The Saturday Morning Garden Report (Remembrance of Things Past)

One of the best things about the weekend garden (assuming you don't have to go to work) is to see it at different times of the day. Each hour offers a different painting with the light and shade moving forward and retreating as the sun moves across the sky.
This is the tenth anniversary of the garden, so it's probably not surprising that I've spent time thinking about what it looked like that first spring after I bought the house.
There was nothing there but a patch of desiccated dirt in which not even a blade of grass would grow, surrounded by a chain-link fence that had been put up by the developers. (The house -- which was a burned out shell -- had been deeded by the city to a non-profit organization that in turn had rehabilitated and sold it.) On one side of the yard was an identical house that had also been renovated, while on the other was another burned-out shell with a backyard filled with garbage and rats; for reasons that remain inexplicable to this day, the city decided to renovate only three of the four houses that had been decimated by fire at some point, presumably in the 1980s when they were all crack dens. 
The first few times I went out into the backyard (twice to pick up the carcasses of dead stray cats, sadly), I felt very self-conscious, as though the windows of the abutting apartment buildings were all eyes. I wondered if people would scream and yell at me, or perhaps throw things. But I overcame my inhibitions and on a day very much like this went out and began to turn over the soil, which was filled with syringes, lighters, bent spoons and other drug paraphernalia. (Thankfully nobody seemed too concerned, except for a few foul-mouthed little kids who would occasionally laugh and swear at me from their apartments.) Further underground, perhaps 10 or 12 inches, I dug up the cracked remains of the original backyard from 100 years earlier, which was covered in a brick-and-cement patio with (judging from the pipes) some sort of water feature. 
In short order, I became obsessed with the idea of creating something beautiful (and natural) when so much else in the neighborhood was (and still is) more decrepit and forlorn, with very little in the way of trees and parks. (By which I mean the immediate neighborhood; the riverbank is obviously a beautiful park.) But good intentions in gardening don't go very far when combined with limited knowledge, poor soil and the general impatience of one born under the sign of Aries. In those first few years, I killed far too many plants to list, and felt continually dissatisfied, so that I would move and rearrange the plants constantly. But eventually a few things took, and I added hundreds (and possibly thousands) of 40 pound bags of topsoil; I also retrieved old bricks from a dumpster in the neighborhood and from what is now the Costco Harlem and laid a brick path and patio (which I also tore up and relaid at least four times) until, with the addition of some rocks I found in the vacant yard in the course of having it cleaned out and the construction of walls (to keep the rats out), it ended up looking like this. (I should mention that by this point, Stephen had joined me as co-owner of the house, so the current design reflects much more of a shared vision; he was also a strong advocate on behalf of the plants who did not like to be moved, which is to say all of them.)
What's nice these days is that the garden requires only seasonal maintenance. There is much less death; all of the big trees Stephen and I planted three years ago seem to be thriving, knock on wood. (If only the climbing hydrangea would cling to the walls, but alas, that doesn't seem to be in the works, due to the lime in the cement facing of the walls, which apparently burns the tendrils they use to climb.)
I no longer feel embarrassed to walk outside, knowing that for the most part I am hidden under the leaves.

Comments

[Jay]

This is beautiful. I am so envious!

[Matthew Gallaway]

Thanks, Jay -- there are plenty of houses for sale (cheap, by Manhattan standards) in the nabe!