Banana in Early Spring
My banana tree has far exceeded my expectations of its growth. On year two of its planting, it hit 20-some feet and produced three massive bunches of green bananas, inedible since our Atlanta growing season is shorter than Costa Rica’s. And then there are the canna lilies that shot up past the eight foot mark. My parents arrived for a visit and my tiny mom got out of the car, took a look at my “maximized” front yard and burst into gales of laughter in the middle of the street. Dad wandered into center and then commented that he was having some Vietnam flashbacks. Hilarious—they should take it on the road.
I don’t care if it’s unorthodox; I am pleased with how my urban jungle is thriving. City folks have, if we’re lucky, approximately one fifth of an acre to play with. If you happen to enjoy gardening and also happen to have a shady backyard and large wooly destructive Siberian huskies, then you are left with only the front yard as a gardening option.
I don’t have any real education regarding gardening except that I checked “Gardening for Dummies” from the library and read it and then decided to do whatever I liked. The real credit for my overly thriving plants is the demise of the century-old oak from next door. When the tree died from its fire wounds (the house next door burned to the ground) and was cut down, I claimed two truckloads of oak mulch and shoveled a 12 inch layer into the front yard. Transferring that much mulch took three weeks, mucho sweat and sore biceps, but paid off mightily. Our Southern red-orange clay turned black with organic decay. The once “Charlie Brown” windmill palm grew 8 feet in two years.
And now this small front yard is its own ecosystem. We have honeybees, hummingbirds, blue birds, robins, and butterflies galore.
