My Garden Renewed - May 2008

Here is a picture from my renovated, revived, reinvigorated backyard garden. I took it on May 4, 2008 to show to my Dad in the nursing home. I never got the chance. The crape myrtle in this picture sprang up some years ago, an offspring somehow of another crape myrtle at the other end of the garden! My friend John told me what kind of tree it was. He collected and studied crape myrtles.

In future posts you'll see lush magenta blossoms on the branches. Right now you can see the multi-limbed trunks, their mottled gracefulness newly exposed by a recent pruning. I couldn't see the trunks of the tree from my basement studio until recently, when I had an old, sick Alberta Spruce removed that stood between me and the crape myrtle. Now I look out at it all the time.

The white birdhouse is from Carroll Gardens, a nursery and garden center in Westminster, MD, where, it turns out, John used to buy crape myrtles. David and I went there a few Sundays ago and walked the winding paths around all kinds of shrubs and trees, then tromped through the greenhouses to the office. There was this little house, hammered together out of old wood, for $8. I loved its uneven dimensions and its little Victorian roof, and I think it looks just right in my crape myrtle.

The birdhouse has no residents yet, though two possible renters (a couple?) did inspect it a few weeks ago, chattering loudly to each other as they looked in the doorways of all the birdhouses I have in my yard. Apparently none of these abodes met their requirements, and they flew away.

Dad, this is for you.