A fence doesn’t have to be a forbidding expensive picket fence. A chickenwire is much cheaper, and it can look absolutely lovely after you train all manners of things onto it. I recommend you start with http://talkaboutwildlife.ca/profile/?s=1191 Bird Vetch. It’s a hardy flower always growing onto fences and bushes. I love picking those purple finger length flowers in the park, to go with red clovers and white daisies and yellow Birdfoot Trefoil. The park used to have those in plenty until the mowing schedule increased, in spite of the poor city budget, and most of them stopped growing back.

There is a plaza near Bridlewood Mall, with beds of pink roses, the Middle Eastern variety with simpler flowers that are lovely for their yellow centres. It look so good with purple bird vetch mixed in it. First bird vetch, then thorny roses.

I wish the world is a better place. There is this park I really like that I haven’t gone to regularly for a long time because I’m sick of seeing it ruined. I keep picking up beer bottles but people keep leaving here. I can’t climb on the willow tree and have my secret space anymore because the lower limbs have been sawed off, and I’m older anyways. To top it off, today discover a hole in it that looks like it was bore by bugs. I took pictures of it, but I’m afraid of calling city because it’s the last Willow left and I don’t want it cut down (I think they do tend to take the easy way out) if there were some other way to treat it.

Our gardens are like physical extensions of our best, most hopeful selves… ‘tendrils sent out into a sharp-edged world. Of c-o-urse you are feeling crushed, hon.

But as so many of your readers have said before me: your site, this work, continue to inspire green beauty and growth all over the country…

I invite you to sit for a moment and send your hurt heart and mind down along that resolute, little subterranean rhizome connecting you to all the rest of us empathizing green-girls out here!

Let your fool of a landlord and his limitations go. You will find other, better spaces to grow your creative efforts; if the man chooses to remain firmly rooted and obstinate in his own paved-over, mental parking-lot hell, let that be his cross to bear.

Both you- and your rambunctious, feisty plantlets, will surely come up again!

I would have to say that your landlord sounds like a small, misguided, foolish man who may need to be taught how to treat others and their property (after all, the plants are YOUR property, even if the land they are on is not). I am encouraged that he wished to paint a mural, regardless of the motive; he could have chosen simply to cover the wall with a single color or left it blank instead. I think those who do not garden think there is nothing to it–after all, we pass weeds everywhere every day, and they grow and flourish without any care, and we treat them harshly. Your landlord may need to be taught your perspective by way of some lesson close to home. For example, the store he has is something that he has put his time, effort, and money into, and regardless of the fact that he operates it to make money, if it were trashed or vandalized, I am quite sure that he would feel taken advantage of as you do. So maybe he should be told this. Sharing some of your bounty with him may make him aware that real effort goes into it, too. I know the last thing you probably feel like doing is being generous with him, but if he is merely careless and self-interested, you in your infinite wisdom can show him the way to treat you.

Enough of my pontificating. Stay strong and hang in there.

p.s. my neighbor sprinkles cayenne pepper on the front of her property to deter dogs (and it kept the squirrels from digging up my bulbs)! Too bad it won’t do anything for humans…

I’m sorry to hear what happened to your garden … but your thoughts and feelings really helped me to see that I am not the only one who feels that way ..

“… I can’t imagine doing it with only half or a quarter of myself invested. And that’s the kind of world I like to imagine. One where we can all feel safe enough to put our hearts into the things we care about without fear of having it broken. And one where we are all valued and can in turn have a shared sense of entitlement to shaping the world into something we can feel good about…”

I couldn’t have put this any better myself …

~Willdernessgirl~