When we built this house, we put the rear where the front should be. Back then, when you built a house on top of a hill, you put the front of the house toward the view.
However, we drive up to the back of the house, and everyone comes in the back doors. I don't think anyone has ever come through my front door. There are no steps leading to it, and no real reason to walk around there.
In fact, the only time I know of anyone using the front door, or the small porch there, was one year when the UPS man left a package there during bad weather when no one was home, and I didn't find it for three months.
The back part of the house is where the heat pump is, and we've always kept a flower bed around the heat pump. I started out with perennials, but soon switched to roses only. My husband's grandmother was a prize rose grower, and she gave me starter plants.
The roses never did as well as I wanted. The ground here is Virginia clay, and that doesn't grow things well. Mulch and flower food helped, but since the roses were never strong to start with, they easily caught disease and were home to aphids and Japanese beetles (although come to think of it, I haven't seen Japanese beetles in some time. Maybe the stink bugs ate them.)
Of course, I am older now, and I've some health problems, so weeding and keeping up with this little plot had become something I wasn't doing as well as I wanted.
Monday, the last of Grandma's roses went to the compost pile. My husband had decided he wanted something that looked better there.
It does look better, and once I buy some flower baskets there will be flowers. Also, there are mums in the old whisky barrel.
Of course, all of this could have been avoided if we'd reversed the house to begin with, so that the heat pump was not by the driveway, main entrance, and patio.
Live and learn.
We had something like that in a previous home and we covered it with lattice.
ReplyDeleteSuch an ambitious project! But a great way to herald spring.
ReplyDeleteYou know, there's an ancient episode of Bonanza where a woman who wants to marry Ben (but really wants to get her hands on that big, beautiful house), explains to him why his dining room should be his "parlor" and vice versa. Why not have the more beautiful view from the parlor, where everyone can see it, instead of the barn, which it looks out onto now. He patiently tried to explain to her that no one would want to ride around the house, from the flat area to an incline, to tie up their horses and knock on the door. Then he decided not to marry her.
That's funny about the UPS delivery!
ReplyDelete