city paradise

by nell simone
(syracuse, ny)

our little world is our paradise. we started by taking down a rusted old swing set, and then saying "hmmm" where to start. Mike and I met late in life, my children grown and gone, and after living all over the dag gone world (army brat and huge travel buff) I decided to stop and smell the flowers. OURS!

We started with hauling rocks from a falls nearby, we would go every few weeks and just take a few here and there and then lined up a garden in the back near the fence...that was not enough...suddenly we spent each and every weekend at the local nursery and our yard became our sanctuary.

We live in Syracuse, NY. Mike all his life. He works at the University, and I work as a trainer for a non profit agency that provides services to persons with developmental disabilities. Our jobs, in our eyes can be stressful. But once we are in our yard and looking at the beauty we allowed to grow, amazing things happen. We find peace and we have new little friends, like humming birds near our bee balm, and dragon flies, and butterflies.

Rather than purchase knick knacks for our home, (who needs these things, really??) we find yet another amazing plant to let join our back or front yard ...


People on our street are hard working poor. (most of us are!) They see us trying to make a go of it and they become inspired. We started seeing more hanging plants, and we received many compliments from those who rarely spoke in the past. Too, we have something we can give to them...plants!


Once we reached a point where we could split and share, it became a wonderful thing to do for our neighbors and friends.

When Mike and I first met, I had a dream, it was of he and I in a yard, gardening and just looking over at one another and feeling content. After moving all my life, or traveling, I find that at this point in life, this is where the only thing that will be moving is a plant, from one area to the next.

WE do have one anemone that refuses to leave. Last year, we gave some away, we chopped it up into four plants, and moved it toward the back of the fence and yet, where we thought we got rid of it, came back bigger and stronger and more beautiful. So, it won. we ended up giving it an entire section of garden...

I suppose there is no one story to our garden world..but many...we have woodchucks who we have caught and released..but they love us and continue to come back...we have a humming bird who stays until the camera comes out...and butterflies of all types, colors and sizes.

There is no greater feeling than having someone say how beautiful the yard looks, because then we know someone else appreciates the beauty in the life of the plants that give so much beauty.