Tangled Brush

No discussion of the garden would be complete without my describing the Side Garden, a strip of land on the other side of the driveway. Since I am on a corner lot, I get this extra strip of land to work with. It delighted me, as it meant I could have two front gardens. But, ah, what a tortured piece of land it was!  Weeds, rocks, sunshine, thistles and lurking roots of decapitated Virginia Creeper. Ah, the Side Garden! So it was weedy, and wild. The previous owners had pulled down a cedar hedge on this corner plot (quite the safety hazard, everyone in the neighborhood agreed), and put up a shiny new fence. Great! But then, they never got around to landscaping in front of it. By the time we moved in, it was a weedy overgrown mass. The grass had been mowed, but it was hardly the lush green carpet of your dreams; no, it was clover and dandelions, knotweed and toad flax, crabgrass and such. But it got great sun. Oh, this corner had such great sun! Unlike the main front garden,