DAYLILY Blog | This Fence on Daylily Haiku Thursday! | a girl and her garden

<posted November 6, 2014> So we paved paradise and put up a parking lot. Actually, a fence.

It's like what happens when you paint a room and get a bit on the ceiling. No matter how hard you try, you always notice that one spot.

That one spot (about 20 of them, actually) was driving me crazy. When the fence went up this week and I walked out in the garden, it was a totally different experience. I was focused on what was INSIDE the fence, not on what was OUTSIDE, and out of my control. I like my neighbors a whole lot, but I've learned over the last three gardening summers that I like my privacy more.

This fence puts a limit on my scope. It gently says, "here are your boundaries - stay in here." With the open plan of our subdivisions backyards, its easy to see/think that your backyard is the whole swath. And my type-A vision sees that whole swath as "ours." No matter how fabulous my fraction of the swath is, I still notice that broken broomstick in the above picture that I want to sneak over and yank out of the ground every time I step outside.

Maddening.

This fence changes the shape and the elevation of the gardens - at least my perception of it. The beds seem taller, the plants seem closer to me, the grass seems greener and the hardscapes look more grand. The installers got a kick out of all the plant markers; I chatted up daylilies, of course, noting there are now almost 80,000 registered varieties and how I show some of the plants I grow competitively. At most, they were mildly entertained and very gracious.

There are two 5' gates on each side with self-closing hinges, which makes it very convenient to continue to host garden tours and for the dogs to discover their own backyard safely, without a leash.

Although I no longer can ~~pretend~~ imagine the community backyards are all mine, all of this makes a ton of sense on many levels. These are my boundaries.