Hello my fans and trolls and interested seekers...We have had a bit of a snow and ice event here in Virginia, so work on the garden has taken a break. I thought I would take a moment to explain why I would blog about this particular garden on my Resistance blog.
One, as I said earlier I do gain inspiration from being in the outdoors and have been told that readers enjoy learning bits about an author's passions and other interests besides writing. However, the reason it is on the Resistance page is because I and others are working in boldness in opposition to my hometown of Strasburg which has been harassing a friend of mine for a very long time. A few people in the town do not like my friend and complain regularly about his property. Usually, we have simply gone in and cut down everything except the trees, leaving a lifeless unhappy place. And honestly, what creative person wants to go into a dead zone?
A bit of background on the property. About 10 years ago there was a suspicious fire in the building, E. Pearls, and it had to be gutted and rebuilt. Being that it is/was an historic building the owner, my friend, took the time to rebuild the interior as historically accurate as possible. Obviously, this took over two years, in which time the garden became overgrown and filled with objects removed from the home. During this time, my friend lost his mother and had to take care of his ailing dad which meant months away from the property.
The town passed an tall grass ordinance in 2013 and that's when the actionable complaints began. Once the town got involved, my friend began the process of removing "junk" from his yard and we had the first clear cutting of the back. I cried, as it seemed so wasteful to me. My friend used his grapevines (which had to be torn down), cane grass, flowers, "weeds", and more in arrangements for his business. But that did not matter and we destroyed it all. A few years later, when it had grown back more complaints, and another clear cutting was done. I'd like to make the point that no other properties around my friend were complained about. Tall grasses, literal junk, and other "nuisances" (which the town will not define) dot the landscape of my little town and very close to him, in fact a shared property line was allowed to grow unmanaged with no complaints.
Then covid hit. And not much could be done or moved because of covid fear. Finally, last year we had come up with a plan to stop the complaints and fix the garden. The clean up began in August and the complaint came in September. However, this time the town wanted to make an example of my friend. The threat of having the town come in and clear cut the garden for him and then charge him was too much...after all, if he had the money to get it done all at once it would be done. I decided it was time to follow the process and make an appeal to the town council and ask for time (6 months basically) for us to get the property in a condition that the unmanaged growth would not occur again. BIG MISTAKE.
A majority of the council had already made up their minds about my friend's property. They had a friendship with the complainant, a neighbor, and chose to not give us an appropriate time. They chose to give us 45 days starting January 1st, to abate the "nuisance" which they would not define. Thankfully the new town manager has been working with us, coming to the garden to see it, and see the progress we have already made. Sad thing is, we got snow on January 3rd and by the time it melted we got hit with a snow/ice event that has been on the ground for a week already and will be for at least another week. meaning we have already lost an entire month. However, I believe the "nuisance" of tall grass has been abated. I'm hoping that it will be signed off on and we can get to the actual work of making a beautiful, mysterious garden come back to life.
So, here we are. a small group of people determined to bring an overgrown garden back to life, against a town council that would have us clear cut it again...The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. My friend, finally decided to take action to do something different with the yard. To hard scape it with weed barriers and with people willing to help with the garden besides one day of coming in and chopping it all down. We are resisting the status quo of "attack the weak person that you don't like to make an example" and are fighting to restore this secret treasure that was once open to the public, but will no longer be. Very sad, that a few malevolent people have tried so hard to destroy something that could have, and at one time did, bring people to the town; and Strasburg is a very nice town with mostly kind people. Something to bring green space and pollution fighting, oxygen providing plants to an otherwise asphalted jungle of historic buildings.
So, in conclusion, we are working to bring this mysterious garden to life. And once the snow is gone and we can get back to work, I will continue the saga of creating, or better, renewing something precious.
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