The Battle of the Boat

I've been trying to plan a garden for the front yard.  At first I was going to make a raised bed around the tree we've got out there, but the tree is really close to both the street and the edge of the border garden that runs the length of our front walk.

So even though part of me was determined to make it work, just so I could have a big, showy spot for my iris plants...the other part of me wasn't satisfied with what I was seeing in my mind's eye.

Last night I measured out a rough rectangle that included the tree in the front left corner...figuring that the irises and other flowers would take up the other three quarters of the area.  I put sticks in the ground to mark the corners.  And this morning when I looked out the window at it...it looked stupid.  Even the finished product in my head, while filled with irises and whatever else I decide to put in there...still looked stupid.  Bill stared at it too, and said he was having trouble visualizing it.  He'd said the same thing a couple years ago when I had this idea of half sinking a small old dingy in part of the yard and having a garden "pour" from the boat.  He couldn't visualize that either.  So we used the little boat for a giant ice bucket for cans and bottles of beer and soda at the cookouts we've had...and that seemed to be the boat's job.

But then this morning, when I was kind of babbling on about the feeling of the garden that I wanted to create...and that I didn't want it to look stupid or awkward...Bill suddenly said "Well if you want to sink the boat, go for it."

(imagine "Ode to Joy" right about now)

And that was it.  I am psyched.  I can see the finished garden...lots of blues and whites to kind of give it a watery feel...and then the other iris colors along the borders of the walkways, where the purpley blue irises have been since Bill's mother and I planted them right after he and I closed on the house. 

Bill's big concern is that it not look dumb, having the boat there.  So, to set his mind at ease, we'll drag the boat around to the front yard and kind of position it the way it'll be once it's "planted."  I think I will make him a little model of the way I want the whole thing to look...just so he can see that maybe it won't look stupid after all.

We'll see.  I think it will be nice and relaxing to look at.  Kind of free-form, spilling out of the boat and making a rough, soft-edge triangle in the front.  I think I want to plant some baby's breath in and among the irises too...I have a pink baby's breath plant...but these would be white...kind of the froth on the waves....we don't live near the beach like we did before we bought this house...but I think I can create a little of the flavor of it.

We'll see.

But at least it's a nice project to start planning...and it looks better in my mind than that rectangle did.

I will let you know how it goes. 

Comments

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Yay - it sounds beautiful, Jayne.