Take back the Shed!

This photo is one of the oldest slides of our garden. It was the inspiration for our name, "Old Country Gardens".

When we moved here, I was already bitten by the gardening bug but I knew nothing about garden design. I saw all this land out back and thought the only way it could be planted was like a farm, everything in rows. Our yard no longer looks anything like this but I'm so glad I have this old photo to remind me of back then.


When we first moved here, I stored my gardening tools in our two car garage. We never had one of those before but somehow managed it fill it immediately on move-in day. To this day we can only squeeze one car in there.

It wasn't long before I knew we needed a shed. I was wasting precious time every day running back and forth from the gardens out back to the garage every time I needed a tool. When Don agreed that we needed a shed, I drove him crazy looking for the perfect one. It had to have windows, window-boxes for me to plant and I insisted on the door being centered.


The color of the shed alone was a whole project, I drove around town looking at other sheds and comparing different colored wood stains. My darling shed had curtains on it's windows before my daughters bedrooms had curtains, how could I resist those lace valences with picket fences on them.

The inside was another project. We bought flooring from the remnant section, cabinets and a counter top too. We didn't get to choose colors but I was so happy with what we got. Little did I know what a light colored floor would look like after a rainy day in the garden.


This is what the interior looked like the first few years. My daughters were children then and they'd spend days inside playing board games or house. I couldn't get them to make their bed but they'd sweep the shed in an instant.

Recently I tried to find a new photo of my shed. If you've read my recent posts you'll know how upset I was when our neighbor ruined the wooden fence and installed this hideous white vinyl elephant. Maybe that was the beginning of the problem. Maybe it was the day my mom was giving the shed a spring cleaning and let out a shriek when she found a mouse.


What ever it was, I started to avoid my shed. It became a place where I opened the doors, threw something inside and ran off again as fast as possible. The plant material around the shed has filled in so beautifully yet the only recent photos I found were two taken in July of 2006 during a garden tour here. My youngest daughter Emily took photos of people in the garden and the shed was captured at the same time. You can see here that the window boxes had rotted off by then. I miss them!


This last photo shows the shed out back. By the summer of 2006 the interior was totally ignored, the only enjoyment I was getting was working on the landscape around that shed. This brings me to the title of my post. It's time to "take back the shed"!

As soon as our snow melts, I'm going to get in there and empty out all those mouse filled birdhouses. The mice must think it's mouse condominium heaven in there..."ooh look honey, which house would you like? The one with the peaked roof or the one that looks like an old mans face...".

Really, I am!