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I finally had my slice of heaven! A four acre plot of land in the mountains of Pennsylvania where we built our first home. It had been part of a farm and most of it had been a horse pasture. There was an old silo in one corner almost obliterated by bramble roses, some mature and thoroughly neglected apple trees stood at the back of the house and the remains of a stonewall along one edge of the property gave the place a sense of the past meeting the future. The rest was open field. We saw great potential.
What we didn’t see was the foot of clay soil covered by two inches of top soil and the multitude of rocks hidden everywhere. We wanted to start our very own arboretum with a diverse planting of trees common and rare. But everywhere we dug a hole there were rocks.
“Well,” said Tommy, my supremely optimistic husband. “Now we have enough rocks to fix up that stonewall.”
“You mean enough to make the wall surround the whole place.” I grumbled as we hauled wheelbarrow after wheelbarrow of the heavy things. With most of the rocks gone we were down on soil so off we went to get a delivery of top soil. Do you know what they consider top soil in the Pocono mountains? Neither did I. It wasn’t any better than the fill the builders used.
“It’ll be all right. Trees have to survive in their native soil if they are to be hardy.” Tommy insisted.
I had my doubts but I went ahead and ordered a bunch of yearling trees being money was on low supply at the time. Do you know how big yearlings are? Well, I didn’t. A foot long at most, these little guys were.
“Since we can’t dig big holes anyway with all the rocks in the way, it’s fine.” Tommy stated with a shrug. Did nothing get this man down? No, nothing.
We planted the sticks and left them to nature and for our neighbors to snicker at. Half survived the first winter intact. The trees I mean, not the neighbors. The others were chewed down by deer and rabbits. Yes, there was a point when I first moved to the mountains when I loved to see a deer walk slowly across my path but that was before my path was lined with Hosta, or as I call them, Deer Chocolate.
Thus came our plan to build a fence between our place and the rest of the world. Do you know how high deer can jump? Well, we didn’t. They kept coming right on through. They were here first, you see. We were in their path to...where is it that deer go to anyway? Heck if I know! But come they would and the more I planted the more they paused to take a nibble. And rutting season! Oh, but how they destroy trees by rubbing their antlers on the bark. Thus the need for cages.
Deer aren’t all bad though I learned after a few years. The Catalpa trees they had nibbled down to nothing grew back better than they were. They usually grow straight and spindly but they now had been forced to branch out forming a very pretty, wide-canopied tree. Of course that was the only good thing they ever did for me.
Deer weren’t the only ones to contend with. The raccoons ate my entire crop of corn. The moles left mounds of soil in the lawn. The woodchuck decided to make his very smelly home under my porch. The fox left bits of rabbit all over the yard but I didn’t cry about that. The rabbits took all my lettuce, cabbage and they nibbled at my Asiatic lilies. The skunk...well, he really only walked through the yard but he stinks! And the opossum is just too ugly.
Some places in the yard never dried up even in hot summer weather. How could this be? It didn’t make sense until we had a builder come in to make a workshop for Tommy.
The builder said “You got yourself a spring there. About three gallons a minute. Pretty darn good if you want a pond. Not so good if you want to build a pole barn.”
Lemons into lemonade, we had him dig a hole for a pond instead. It wasn’t even filled and the frogs were making their home, calling for mates and laying eggs. The blue heron that showed up out of nowhere had himself a bit of a feast.
The winter here is tough, too. Bitter cold, blustery winds, freezing rain, a predictable January thaw that heaves plants right out of the ground. It’s truly a miracle I have the garden I have. The place is completely unrecognizable from what we started with. Our sticks are now thirty, forty and fifty foot high trees. We’ve made a truce with the wild life. We just protect what we don’t want them to have and plant a few more strawberries than we need to share with the field mice. My flowers and shrubs thrive though it’s beyond me how. Mother Nature must be watching out for me.
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Author Bio Box: Glory Lennon
 To find more on gardening visit
http://www.helium.com/user/show/32782.
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