly installed originally, then flood damaged, and is too fragile for pressure-washing. The ugly weeds that are all over town had taken it over. It’s the only sunny spot in the yard, and there are old beds on either side of it that had washed away, leaving only a lemon tree. It’s producing beautiful lemons, but leaning over so far it was practically lying down.
Shannon’s former contractor had left a bunch of junk back there, including some old cabinet drawers and the old, funky bathtub. There is a nice-sized waterproof shed, but it was hard to get to it because of the tangle of weeds. When I was over there last Thursday, I looked out the back door and instead of seeing a bunch of mess I suddenly saw a completely blank canvas. I called Shannon Friday and told her I have a gardening jones and I have boxed myself in over here at Dangerblond Gardens until I see how things are growing.
She said, “Girlfriend, get over here and knock yourself out!”
This was a perfect time to do it for her because she just had surgery. She literally can’t bend over or lift, so she didn’t have any problem just leaving me to it. She knew that I knew she couldn’t help and I didn’t expect her to. On Friday, I was just going to clean up a little, but I ended up revamping the whole place and getting into a sort of funky look with all the stuff I kept finding. I started a little fire and burned up most of the weeds, sticks and debris, which kept me from having to fill up umpteen garbage bags and put them out. I even tossed a few cabinet drawers on the barbie. I admit I’m a bit of a pyro, but we used to make fires when we lived in the woods and I love to feel the heat of an open fire and listen to the crackling.
David was impressed that I was doing all this work and not getting paid, so he volunteered to come over and help me move the old bathtub. It was upside-down. He moved it into a sunny spot and we tilted it up for drainage. I put in rocks, organic matter, soil and pine mulch to make it ready for an herb garden. This isn’t really the season for herbs, but I got some trailing rosemary and planted one at each end of the tub. It looks like a person with green curly hair and green furry feet is submerged in a bath of mulch.
I planted some irises in front of it so it doesn’t look so much like a bathtub, and there is plenty of room in the bed under it to plant more things around the tub and totally disguise it. I placed her old shutters up against the chain-link fence to screen out the neighbors. When poking around looking at the drainage, etc., I saw that Shannon’s other neighbors have placed a wire containment barrier below the wooden fence and filled it with drainage rocks. It’s over a foot of rocks. So their yard is probably draining right into Shannon’s. No wonder the bananas were so happy.
On Saturday night, I gave up my rollergirls tickets so I could work on lighting the garden. On Sunday, I put in climbing vines, roses, a camellia, some monkey grass, a gardenia and un-killable aspidistra, called the cast-iron plant for a reason. I made a chandelier out of Christmas lights and a Kentwood bottle. I made her a little compost pile and mulched the rest of the garden.
I gotta tell you, because of the old house, the playful yard full of junk to recycle (and burn up), the badly-laid patio, the leaning lemon tree (which I braced up with a board), and the funky Bywater location, I actually like Shannon’s garden better than mine. I hated to leave it. When I came home sore and filthy on Sunday, I thought, “this must be what mid-wives feel like. You do all that work to birth the baby, then you have to leave it and go home when everyone is saying how beautiful it is.”
There is plenty of room for Shannon and Thierry to put in more plants, and in the spring they can go bananas. Well, maybe not bananas.
- Posted in : main, new orleans
- Author : dangerblond
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