It takes some getting used-to, the absence of the large pine in front of our house. Our property isn't very large at 50' in width and 110' in length, with the house taking up at least half of that space in depth. It doesn't leave us much of a backyard, although the house is well set back from the street, at the front. And the frontage and the elevation of the house does give us ample room for gardens.

When we first moved into this house 23 years ago our daughter began our gardens. It was her gift to us and she has a definite knack for gardening. She was born with a green thumb, and like her father her aesthetic sense is sharp and extremely useful in arranging and selecting objects that give pleasure, extending well into the realm of botanical cultivation. Since her original breaking of the ground so to speak at the very front of the house, we have ourselves slowly extended the gardens to reach the street itself, diminishing the amount of green lawn in the process.

We both enjoy our gardens and enjoy no less the work associated with giving it our personal stamp to reflect what we most like about the opportunity to select and plant and lay out an arrangement that pleases our aesthetic sense. The large pine that dominated the front is now gone, and in a very real sense it is missed, there is a palpable absence that we will become accustomed to in time.

In its absence, our view of the street has been opened. In its absence we can now look out the front door or the dining room windows overlooking the garden and see the broad sky where before the pine boughs completely obscured the sky. In its later years as some of the bottom boughs of the pine died they were removed by my husband. Several years ago a major bough reaching high into the middle of the trunk died, its dead needles a reproach that we were unable to remove.

Now that the tree is no more, the lawn and the gardens have been completely opened to the sun. We took advantage of that to plant a carpet 'drift' rose, and another hydrangea; the rose requiring constant sun the hydrangea not. It will be interesting now to see the results of increased sun exposure. Because of the constant shade we have been careful in the past to plant shade-tolerant plants, and hostas in particular became a prime favourite.

We will have to evaluate how everything adapts to its sudden sun exposure. The very hard winter just passed made it a struggle for our rhododendrons to survive, and though they've been able to bloom there were branches that had to be removed, while those remaining look fairly sparse in comparison to their usual more robust appearance, and we hope they will begin to thrive once again. The severe winter did nothing to harm the magnolia trees though their flowers were somewhat less abundant this spring. They were well rejuvenated and now sport full green coverage.

The corkscrew hazel took much longer to leaf out this year, but it is now fully leafed. Our Japanese maples also suffered, but appear now to have recovered after some spring dieback. We have trees in abundance, mature spruces among them, so in the long run the pine won't be missed as it is at the present when its absence is so raw.