November 14, 2006

mary, mary quite contrary...

to date, the garden has had more attention than anything in the house.

first a little background
i am a born and bred new yorker but somehow have planting in my soul,
we lived in soho for 25 years prior to moving to crown heights and i had a kind of amazing garden on our fire escape which ran the full width of the loft
(while it was still considered to be "bad soho" we actually grilled out there)
having "real" outdoor space was a huge part of moving to brooklyn,
and for a while we were only considering houses with south or west gardens so that there would be as much sun as possible (as in the longest growing season)
but this area (of crown heights and prospect heights) is very special in that the lots are 131' deep, which means (among other things) that the back portion of the garden remains unshaded by the house
hence, i found a north garden that would work for me.

moving from a loft to a brownstone as a painter poses its own special issues,
such as... where do you put the studio????
for a while it was going to be the entire third floor
(begging the question of where the "guest room" would actually be)
and we were planning on putting our bedroom on the ground floor with doors opening into the garden.

but after spending time in this house, i realized that i didn't want to torture the top floor into a studio,
that it would be much better to leave the inherent design of the house intact
and since we had such a large back yard, there would be ample room to build out the ground floor to accommodate my studio. (which will basically occupy the space where the grape arbor is now)

you can click any image to see it larger, it will open in a pop-up window

the backyard, first day we saw the house in march	the back of the house & the grape arbor	second visit in may, from the 3rd floor
it's july, it's ours and it's completely overgrown	clearing the land, by hand, mostly pulling, some hacking	cleared but leaving some privacy intact
some of the 10 contractor bags of garden "debris" awaiting disposal	sometimes i find it impossible to believe i'm in the city	very few treasures discovered, like my fellow bloggers i mostly dug up glass & bottle caps
the beginnings of a garden: zinnias, basil, arugula, begonia (didn't make it), sage, parsley	yup, i think i'm in the country	adding tomatoes (yes a little young for an august planting), dill, cilantro and oregano
finally realized zinnias are cutting flowers: the more you cut them, the more they bloom	my studio, under the grape arbor	it is not possible to be out here without burning punk; we have killer mosquitos
yes! some day there will be tomatoes	mary, mary, quite contrary...	i can almost taste them
does anyone know what vine these berries come from?	i told you there would be tomatoes, fried & green & delicious	at night in november

so the first thing i did was attack the garden,
this consisted of whacking away with a few rudimentary tools and pulling up as many weeds as possible.
the earth, in some parts had a rather clay like consistency, so when i made the planting bed i mixed in everything i could find that was left by previous tenants, plus what i had brought from home: potting soil, peat moss, manure, etc. in no particular proportion...
it seems to have worked

we had to call a plumber to have the water turned on, so i had a hose connection put in the basement which has a back entrance to the garden.
(this will be particularly useful when this area becomes my studio as i plan to use the basement to store paintings)
we kind of jerry rigged it through the wall so that we could keep the basement door closed with the hose attached
what a luxury to be able to water with a hose (love all those spray settings) after endlessly carrying watering cans to and from my fire escape
and with the "L" bar that g/ put on the wall to coil the hose on, i feel positively suburban.

there was also a tenacious vine
(the one that has those beautiful berries)
covering almost everything
while it made for a great privacy screen it also engulfed anything resembling a tree
and it turns out, as scrawny as they are
we do have some trees
and one of them appears to be a fig tree

there were a lot of rocks & stones (and glass) to be cleared,
a lot of debating over what was weed and what wasn't
and a lot of slugs and earth worms encountered,
yes the big fat ugly ones, that for a brief moment i considered adding to my indoor compost
but i stopped myself in the nick of time:..
why add strange creatures to an already thriving environment?
my worms are about 1/4 as thick, i think they would have become breakfast.

sidebar:
within 24 hours of clearing our lot, our neighbor to the right had done his.

i spent the better part of the summer, surrounded by punk
(warding off the attack of the killer mosquitos),
painting under the grape arbor.
in a word: in heaven

and i have spent the better part of the fall on frost guard
hoping that my tomatoes, carefully carried back from fire island, would ripen.
(sad but true, no one had tomato plants for sale around here in august)
at a certain point i opted for fried green tomatoes instead of waiting (and praying) for ripe & red, and they were fabulous.

it's november and we are still eating the arugula,
seasoning with the basil, dill, cilantro, oregano and parsley
and reveling in ravioli with sage butter.

Posted by neene at 12:45 AM | Comments (11)
Categories: garden

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