Life just ebbs and flows along, meandering, humming a little tune as is sweeps along, happy in the direction it's going, knowing nothing else.......until a storm moves in.......then things change. That happens in all of our lives and it happens in the life of the garden.
In our case, we worked peacefully, my husband and I, in our shade garden. We learned to adjust and love the plants we could grow in the shade. Sometimes I complained that I couldn't grow tomatoes or some extremely amazing plant that demanded full sun, but for the most part it was a haven from the hot Texas sun and a lovely one at that. That is, until that fateful day........the winds blew in from the west......and I'm not talking any plain ole ordinary wind, I'm talking the grandfather of all winds before it becomes something else......straight-line winds of 60-90 miles an hour!
Things have a hard time remaining the same when confronted with that kind of a force. All along the fence line, the hackberries have been growing for 60 plus years; our neighbors have been losing them a few a year, as have we. But.....this last event removed the top 25 feet of a couple and revealed the need for the rest of them to be removed before they fell on our house or the neighbors house.
So we had to start on the path of change, starting from the top, down.
The tree guys came, sawed, and conquered!
And then there were none....
Now comes the rethinking and planning. After several years of severe drought, loss of trees and then torrential rains we had to put our permaculture knowledge to test. My husband (and fellow garden lover) and I come from two different
directions in the way we garden......he measures and draws and counts
and calculates....and when his back is turned I dig a hole and plant
something. So far, it has worked magnificently. We compliment each
other, compromise and laugh! We get to spend quality time together and the reward is enormous, both in the relationship department and in the resulting garden.
We raised and leveled the back portion where all the trees were.
And planted some really great pollinator plants, a Fig tree, a Mexican Plum tree, a Methley Plum tree, and an Eve's Necklace tree. This was all last fall and so this year will be the first year to see what comes back and what starts to really grow........I have to totally restrain myself from going and buying new beautiful, fresh out of the greenhouse plants to fill in the spaces.......spaces that will fill in on their own as the plants do that thing they do!
Just a sample of what's to come.....and guess what else comes........
Bees on the oxalis and Oscar waiting to eat it......
And all the rest of the garden creatures that find their home in paradise......
So that we can sit on the deck, sipping whatever, and watch the live nature channel.
Just be sure you wear the proper attire and watch out for the sun!
