Change is good! It’s a good thing I don’t mind it, as Cowboy and I sold our home in a day and needed to be somewhere else in 30 days! I packed, purged and kissed my sweet lil home and yard good bye. Like children – we don’t notice their growth until we are gone for a bit… Looking back at photos of our “Before” and what we left… well, seven years of joy made things better for sure. (Did you know “7” is the number in the Bible for Perfection…Completion..?)

Fall is a great time for planting shrubs and trees. If you are in a home you plan on keeping for a while I would suggest making a LANDSCAPE PLAN. Get yourself some 1/4′ graph paper. (One square would be a square foot) Take large strides (@ 1yd) through your yard measuring as you go. Divide your yard into areas easily identified and make rough notes. Later sketch in what is where. Photographs taken throughout the year help too.

Keep those plastic picture tags! Trim the point off/punch a hole in the top and slide them on a large key ring. I write the year on it as well – another use for my permanent marker! If the plant dies or just never comes back I go back & write THAT on the tag later. (DIED :/) Making sure the pictures are ALL facing the same direction cuts stress later on as well. Your space will be more organized and under control. And next Spring, when you are busting to get new things you will know where the perennials you planted THIS year are hiding. Happy digging! BA

I’m a former Garden Designer… The reason you hire ME is because I know what will grow best in your yard and moreover, what it will look like in three to five years. I know that doesn’t really sound important …yet many times it is paramount to the overall success of your yard.

That wonderful little slip of a Christmas tree looking thing you just planted at the corner of your house right next to the kinda round shrub …’you know the one… it has lil green leaves. “As a former Garden Center employee I heard that all the time! Really!  Well, in five years that lil pointed evergreen will be 12 feet tall and 6 feet wide… pretty much covering the entire buffet in your dining room. If it’s spring and the window is open…. NOT GOOD.  And that 28” you just allowed from the house to the center of the tree … Not far enough out! 

I fully agree that personal experience is the best teacher. And it is much more advantageous to live with a shrub a bit further away from your foundation for a couple of years than to spend hours upon hours digging the thing out later – to move it merely 6 feet. That’s where the personal experience kicks in. I have lots of friends but this friend was one of those really good friends.  Our husbands were on a golf trip…. and instead of getting our nails done – or a massage or something relaxing …. we took on those projects that would have been a bother to our husbands.  I think I was painting the exterior trim on our house;  She took on a Hollywood juniper that was .. Ahem!.. too close to theirs.  I won’t go in to details but by midnight there were headlamps, a rope and a bumper involved.  Never underestimate two Yard Ladies! Not doing that again!  And 20 years later….I have learned the “Necessity” of a “Mani-Pedi”… in MY world I call that “Maintenance!”

OH!.. The Socks!!!  Well, it was summer with lots of critters out. So I usually wore my really cool black and white polka dot boots when I was out tromping around. And I wore socks inside them… (Thick comfortable socks…kinda old too) I pull these up over my pant legs so no ticks, etc. get in. My socks get washed every time I come in from working and go in my purse so I’ll have them in my car for the next time….  Well, last Saturday I neglected to toss them to the back of my car.  Sunday morning as we are standing singing just the most beautiful Praise song –  I got a little weepy so I reached down and pulled out my  Southern Belle Hanky.  Afterwards, gathering myself to sit … there in full view of everyone were my old stained socks..  LORDY!!  At least I had God as my witness – cause HE knows they were clean!!

Later, BA

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