My back fence neighbor had all of his trees cut down yesterday. These trees had been the frame and backdrop for my garden for 23 years. Back then the magnolia grandiflora was about 15 feet tall and the arborvitae hedge was tightly clipped to about 8 feet.
All these years later the hedge was dying and most of the individual trees would have come down at some point. But the magnolia was a grand dame, 50 feet tall, in glorious bloom, and home to countless birds and squirrels. Apparently my neighbor didn’t like its leaves when they fell.
Yesterday I alternated between crying wildly and staring down into my neighbor’s newly visible living room windows. I probably looked crazed and dangerous, which gave me great satisfaction.
The change is stark. I can see the street behind my neighbors’ houses now. Power lines, garbage cans, kids on bikes. At night the garage lights from houses on that street now flood my backyard. I hadn’t realized what work that magnolia and hedge were doing to protect my bats and bugs from light pollution.
Noah stood on the porch this morning and said he kind of liked it. It is more open, and you can see more sky. I do not like it one bit, but I am reassured that someone can find some beauty in it.
Through all my staring across the new void I realize one reason it looked so bad was the scale was now all off. My plants were all placed and pruned to create a pleasing space against looming green walls. Those walls came down, and everything looked wrong.
I spent a lot of time with my saw and pruners today, bringing plants down so they look more natural against their new, lower wall. The top row came off the espalier apple, and the unruly non-native viburnum came out entirely. I let the lime green cotinus play the role of screening tree (ha) and brought everything else below fence line.
I slapped trellis up above the fence top and tied in Virginia creeper for now. I also bought and planted two new lonicera sempervirens to hopefully screen out the neighbor’s house.
I think I’m done with my tears. Looking out the window is still a gut punch, but I don’t want to cry about it.
My grandmother made a sculpture of two male wrestlers in bronze. I’ve never liked it because it feels like fighting, and I didn’t want that in my garden. So it lived under a bush in the way back. But today the anger and movement in the sculpture spoke to me. I put it in a birdbath on top of a brass tub under an arch of the espalier. The water laps the fighter’s feet. When you look out the bay window your attention is caught by the water and the art, and maybe not so much by the neighbor’s house, gas grill, and beach umbrella.
That’s the hope, anyway.
The garden last week:
The garden today:
A Gardener's Lot 