I am so happy that author Julia Robb stopped by my
blog today. She recounts an amusing story of her West Texas gardening trials
and tribulations. However it is a journey of much reward in the end, for while
her garden refused to grow, her impressive body of literary work took hold and
bloomed. She tells us about her latest book, as well. -Linda Lee Greene,
Author/Artist
The Oak Tree
From Julia
Robb, Author
My garden saga began when I moved to my parent’s home
in Marshall, Texas in 2004, after events had beaten the heck out of me. I had
left a Maryland reporting job for a Louisiana reporting job, because Louisiana was
nearer to Marshall. But the second morning on the road I took my chocolate lab for
a walk, and he jerked me. I fell, shattering my leg. That led to a Near Death
Experience, which I tell in its full detail in my latest book, SUPERNATURAL
PHENOMENA. Readers can find the book at https://www.amazon.com/SUPERNATURAL-PHENOMENA-Julia-Robb-ebook/dp/B09256BZ82
I didn’t get
along with the Louisiana folks and got fired. Then, I got home to Texas just in
time to see my father’s Parkinson’s disease go from bad to worse. I needed
cheering up, so I looked for a house (one I could afford). A miracle—I found
it. But the house had problems.
There was nothing behind the tattered
wallpaper but board and the home’s former owners had covered the ceilings with commercial
acoustic tile. Linoleum covered the sunroom floor. The 1940 yellow-brick,
two-story house was on a nice street, but nothing grew in the front yard but
scrubby, yellowy grass. According to neighbors, the renters who lived there before
I showed up never watered the grass, or planted anything (which I could see),
but they did haul a plastic kiddie pool to the front yard and splashed around
while guzzling endless Coronas. I renovated all 1,600-square feet, and then faced
doing Something to the vast wasteland beyond the front porch.
Question: What
did I always want in the way of a garden? Forget gardens. I had always wanted a
tree that towered over everything—hundreds of feet of green shade. I wanted a 500-year-old
Downton Abbey-type tree.
I thought, “Maybe I can have that tree? Maybe at
least a 30-foot tree?” I didn’t know anything about trees. I had never planted
a tree or even had trees because I grew up in West Texas, which gets a maximum of
20-inches of rain each year. (Marshall gets 50-plus).
As soon as I
got this tree idea, I was inspired and zoomed off to the nursery, only to discover
none of the trees were more than five-feet-tall.
A grizzled laborer said, “Lady, nurseries don’t sell no 30-foot trees. You can
try somewheres else, but you ain’t gonna find nothing that tall.” On the good side, he said the tree I liked was a Red
Oak, long-lived, hardy and tall (eventually).
I gave up and shoved the tree inside my Toyota (although half of it hung
out the window) and raced home to the waiting (male) neighbor. Bless Mike’s
heart. Digging the hole was convict labor because dirt in my front yard is
hard-packed clay. When we sat the tree in the hole, that five feet was pitiful
looking; better than nothing, but pitiful.
Then my real challenges began. It wasn’t long before I discovered that grass
refused to grow beside the oak. Clay topsoil will not hold moisture. So I had
this little, bitty tree which reached my nose, but was surrounded by dirt. I
solved that problem by hauling wheelbarrows of rocks to my yard and dumping
them beside the tree. That created a sort-of Japanese look: A tiny tree
surrounded by rocks. The yard wasn’t looking like an English manor.
After fuming about the vast
wasteland, it dawned on me I could plant other green things—back to the nursery
to buy irises. I lined the sidewalk with purple irises, but they took turns
blooming for two weeks each spring, and that was it—not near good enough.
I searched garden books and found an English manor house with roses
surrounding the main entrance. That’s it! Climbing roses! That was the answer. So
I bought an iron trellis that circled halfway around my front door, and I
closed the half circle with wire. The Don Juan climbing red roses looked like
my vision of heaven. After they grew around the trellis, I rejoiced in the beauty
and the smell. Then black spot hit.
My heart was broken, but I was not going
to be beaten down by rose disease. I cut the roses down and planted a clematis
vine. That worked splendidly. After several years the vine grew all around the
trellis and the tiny white blooms smelled just as good as roses.
Inspired again, I planted a 12-foot-long garden of perennials (zinnias)
between the front door and sidewalk, on the opposite side of the oak. I thought
I wouldn’t have to do anything; just plant, and the tall pink flowers would
grow, faithfully, each year. Yes, when they bloomed, the zinnias were
beautiful. They got taller each year, but so did the weeds, which flourished.
Eventually, my flower bed looked
like an empty lot and I didn’t want to spend my free time on my knees. I forced
myself to pull up the zinnias by the root (that hurt me, because I believed the
flowers cried when I did it), and planted another tree. But the tree had to be a
dwarf to avoid electric lines running over that part of the yard, so I planted
a Crape Myrtle. Crape Myrtles produce pink blooms from summer until
frost and usually quit growing at 12-feet. Guess what! My tree is three years
old and has never bloomed.
Then last month a freak, five-day
storm may have killed the clematis vine. Right now, on April 5, every single leaf
is brown. I have no idea if the vine will come back. My neighbor swears it’s
dead. If it’s really dead, I’m going to plant disease resistant climbing roses.
Now let me tell you about the
lantana, which is a perennial verbena plant with a red or yellow bloom. I
planted two lantana plants with yellow blooms, one on either side of my yard,
beside the front sidewalk. They’re beautiful when they bloom, but the plant
dies off each winter. In spring, you have to cut off the skinny limbs to make
way for new growth, leaving huge circles of nothing but dirt until the plant
decides to wake up.
Oh brother! Right now, I have in
the front yard two large circles of dirt, a mutant Crape Myrtle and a possibly/probably
dead brown vine.
No sign of iris blooms. Well, maybe
one.
I don’t seem to be a natural
gardener, although I am stubborn.
I do have one
redeeming piece of beauty in the yard. Every year, for 16 years, while I failed
at gardening, the oak tree grew, and I wrote novels (https://juliarobb.com/). I didn’t believe the tree would continue to grow,
but it did. Before I knew it, the oak was as high as my house, and I never
dreamed it would go on growing, but now it’s as tall as the house plus half as
much again. And there is an extra benefit—each fall the tree flames with color.
My oak tree almost makes up for the
vine, the roses and the zinnias.
***
SUPERNATURAL PHENOMENA
Julia Robb began collecting psychic experiences from her
Facebook friends and found them so intriguing she decided to put them together
in a book.
One friend told her about a shadow spirit who
flowed across the bedroom floor and physically attacked him, and another about
a malevolent spirit who lived in his boyhood bathroom.
One mother lost her beloved only son to an
accidental overdose, but was not spiritually alone before or afterward. Spirits
kept appearing to her, and she kept repeating (about who we consider dead),
“They’re Alive, They Really Are!”
Julia herself has had psychic experiences, and she
has stories to tell us.
#SupernaturalPhenomena, #Paranormal,
#WestTexas, #OakTrees, #Gardening, #ClimbingRoses, #Zinnias, #JuliaRobb,
#LindaLeeGreene
