The photos I took of the view from the bedroom window make it easy for me to create a review the garden(s) in 2015. When January 1 dawned in Heath there had been snow falls, notably the great Thanksgiving 2014 blizzard, but things looked bright. On that New Year’s Day we were also considering a move to Greenfield which we had been pondering for a couple of years.
This was the view for most of February in 2015. Snow and snow and snow. Frigid temperatures and wind most of the time.
February just wouldn’t leave and this view did not change substantially all month. The only color was down at Smith College and the annual spring Bulb Show.
April brought some snow melt, but it also brought ice!
And yet only two days later it looked like winter’s back was finally broken. There were additional snow flurries and cover, but we felt spring had arrived. And we were seriously looking at houses in Greenfield.
Lilac season arrived in the middle of May – as is traditional. Apple blossoms everywhere. By the end of May we were the proud owners of a smaller house on a much much smaller property in Greenfield.
We were immediately so busy, including getting ready for the Annual Rose Viewing, that I never even took a photo of the June view in 2015, but there wasn’t much change from 2014. The Rose Viewing was held in the rain! The magic was broken. I always said it never rained on the Rose Viewing, at least not between the hours of 1 and 4 pm, but on June 28, 2015 there was rain!
One of the reasons we were so busy in June was we immediately began planting the new Greenfield Garden. We began with shrubs, hydrangeas, lilacs and viburnams on the southside of the house. We also planted the Hellstrip in front of the house. Everywhere we used the lasagna method of planting in our poor soil.
July was a busy month of setting up lasagna beds and starting to move the 10 yards of compost and loam to ameliorate the dense clay soil. New shrubs came into bloom, and so did some of the perennials moved down from Heath.
With the help of landscape designer Julie Moir Messervy’s Home Outside Palette app, we also started planting shrub beds in the back yard.
The only July photo of the Heath landscape shows that we were keeping up with lawn mowing. My husband is dreaming of a Greenfield garden that will need no mowing within two years. He is putting us on a fast track of garden building.
By the end of August we think we have a buyer. We keep mowing the lawn.
In the meantime we had a fence installed along half of the edge of our neighbor’s driveway. Gardens need infrastructure.
September arrives but the late summer garden is still in bloom in Heath, cosmos, japanese anemones and achillea “the Pearl’. These will stand in for all the other blooms in Heath.
Asters from Heath are now blooming in Greenfield, along with many other perennials including Alma Potchke aster, Joe Pye Weed, artemesia lactiflora, geums, and dahlias. Hydrangeas, too, of course.
These tough late-bloom pink mums are blooming in both Heath and Greenfield, as are the very late blooming Sheffield daisies.
As the bloom season ends a new chapter begins in our garden life as new owners take over End of the Road Farm. Will they change the name? That beautiful property is also going into a new chapter with an energetic family who have some wonderful ideas – and we are happy for them, and happy for ourselves who now only have one garden to devote ourselves to.
Everything changes! That has been my mantra for many months. And aren’t we lucky that all these recent changes have been good and happy ones.
I will miss seeing the views from your bedroom window. I remember last year seeing much the same photo for several months and feeling sorry that the snow and winter didn’t seem to want to leave your area. But change can be exciting, and I’m looking forward to seeing the new garden progress. And I’m sure your husband won’t miss the mowing!
Rose – We got several wonderful Christmas presents – compost and new trees. It a good thing I have a new exercise class to keep me busy while I wait for planting season.
That change from April 10 to April 12 to May 17 is a reminder of why we never tire of the magic that is spring. Wow!
I was amazed myself to see the changes. This View from the window was initially intended to provide my poor memory with clues to the weather each year.
Love seeing the changes Pat! When Peter and I had our open house in Brooklyn in early April 2013, we came up here and stayed in Cavalier cottage to get out of our Brooklyn Realtor’s way. We were astonished to wake up and find it snowing! A month later we moved here and almost missed the tulips! Love living here in Franklin County!!