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Chronicle 4: Impractical things we could not afford:
The Ill-Advised Arbor

Donna's Folly: part the first

We were a one-income household for a year or so - and we're talking about one civil servant's income, here. Ever been dead broke and just longing for something new and lovely to look at? Well, while I am all for sitting around, I'm not one for sitting around waiting for times to change (see The Pond), and the warm-up for The Pond was The Arbor.

Shopping list:

   -One section of the cheapest picket fencing manufactured
   -Three 8-foot long pressure-treated 4x4 posts
   -Two pressure-treated 2x4s
   -Four drive-in fence posts

and in a daring display of wild, irresponsible spending:

   -Two post caps & ball finials

Put all of these things in a 1991 Honda Civic Hatchback with a boxer in it (well, how do you think the bricks for the pond got here?), and drive home blissfully unaware of the idiocy of attempting to cut all those pressure-treated posts with a hand saw from the dollar store.

A word to the wise: never attempt to drive 36" posts into cold blue clay full of oak tree roots. Four blades, a broken sledge hammer handle and many, many bubble baths later, the garden was gracefully framed by, um, a gallows with some picket fence nailed to it.

Back to the store for some 2x2s and bit of ridiculously overpriced gingerbread meant for a screen door. Now dig up a couple of wrought iron brackets and hang baskets of ferns from them and voila! The gallows is transformed into a passable imitation of an arbor. With a sort of a 70's fern bar look to it which quite honestly was not exactly what I had in mind. The good news was that anyone who'd ever so much as read a magazine article on woodworking assured me that the whole contraption would fall down in the first spring breeze.

In a desperate effort to cover this atrocity as quickly as possible, I made a couple of raised beds on each side and filled them with herbs, a climbing Cecile Brunner rose, and a whole lot of honeysuckle and sweet autumn clematis. I retired to my bubble bath, telling myself that Cecile would bloom next year, the vines would just take off like wildfire any year now, and the whole effect would be so charming that my enemies would bite their lips with envy.

A progress report, five years later:

1) I am pleased to report that the arbor has not fallen down, despite being hit by a pickup truck once or twice;
2) In the right light, and early in the year, it actually looks, well, not too bad.
2) For much of the year, the gallows, I mean arbor is no longer visible;
3) That stingy old Cecile never did deign to bloom and was shovel pruned without regret;
4) I have learned that sweet autumn clematis was a very silly thing to plant in a barrel that already had a rose in it. I have since moved the clematis to a much more suitable location where it shows every indication of swallowing up everything in its path, which is exactly what I hoped it would do.
5) Honeysuckle was perhaps not a much less silly choice, as it has a most annoying habit of reaching out and grabbing people as they pass underneath. Just the same, I love the stuff and it's staying there.

Donna's Folly: part the second

Pay attention to dreams. In January 2000, I was home sick for several days with a nasty respiratory infection. Of course, January is the time the rose catalogs begin arriving, and I had plenty of time to study them. One afternoon, in a feverish dream - I kid you not - I dreamt of a roundish bed of yellow and white roses, interspersed with blue delphinium and other blue and white perennials; the whole thing backed by honeysuckle and surrounded by a ring of fluffy blue catmint. Well, I already had the round bed ringed with catmint - in front of the arbor. But for some reason the only yellow rose I'd ever grown was the English rose The Pilgrim.

This was clearly a divine mandate, and before I had fully recovered, I had ordered English roses Charlotte, Windrush, Golden Celebration, and Glamis Castle; a fragrant assortment of roses which, combined with "The Pilgrim", are all the same varying shades of yellow, cream, and white as the honeysuckle. In March, I dug up and saved a wheelbarrow full of herbs, and potted up 6-foot tall specimens of "The Pilgrim", and Heritage.

The next day, I finally had that root-filled mess of a bed in front of the arbor dug out properly and refilled with three feet of lovely rich humus. Imagine a warm, fluffy bed of humus in March, in Cleveland! I felt like rolling in it. I replanted "The Pilgrim", and relocated the long-suffering "Heritage" to a wonderful spot that I hope will be more or less permanent. On April Fool's Day I planted the new roses and replanted the herbs. Over the next month or two, I added a few white Casa Blanca lilies, assorted blue perennials, and of course the delphinium. By the end of June, against a backdrop of honeysuckle, it was clear that this was an inspired combination, if a bit crowded.

Another progress report, three years later:

Did I say "a few white Casa Blanca lilies"? That may have been my intention, but as it turns out, what this little bed really wanted to be when it grew up was a field of white lilies. Whatever was in that humus was exactly the stuff that lilies like best. The roses don't make quite the show I dreamt of, although they're wonderful for cutting. But the lilies! They're just magnificent - the fragrance is intoxicating, and they absolutely glow in the moonlight. I'm not complaining.

And about that arbor...don't miss Chronicle 5: Devastation and Ruin, in which the arbor is torn down.

Chronicle 5: Devastation and Ruin