It's summer solstice and a beautiful day -- perfect time to start my rear garden. My back yard has been rather barren. It still is! A blank 55-foot length of block wall was most beckoning of adornment. It really needed something. So I thought of vines...
I made a redwood trellis that's fastened to the wall with copper wire and deck screws. Every four feet got either a
white bower,
lavendar trumpet or
star jasmine vine — all purchased from
Home Depot. Pro gardeners have told me that they're too close together, that they'll overgrow each other. Maybe they're right. We'll see.
There was also a structural reason for doing this. The other side of the wall was eroding fast. It's a municipal easement on the other side, and they clear the ground of vegetation every year. Nothing is left to hold the soil from washing away, exposing the wall's foundation! My lack of backyard trees and shrubs didn't help. Even just two years of erosion revealed a lot. So the fastest growing plants that could hug close to the wall was needed. Thus, vines!
A decent profile was created from a Riviera casing, a rounded corner moulding and the extended jamb. It was the closest match to the Carolina casing that I've been installing elsewhere in the house. (Kelleher Corporation has excellent online moulding profile information) This semi-custom profile was needed because the required depth of the interior wood shutters was beyond the thickness of a single casing. I also decided to forego the typical stool and apron detail for this window because the shutters would dominate the look, and there would also be the chair rail.
