And I don't like Queen and King palms, I do like the big old Mexican Fan palms and the Canary palms...and quite often our likes and dislikes and tastes change with time. Things that I grew years ago don't interest me now....but may again at some point. I sometimes think that our gardens are windows on our lives, of what we need or are longing for at the moment...suddenly a certain look or feel will strike a chord.....and perhaps it's for something missing in our lives, or being longed for. It's usuaally very difficult for us to understand the likes and dislikes of our fellow beings....a friend had a neighbor who had installed a chain link fence between their two properties.....becky quickly planted shrubs to hide it and the neighbor who installed it informed her that she did not want those shrubs hiding her fence, that they'd "paid good money to put it in and they wanted to be able to see it...."
I listened to a person one day tell me how she did not like trees or even overhanging eaves on her house, needed everything "open" and I'd never heard anyone say that before. To me, trees are protecting and sheltering, buffering....kinda floored me that anyone would think that...lol..
I look across the road and there is my neighbor's house...it does have a creek ruuning behind the property and huge Sitka Spruce along the creek, so, thankfully I see those when looking out my windows....but the rest is grass, just grass mowed to never more than an inch in height and a 12" foundation planting around the house....and she does not much like being outside, but does like being able to look straight out at our house...that's what my solid front border and tall shrubs have been planted for. If they would let me plant just two trees, two maples to frame their house, I would be so happy. I do have hopes for the husband who is retiring soon and is the one who mows that grass with every ounce of OCD that he has. He's going to need more than that to occupy his time and has mentioned the maple that was in front of his mother's house in the upper midwest somewhere....and she is finding things that I'm growing that she likes...so I'm giving her things to perhaps enlarge that 12" foundation planting.....
Still, it's rewarding and comforting to find others who like the same things that we do, but doesn't always happen that way...............
