Pergola-tory: Origins

Whenever I read a blog that has a title with a made up word or acronym, I always want to know the origin. That information can be surprisingly hard to find. So without further ado, the story of how Pergola-tory came to be.


I moved from Denver after graduate school in Atlanta in February 2007 to Redondo Beach, California. For the first couple years I lived in an apartment, on the second floor, of a sea-side complex. The sunsets were spectacular, but the salt air was hell on my one little bougainvillea. In Denver (Zone 6), one didn't buy tropical plants and expect them to live outdoors for more than the spring and summer (with profuse watering). But in Redondo Beach, I thought it would be simple. Sadly, a wind-whipped balcony wasn't amenable to horticulture, and my one green roommate died a slow salty death.

After those first two years of apartment living, I moved inland just a bit to a free standing town home. It came complete with a tiny little front yard furnished with some clumps of grass to prevent the dirt from sliding off into a parking spot, an enormous palm tree, and a robust ficus - more on those elements later. The back yard was little more than a fenced in alley filled with bark chips where the previous owners' dog used to defecate. The attached patio area was where I saw a ton of potential. When I moved in, it was completely unmaintained. A very large deciduous tree of an unidentified species shielded the neighbors from my view, and me from theirs, but also had the nasty habit of dropping little seed pods which would explode in warm weather to create a lovely slime all over the patio. There were two other large trees that were jammed into the small yard too, which like the first, were hacked down as soon as I could arrange it. Removing these didn't go over perfectly with the neighbors who didn't have to deal with the rubbish and the swarm of gnats and flies that accompanied it no matter how many times that I swept. Nevertheless, it was nice to have a clean slate.

I could really see the potential after the tree removals. It wasn't ideal that I had three stumps and a busted brick planter to contend with, but I was excited. Before purchasing a single plant, I bought the pergola. I had hemmed and hawed about it for a few weeks, before finally breaking down to buy it. It was 10' x 10', black powder coated aluminum, and quite the commitment. My buddy from CO who also lives in CA these days came over to help me put it together in an afternoon. It was just like the old Construx or K'nex sets that I used to play with when I was small. We had a great time erecting it and placing it on the concrete pad that was miraculously the perfect fit - it seriously looks like the pad was poured intentionally for the pergola.

I already had the furniture to place under the pergola, and when my buddy and I were finished building it, we grabbed some drinks, sat down to admire our work, and he coined "Pergola-tory" as a fitting name to a place that was waiting to be filled with the plants that I could never grow in CO and that would need more care than I realized in the apartment. Eventually I would fill it with plants, and it would become the place that I would go to just be - with sunshine on my face, green leaves all around, and all the joys that come with waiting for the potential in the flowers and fruits to come.

 

I was able to find a picture of the patio with the rubbish tree still in place. Mind the dresser.