Founding the Tilth

My house is a typical ranch-style from 1962.  It is located in a part of the city called South College Heights.  The streets within a 5 block radius are all named after colleges and universities.  There is a Princeton, Yale and Harvard.  There is a Columbia, Loyola and Vassar.  There is a Dartmouth, Tulane, and Duke.  And there is my street, Baylor.  It is about a block long—however “blocks” are measured-- and is located just north of a very busy avenue. 

It’s not a constant hum and zoom and clatter, but it can get noisy.  Once rush hour traffic is over, the evening and nights are, if not placid, then intermittently so.   

The house seemed a castle to me, after having spent several years renting a small bungalow in the old part of town. 

1200 square feet main level, 1200 square feet basement level.  And the basement was finished, with full bath, TV room, rec room, large laundry room, and not up-to-code bedroom.  There are three bedrooms upstairs with a very nice kitchen to cook in, and a passably comfortable living room.  

It was a very nice environment in which to finish raising my two youngest sons--close to school and shopping, and within a mile of my workplace.  The yards, front and back, are not expansive, but the previous owner had made interesting plantings of shrubs and trees.  The backyard had a garden set up with a drip-system for watering.  I began the usual weekend warrior approach to the yard, doing vegetables in the garden, mowing the large green postage stamp expanses of grass, and ignoring the clutter in the two small side yards, East and West.

My “gardening” could have proceeded along thusly, in Biedermeier fashion, happily, if not smugly, prosaic. 

What turned me into a much more seriously-involved landscaper, rather than just a disengaged gardener can be summed up in simple, brutal fashion: My job environment began to suck. 

2006.  The year that contained both the dawn of hope and the utter ends of despair. 

Next: Toxic co-workers and the Curse of the Spurge!