My Home and Garden Part 1

Here's a bit of our garden's - home's - history.

When we bought this house five years ago, we discovered that we were - amazingly - only the third owners. The first family was a doctor and his wife and son. I would love to have a picture of this beautiful house, which was built in 1926, with its original windows.

After almost 40 years of ownership, they sold the house in 1965 to an Italian family. I am most grateful that this family left almost all the original oak trim, wainscotting and floors intact. However, they replaced the windows with horrible cheap ones that I know we will never be able to afford to replace.

Now to the garden - This house is a corner lot, practically a double lot as well. When we bought it there were about a dozen fruit trees on the property. The backyard had a large, raised bed vegetable garden.

Now, we love trees. In fact, we hoped to recreate a bit of the Bruce Trail right here in downtown T.O.

But we don't love - or know how to tend to - fruit trees.

So, we cut them down. All but two - one I'd already planted a flourishing Clematis beside and the other tree bears purple plums, which are a thing of beauty. Let me say, in our defense, that these fruit trees were all relatively young - the surviving prune plum is definitely the oldest.

So, no great loss and a fresh palet to draw upon.