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Patchworks of plants and flowers
People in the local community were greeted with a patchwork of plants and flowers as they visited homes across Mountain Home during this year's garden tour.
Celebrating its 18th anniversary in Mountain Home, the event featured an assortment of gardening how-tos along with personal advice on what works best for growing flowers and vegetables in southern Idaho's harsh desert climate.
Hosted by the Mountain Home Garden Club, the event centered on the theme, "Gardens with Quilts." According to tour organizers, gardens are similar to quilts, since they feature different sizes, colors, textures and designs.
For some homes featured on the tour, it's taken their owners a number of years to turn their yards into their personal versions of paradise. Most admit it wasn't easy.
When Joe and Mildred McNeal moved to Mountain Home in 1978, their yard presented a number of challenges. In addition to dealing with the weed infestation, their property had just two trees out front.
The lack of foliage presented its own problems. During the summer, the heat would take the healthy grass in the back yard and kill it, Joe McNeal said.
Planting additional trees became part of their solution.
Together, it's taken them more than 35 years to get their yard to its current state, which includes an outdoor gazebo as a main focal point. They admit they're not done yet.
"Just when you think everything's done, something else comes up," Joe McNeal said. "It keeps me busy. It keeps me out of trouble."
Aspects of their yard also have some personal memories attached to them. For example, they planted one tree in his backyard after their first grandchild was born.
When frost from a winter storm significantly damaged the tree's limbs, they cut it back to save what they could. What started out as the tree's central trunk became seven main limbs, each one representing each of their seven grandchildren.
Dealing with the persistent, irritating weeds also presented issues for Tom and Colleen Johnson when they moved into their daughter's former residence on North 3rd East Street. It was the first in a series of challenges they faced as they gradually redesignated in their yard.
Today, each part of their yard has a specific purpose. One corner is dedicated solely for squirrels with another area designed for spring flowers with other space set aside for vegetables and herbs.
"It's just a hobby," Colleen Johnson said regarding her love of gardening.
Maria Myer literally brought the flavor of her native homeland of Italy to her home on North 3rd East Street. A vegetable garden stretching along the back half of her yard is filled with an assortment of herbs and vegetables.
Among them is the chicory plant, which is cultivated as a form of lettuce with a bitter but pleasant flavor. Used extensively in salads, Italians prefer to taste this form of lettuce versus dousing it in dressing, she said.
Her backyard vegetable garden includes some unexpected additions. Among them is a fig tree, which is something others felt would never take root in Idaho, she added.
During Saturday's tour, Myer had on display a quilt filled with memories. She hand crafted it using fabric from her daughter's old dresses, making it very personal.
Like many yards in Mountain Home, Cindy Jett's garden on East 4th North Street remains a work in progress.
"Each year since 1989, I have strived to improve on my space," Jett said.
With ample space to work with, the extensive backyard features a number of areas set aside for specific purposes. A pathway between an assortment of berry bushes leads to an afternoon tea patio with a dedicated outdoor dining area just a few steps away.
"The thing I like most about my garden is that it is ever changing," she said. "I love the tulips, daffodils and the bright, yellow forsythias of early spring... and along come the iris, snowball tree, poppies and then the roses."
By summer, her garden provides vegetables and handfuls of berries with pumpkins ready to harvest in the fall.
Shirley Curt is continuing the work her parents began when they bought their home on East 4th North Street in 1966. The house itself has a bit of history attached to it since it once served as a boarding house for visitors to Mountain Home that needed a place to sleep, she said.
While her father did most of the yard work, she continued his legacy by adding flowers to give it a needed dash of color.
She even took some of the home's existing features and made them part of the overall look, including the original outhouse. Curt then turned a former storage patio into a place where she can entertain family and friends.
Marty and Cindy Ray were able to take what was already in place when they bought their home on Centennial Drive and built from there. They worked with the existing pea gravel pathway to give their backyard an overhaul.
In addition to adding a few more trees, they built a new pathway bordered by flowers.
"The garden is where I spend all my time," Cindy Ray said. "It's my favorite place to be."
While her husband does all the "heavy lifting," she's the one that keeps trimming the plants. While they work together to maintain their yard, they each have their own perspective on how it should look.
"I'm very eclectic in my preferences," she said. "Anything I see that I like I pop into the ground."
Her husband, on the other hand, is an engineer who prefers a bit more order when it comes to their yard, she added.
But they both agree that one of their favorite backyard features is a trellis heavily intertwined with trumpet vine.
"The hummingbirds love its yellow flowers," he said. "They'll go to it before they head to the feeders."