Leaving a garden

I left a seven-year garden behind five years ago; it was not a total loss.

1.  I took starts and divisions of most plants.
2.  I left behind some major mistakes (Chinese chestnuts, anyone?).
3.  I got to keep all the lessons I'd learned in seven years of gardening in
red clay.

I bought a house that had a fabulous garden before the first owner died,
fifteen years ago; just about everything had been destroyed by subsequent
owners.  But the camellia is coming back, after being sawed off at the
ground (had been a 15' shrub); the pear and grapes are bearing again. I keep
finding tiny daffodils in the grass where there must have been a bed once.
I've transplanted as many as I can find, but every year I find more.
Unfortunately, some of the lessons I learned on red clay just don't apply to
the (fabulous!) sandy loam I have now, only 30 miles away.  Plants that were
"tame" in my old place have become invasive in this dirt.

I had to deal with the first owner's biggest mistake, what must have been a
"cute" little sycamore in the wrongest place possible, so we're even--I
dumped those Chinese chestnuts on the subsequent tenants and Mrs. Barnes
died and left me to deal with that sycamore.  I still have to dig out her
fishpond; the last occupant filled it in.  I've been told her daughters, who
grew up in the house and still pass through town every now and then, are
happy that "Mama's garden" is being cared for again.

I do wonder how long I will have to live here before it becomes "Karen's
house" or the "Penguin Lady's Place," rather than "Mrs. Barnes' house."  I
even had a teller in a bank in a different town recognize the street address
on my deposit slip and ask if I ever heard from the daughters...

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