Garden Plans | Opinion | athensreview.com

Like most people, I have been enjoying this recent turn of 70 degree weather. I almost feel like I’m back in San Diego, wearing shorts and sandals with impunity in the middle of February. Presumably, our good weather is set to end in a week or so with another arctic blast/snowstorm in the next week or so, but the forecast hasn’t shown that yet. So, Texas weather does what it wants.

I will use the time to continue the landscaping project from last summer. The Missus and I have done well clearing a lot of the overgrowth to the point where I now have a canvas to work with. We went to the Dallas Arboretum and Botanical Garden last weekend – Never been, and haven’t been since the late 1990’s. She’s a plant person who looks after trees. I am a landscape person who watches ponds. We used the trip for ideas and pictures. I don’t even know where I need to be in removing bamboo. As a kid, it’s fun. As an adult, it’s incredibly invasive… and surprisingly “pokey.”

While clearing some of the wilder areas, I found two wooden fence posts, and I realized that they were the posts of a fence that my father built in the 1980s. I have to give credit to my father: he made a good job that was done last. So I tried to implement the original foundation in a new design. Established, but built on a new era. I plan to make the area something of a quiet garden to go out and sit with a cup of coffee while watching the flow of the whole. I have some placeholder items on stage, but I plan to build them this spring.

We also discuss a “tree house for adults:” A place to sit on a raised platform while entertaining company. I had a tree house that I practically lived in during my teenage summers with lights, a television, a Nintendo and a zipline to visit my friend’s tree house next door. It probably won’t be as extravagant this time, but something with a table and chairs a dog bed and a small bookcase would be suitable. I already had “the eye” for my idea that the old game Ewok Village from “Return of the Jedi” is a promising starting model, but I know I’m right.

With the amount of yard we have, I want to have spaces on stage: Each thematic separately, but connected to where walking a few feet brings a new experience. I love the outdoors, and after being away from Corsicana, I often dreamed the fantasy of “if I ever had my old backyard, I would do all kinds of things to it.” Now I have to put my ideas where my mouth is because the yard is right outside my door again, and the weather could not be better to work.

Well, for this week, anyway. Let’s see how this whole “snowshoe” thing goes.