Seasons #5 - Lemons to Lemonade—Again
When I began this blog again, one of my earlier posts was entitled Lemons to Lemonade. I talked about an unavoidable situation that we were able to turn into something special. This is another unhappy situation that we have been faced with. The arbor in our front yard is about 20 years old and beginning to deteriorate. We know it needs to come down but we wanted to save part of it. The corner posts are warped and rotted on the bottom, but the lattice, hand made by my hubby, is still in good shape. As I mentioned in another earlier post, we recently lost our leyland cypress trees due to a disease. Not only did these trees offer shade and privacy to our back yard and back porch, but they also blocked a lot of the dust from mowing, all of which affected our ability to use our back porch. So we put our heads together to decide what to use the panels for, and came up with what we thought was a good use for them.
The first photo shows my husband beginning the process of removing the panels. The second photo shows the panels in their new home. We placed them strategically to be a dust block, and to give us a nice view of the (we hope) beautiful roses on the lattice. I designed a topper, which my husband cut out, put together and installed, shown in the third photo.
We used recycled lumber from our old deck when we installed these panels in their new home, but my hubby didn’t like the look of the old white boards. So he covered them with unpainted weathered recycled boards that matched the lattice. We both liked the look of the finished panels, shown in the second photo looking out from our back porch. We put a strip of fencing between the boards, and planted a mandevilla, which by now has climbed to the top and is looking very pretty.
We went to Lowe’s looking for roses, and found both of these on sale. The red one is a climbing Don Juan, and the orange one is a Westerland rose. We aren’t exactly rosarians, so say a little prayer for these roses.
There are two things that I have trouble resisting: a new bundt cake recipe (yum!), and a flower that is calling my name. And this pretty blue iris called my name. After we planted the roses, it just seemed like this would be a good companion plant. The last photo here shows the back path as it looks now. The bushes on the berm beside the panels are a tall viburnum that we hope will help with dust control, as well as have pretty white flowers in the spring. All in all, we are both happy with the way this project turned out.
Final thought:
When we are young, the world is new and all our dreams are going to come to fruition. As we get older, we begin to realize things change and, through no fault of our own, our dreams may need to be modified. We loved the arbor and the romantic element that it added to our front yard. But we love that some of that romantic element has been added to our back yard, and we look forward to a new chapter in the life of our front yard.