Building a wall

The truth is, I have appropriated my neighbor's yard.

My next door neighbor Jim and I made a deal six years ago when I moved into our house here in Greenbelt. For the priviledge of storing my mower and gardening tools in his shed, I would take care of his yard. For Jim, this was a no brainer. He doesn't know an azeala from a daffodil and has absolutely no desire to ever pick up a rake or put a shovel in the ground. For me, I get more work, but I also get more room to play.

Let's consider the "more work" part of that equation. I haven't planted much in Jim's yard (it is HIS yard after all) but I mow, rake, trim, sweep and generally keep it neat and pretty. The biggest project came last spring. I had never cut back the red tips in front of Jim's house. Frankly, they were so big -- up to the roofline -- that I didn't want to tackle them and to have to clean up all the dead leaves and mess underneath them.
Then came three feet of snow last February, and the red tips were bent to the ground. When the warmer weather came, I had to do something. So one Sunday afternoon, I borrowed a bow saw from a neighbor and started cutting them down to size.

Once I was done with the red tips, I realized that the scraggly-looking cedar bushes needed to go, too. And then I needed to rake all those old leaves up. When I was all finished, it looked like a disaster area! No more towering red tips, just red tip stumps and a newly exposed heat pump on a barren bed of dirt.

For days I kept looking at this stark scene in front of Jim's house, wondering if my actions had been a bit too drastic. I knew that the red tips would come back and make great-looking hedge bushes along the front of the house, but we'd have to suffer through an ugly period of regneration first. That's when I got the idea for the border wall. I decided to make a bed around the red tip area because I knew that someday it would be the focal point of Jim's yard. I wanted to build a little wall that would signify that this area was going to be special, even though at that moment it was decidedly not.

Building a wall, even a low simple wall, requires more lifting and carrying of stone than you think. (It also requires more stone than you think, which means yet another trip to Lowe's.) As with my gardening, I am an amateur when it comes to building walls. I do it by sight, not with chalk lines or strings that have been measured to be level. Just a stepping back and sizing up with head tilted and murmurings to myself to lower that stone or put more dirt under that one.

In the end, it didn't look like much. A few rows of stone surrounding some red tip stumps and a heat pump. But I felt better for having put something new in place of the old, and the gardener in me -- that part that has faith that the bulbs I plant in the cold of November will bloom in the sun of spring -- could imagine what it all would look like when the leaves have come out on the red tips and a layer of mulch is covering the dirt.

Almost a year later, my vision is starting to become reality. So yes, Jim got a good deal on getting his yard cared for, but I think I got the better bargain.

Growing ideas

The reason for creating this blog is to get my juices flowing so that I can come up with a brilliant concept and business plan for a new online venture. By following my passion for gardening, I should be able to find some inspiration for this project. Well, so far, I haven't had any flash of enlightenment. I can't even say that I'm "growing" any ideas, and I'm certainly not "harvesting" any either.

What I have been doing is mulling over the thought of connecting gardeners in the same neighborhood. What if we could make group buys of bulbs or plants? What if we could have a tool exchange? (I don't own a tiller, but I might want to borrow one from someone down the street instead of renting one from Lowe's.) If I took a picture of a plant or a tree that I like, could someone identify what it was and tell me where to get it? These don't seem like ideas that are the beginnings of a new business. I haven't struck on anything that's a need or niche to be filled.

The only need I'm feeling right now is for warmer weather to arrive so I can start mucking around in my yard.  I'm itching to rake the leaves and clean up the acorns and start making it look neat again. I want to be able to see when the first green shoots of the crocuses and daffodils begin to emerge. I find myself searching for those first signs of spring. Could that be a bud on the forsythia bush?

Perhaps some dirt under my nails would provide some inspiration that sitting in front of the computer doesn't seem to spark.

BTW, I'm on Blogger and not Tumblr now. I found Tumblr too confusing, and I couldn't figure out how to allow for comments. The downside -- the name Dirt Under My Nails was already taken on Blogger.

A Passion for Spring

(I originally posted this on February 2 on my first blog attempt on Tumblr.)
So today is Groundhog Day, and our friend Phil has predicted an early spring.  Hallelujah! This winter has not been as bad as last year's, but I reach a point each year where the gray and cold begin to get under my skin. I look out on my snow-covered yard and close my eyes to imagine the daffodils that I know will be blooming in a few weeks.

Welcome to my new blog. As part of this semester's courses for my multimedia journalism program, I have to write, tweet, blog -- do something -- to express a passion and then see if there's any chance of turning it into a business. In class, I talked about my interests in travel and cycling and musical theater.  But when I started thinking about what I really enjoy and feel passionate about, I realized that gardening is what I'd like to focus on.

I've spent many, many hours in my small yard in Greenbelt, MD, planting bulbs and shrubs; mowing and raking; daydreaming and planning. What I actually like best about gardening is not thinking. It's about doing and letting my mind wander where it may.

My plan is to write about gardening in the coming weeks -- my garden, my yard.  I don't know the Latin names of plants. I don't have a grand scheme for my yard. I buy flowers that I think are pretty and that make me happy. And my bet is that I'm like 75% of the other gardeners out there.  People who love the feel of a shovel in their hands with the sun on their backs, or at least love imagining it in the midst of a gray, cold February day.