Home and Garden Improvements… Well, home improvements are, like beauty, in the eye of the beholder. For instance, about ten years ago, I decided that our 1300 square foot, fenced, back yard would be greatly improved by a six hundred square four fenced garden and an herb dryer. I planned to plant herbs and sweet-smelling flowers and a few vegetables and fruits in raised beds and to make of this project a learning experience. At the time, I had hopes of some day and some way opening an herbal business. So, I got started. It took almost two years of hard, back-breaking labour and scrimping and arguing with our next-door neighbour who felt city yards should be devoted to ornamentals and grass. It worked. Before it was over I had uncovered a good market for my herbs (In fact I could not supply the market with the amount needed.) And I learned a lot about potpourri. And I learned a lot about soaps and I even came up with a cream or two for medicinal purposes.

I learned a lot about city agencies courtesy of the lady next door. I was just getting started on the herbal aspect when we had to move. The people who moved in paid a good price for the house and had every right to dig up everything I had done and fell a pine tree in the back yard squarely on the 8X8X8 foot shed that I had built out of treated wood to the utter amazement of bank inspector who declared the wood “not at all cheap” and the shed “built to last.” You might be interested in the things that were in that garden. First I built a covered entryway with slatted wood sides on which I trained yellow and white delightfully sweet-smelling roses. There were about six 24-foot raised beds lined with 8-inch X 2- inch boards. The beds were 36 inches wide and separated by bricked paths (The bricks were set in sand.)

There were also one or two circular beds. To make a book-sized account short, there were sunny beds and shaded beds, dry beds and damp beds, beds with sweet soil and beds with acid soil. There were gardenia bushes and blueberry bushes and I think I planted a couple of small plum trees (I know I meant to.) There were four or five different mints, horehound, echinacea, begonias, tomatoes, oregano, bush roses, violets, garlic, onion, peppers, and a bunch of herbs and flowers that I have long since forgotten. Oh yes I had one corner dedicated to all the children who left home and were lost. It was full of forget-me-nots and small spruce bushes. And in another corner was a statue of the Virgin Mary where I periodically put cut flowers.

Oh yes, there was a lovely patch of kitchen herbs also. The lady next door was pretty quiet about the plantings except for talking the sheriff’s deputy across the street into spraying weed-killer on the violets which lined the fence on her side (I guess she was afraid they would encroach on her grass which she paid a local company to maintain.) In the front of the house, I ran another 36-inch bed of sage, lavender, chives, and boneset and several flowers that loved the shade of the cedar tree on that end. All-in-all, I think I improved both the looks and the use of the yard. But, as I say, that is in the eye of the beholder.