When we moved to this southern city two years ago, we looked at many houses, eliminating them all for one reason or another until we found this one. It was untenanted and unkept, the grass knee-high, the shrubbery overgrown, the screen doors sagging open, the awnings faded and torn, water in the basement.
Then we chanced to look out a back window onto a lovely terrace built of old and mellowed brick placed in the center of the yard and built on different levels so that the terrace rose to one side of the yard. A barbecue was at the far end of a low curving wall that held back the highest ground of the area over which towered 70-foot pines. The lowest area sloped away to a drainage ditch. In the back beyond the terrace was a deep woods.
We bought the property and laid out a garden around the terrace. First a 7-foot high provincial-type cedar fence was installed at the upper side along the property line as a screen and shelter for choice camellias. A wire fence across the back of the property with a cedar gate does not obstruct the view of sun and shadow playing in the deep woods. A rose hedge is now planted in front a the ditch to hide it and provide cold all summer. Grass stretches along the sides of the terrace separated from it with flower beds. Birds are encouraged to the garden with feeders and a bath.
This terrace is now our outdoor living room, an all-year place of contentment. Spring brings the scent of blossoming trees, sweetshrub and honeysuckle, host of daffodils and Dutch iris nod acquaintance with pansies and foxgloves. Summer is scented with roses, gardenias. lilies and tuberoses, with petunias gayly sweeping their salmon skirts across the beds. In fall the massed chrysanthemums catch the eye. Winter brings the beauty of the exotic camellias into prominence. So in the favored climate of this southern land we barbecue or catch the sun in our sheltered garden, ever thankful that the terrace so enchanted us that we bought the property just for it.
by M Snyder – 64342
