My garden is a work in progress. The front yard has rhododendrons and bark mulch (refreshed this weekend) and a birch tree and an arbutus and a big pine tree and some shrub things. There’s a clump of chives pretending to be ornamental, too, and a yellow climbing rose and a big red rose against the house. The bottom of the red rose bush is frequently deer-munched. The back has more rhododendrons surrounding a patio with a square of flowerbed, and a little creek that comes through in the winter rains. Then there is a rock wall I’m still making as I build up dirt behind it to create a second level, and behind that, I’m levelling out the hillside a bit. Then it merges into Mill Hill Park, and I can’t do any more alterations. 
Optimism rules! There are lots of tiny flowers in the back square, surrounding a palm. Little violets and forget-me-nots and other flowers I can’t remember the names of that I got because they are purple/blue. (I want a square of tranquillity for when I come home from work and sit out with a drink or cup of tea, and apparently blue flowers are the most soothing to look at.)
There are planters with purple-pink geraniums and other vivid coloured flowers and potted palms and some things that lasted over winter, and a golden bamboo (potted) and a heavenly bamboo (potted). The optimism comes in with the impulsive purchase of seedling plants: peppers, spaghetti squash and zucchini. I’m an inept vegetable gardener, but will try again this year. Behind the shed, I hacked away at the blackberries for two years, and discovered a garden plot must have existed at one point: I found rhubarb and Swiss chard (I’m pretty sure). We bought some chicken wire and tall posts, so my husband is going to rig something up to surround the vegetable plot to keep the deer out. How I’m going to get in is another question…
We have hummingbirds and squirrels and deer in the garden. We have strawberries that are either wild or escaped and went wild. (No, I don’t know what they taste like—the birds have beat me to them every year.) We have azaleas and the last of the daffodils along the driveway. I have a clematis in a container and another one that came with the house. We have ferns and blackberries, not necessarily by choice, and we have St. John’s Wort, which only makes me depressed. I hate that stuff. Along the other side of the house there are more rhodos and two plants I don’t know the names of—one blooms pink, the other yellow. Oh, we have a magnolia tree at the bottom of the driveway and it’s currently dropping large petals everywhere.
We have a lot of stuff growing here; most of it was in when we bought the house, but I’ve added to it. I’ve also tried my best to tame it; the little old lady who lived here for a long time didn’t (or couldn’t) keep it up, and it was totally overgrown.
I will probably be trying some tomatoes again. I failed last year, producing just one tomato on each plant! Sad. Sadder still, just as I was going to pluck and eat them, some critter guessed my intentions, and beat me to it by hours.
My knees and my thighs hurt today because of my garden. I have weeded and spread mulch and weeded some more and put down newspaper and rocks to do a pre-emptive weed control between one of the sheds and the back rhodos. I hope to get that area settled down and then I’ll put something over it to get it presentable. My garden has a pair of chairs and a table in wrought iron. There is another arbutus that I’m encouraging to grow because it will add some more privacy, shielding the neighbour’s view into my favoured sitting spot. But today, for the first time this year, I looked around and I could see this summer’s potential. Especially at the back, it was looking pretty, and it was a lovely place to be.
Gardening is all about patience, and it also about hope.
