CindySue's blog: My Little Lot

OK - I can't see the picture while I'm writing this so I'll probably have to take a few stabs at describing the situation.

The yellow outlines are shade from trees on the property north of me and behind me.

The big purple shade circle in front would be morning shade from the huge old trees in the BACKyard of the house across the street. Them's some big trees!

The slanty lined boxes are slopes. The one right behind the house is steep and drops about 5 feet. The one at the back only drops about 2 feet into a sort of pit at the back of the lot behind mine.

The green circle at the southeast corner of the porch is a boxwood. I have nothing else but grass and weeds in the front.

The green circle at the back corner of the property is an evergreen. That my former neighbor planted. I don't know why. Yes, it's on my property. Same guy tore out a beautiful honeysuckle. Yes, on my property. I don't know why. I think he thought he was "helping" and being "nice" but he moved, thank God. He was the reason I hadn't done anything with this property. Aside from the boxwood. Had he messed with my boxwood...I don't know what I would have done but it wouldn't have been pretty.

The "landing pad" - oh my. I call it that because there is nothing on it but weeds and a little grass. If you put a big X on it, it would look like a helicopter landing pad. It's like a huge, flat raised bed or planter. Projecting straight out from the end of the driveway. It drops off approximately 6 or 7 feet on the south side, about 5 feet on the west side and has stairs that sort of follow the slope on the north side. It gets full sun, all day long. Hot as a pistol. Same clay/rock. Drains like a sieve. And the retaining wall bits are railroad ties and the back (west) wall has some problems. It had a tree growing out from between the railroad ties that simply would not die and I didn't deal with that properly. I thought it was gone. Twice. Then I was sick for quite a while and didn't, during that extended period of time, ever go down into the back yard nor notice what it was doing. The wall is solid but bulging at the point where the "trunk" of that tree was and will have to be replace at some point over the next few years. Fortunately, the drainage has done a fantastic job of maintaining those walls. They're old.

The driveway is all concrete and also hot as a pistol, all summer long. Being right against the house and flat makes for a lot of reflected heat and that portion of it gets sun all day, too. Fortunately, that's the side my outside faucet is on so I want to figure out how to add container plants that won't be blown away by the wind tunnel.

The wind tunnel is exactly that and that portion of the driveway and that side of the house, which sits on a high foundation and full basement, get the full blast. The landing pad gets wind but the tunnel comes up, through a sort of hollow, so the landing pad is actually not as windy down at its ground level. The wind is already on an upward trajectory coming up from the hollow, hits that tall retaining wall and sort of jumps over it, for the most part. So THAT'S a good thing. The boxwood probably gets the most violent wind that comes up the tunnel because it's extremely turbulent right there and where it hits that end of the porch. I suppose, from coming up and then slamming into that side of the house it just gets all mixed up and goes nuts.

The property has a lot of interesting features and three distinct microclimates, between the landing pad, the front yard which is practically ideal and the backyard which is...well...in many ways, it's ideal as well because the wind hits the slope on the south side and sort of glides over it. It doesn't jump over it but the slope into the neighbor's yard and another downward slope into the yard of the house on the other side keeps the wind moving in a pretty steady upward direction.

The wind tunnel is unique because it catches wind from the south, the east and the west, due to the topography of a rolling portion of a golf course, woods and then on the other side of all of that is the lake so - flat as a pancake.

The north side of the back yard is also a retaining wall down from that neighbor's property. With a difference of about 3 or 4 feet.

All of the bits that aren't the slopes are flat. There's a slight downward grade, front to back, on each level, but if you didn't know that, you wouldn't notice.

SOOO - it's tiny. The perfect size for me, since I'm not a young'un anymore, but what to do, what to do, what to do with this little plot of land that I love. I love it all. The wacky little lot, the house that was originally something else - not sure what but it has no interior load-bearing walls and is of a sort of craftsman style with oak floors and big chunky trim on the inside and a full porch with craftsman style columns. It's suffered some abuse and sloppy hacking but I like it anyway.

It actually looks nice mowed and edged, just as it is, but I want to do something with the landing pad and will be planting a string of 3 hydrangeas across the front and some portugal laurel across the north end of the porch - assuming my plan to harden them works. The one thing I sort of resent is having nowhere to plant anything on the south side of the house but I gotta plan to keep the laurels alive, get them established and harden them up so, wish me luck. And if anybody has any ideas about what the heck to do with that landing pad, please speak up. I love the idea of it but with nothing on it, it's just an eyesore, seen from all directions save one. From the front, it just looks like lawn but even from that point of view, it seems "wrong". This is such a green, wooded and lush area that it just seems off. The evergreen in the background helps but MAN - I do not like that tree. It's some kind of fir or spruce or something. Something that's going to be 100 feet tall and my responsibility. POSSIBLY with bag worms! It shot roots deep during a 5 year drought and has been growing like a weed since the rain resumed.

Can somebody teach me to love this tree - please? Tell me something awesome about evergreens. I love evergreen shrubbery - I don't know what it is about evergreen trees that I don't like. Prove me wrong. Please. There were two things I hated, as a kid. One was bag worms and the other was cottonwood borers. Have you ever seen one? They just look like the devil himself shipped them OUT of he** because they're so freaky. Look them up. If they're not ugly enough for you, consider the fact that they're also HUGE. Or, at least, they were in Kansas. Their Latin name even sounds like an evil alien species on Dr. Who or Star Trek - Plectrodera scalator.

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