Life on
the alley continues to involve getting the rental unit ready for a tenant. Dave gave a first showing to a potential
renter. It seemed like a good fit. A woman with grown children, who owns a tea
room and loves to garden. We would be
more than willing to give her free run of the little yard that was devastated
by the French drain project. She is
hesitating because of the noise of the main street. I was dubious about the same thing when we
moved here, but have been happy to discover that it really isn’t that bad, even
in the late afternoon/early evening. We
sit above the street behind a chain-link fence. The fact that the alley is a
dead end at our end means blessed little traffic. The folks across the alley from the rental
are a quiet youngish couple who do park in back of their house (and hubby does
toot goodbye in the mornings, which I find cute). He owns bikes that he rides on nice days, but
his biggest is a quiet Goldwing so it’s not like he’s firing up a Harley at 5
AM.
Because
Amy and I use the ramp at the back of the house and because the dining room and
kitchen face that way, I am more oriented toward the alley than the street from
which you reach our driveway. We
actually sit above that one, too. Night
owl Dave heard a screaming match down there one night, but our bedroom is on
the alley and I heard nothing. Anyway,
because I come and go from the alley and the ramp, which functional, looks a
little institutional I decided to start adding some flowers. It’s hard because there’s essentially no
yard. The French drain guy put down a
lot of gravel at the end of the project last summer because his equipment tore
up the alley and we knew that when the fall rains came it would be a quagmire.
It’s
also a little tricky because that side of the house faces East. We get a lot of morning sun and have
discovered it can get downright hot of a morning, but the house gets its heat
from the direction of the baseball park toward the West. My experience in our previous home was that
the East side is good for fuchsias and impatiens. I’ve got my fingers crossed over some
wonderful smelling purple petunias and a star jasmine. I had Dave bring my Buddha around from the
front of the house. He balked at first,
but like Kevin Costner I told him that if we beautify, the neighbors will as
well.
The house directly across from our house
has a wilderness behind it. A heap of
mulch has begun to grow grass, there’s a stack of broken concrete and some
lumber. One afternoon after the Buddha
come to rest at the bottom of our ramp, I came home from shopping to find the
young couple working in their wilderness.
I had chatted with her over the garbage cans a week or two previously so
she waved hello and introduced her husband who said, “We decided that you were
making your place look good and that maybe you don’t like looking at our mess.” He specifically mentioned the Buddha. After two days they seemed to lose their enthusiasm,
but they also have a small child and I was told has an extensive garden behind
the fence that faces us. I want to
wangle a look-see!
Dave weeded an old bed that has rhododendrons
in it and along which one of the new drains runs. To keep the mulch from running down the driveway
he edged it with cinder-blocks which didn’t look too good, but I had him fill
the blocks with potting soil and plant impatiens and petunias in them, about 30
in all, and they look pretty good. Dave
calls it cinder-block chic. My uncle had a block plant in Greenfield,
Missouri. I would like to think he’d be
happy…or at least laugh.
I threw down some wildflower seeds
that are supposed to do well in the shade and would be grand if they come up
behind the ramp, but I won’t hold my breath.
It’s only our first Spring here and I hope that the place will evolve
into a little secret garden here on the alley.
