Jane Carter’s Pretty Place Named Yard of the Week

Aluminum siding and expanded wings hide the age of the home at our latest Yard of the Week. The sixty-year-old lawn, neatly mowed and fertile, has outlived towering pine trees and a stream that once ran along the property’s base before feeding into the no-longer-standing grist mill just south of Memorial Park.  This is the original John Done home, built out of adobe-lined sandstone brick in 1896, and the Carter family home since 1952.  It remains under Jane Carter’s nurturing care.

Jane and her husband, the late J.D. Carter, bought the home sixty-two years ago from one of John Done’s sons, after it had remained vacant for a few years, long enough for the weeds to grow to be two feet tall. J.D. burned them soon after they moved in and then planted the lawn that continues to grow there today.

The Carters raised their four children, Susan Carter Hallett, Caralee Carter Steele, the late Allan Carter, and the late Jay Carter, in the home, located a short distance away from Payson’s historic core.  Today, with thirteen grandchildren, thirty-four-great grandchildren, and one great-great grandchild, it is a place for much larger gatherings and for memories to continue to be made.  Memories like those that connect Jane to the place she works hard to maintain.

“It’s nothing fancy,” Jane will tell you.

Simply lovely defines it perfectly.  What is more, Jane wakes up between 5-5:30 every morning to work in the yard before the sun turns unbearably hot and is out there again later to work again, after the sun has begun to set.

More still, Jane is eighty-three-years old.

Geraniums--her favorite--and snapdragons breathe color into flower beds accenting the charming home. Golf-ball-wide marigolds in citrus hues blossom beneath friendly ornamental artwork. An exotic tiger lily grows along the home’s northside, itself a piece of art.

Pots for peppers and tomatoes and a small garden spot filled with yellow blossomed zucchini line the south sidewalk leading to a back porch that looks over a steep back yard that is shrouded in acorn trees, shrubs, and the remains of irises that bloomed in spring.

July’s thumping heat has paid its toll on the hostas and other plant life there.  Gone are the blossoms of the fragrant lavender. Water restrictions have encouraged Jane to direct her sprinklers away from grass that grows distantly from her home.   But she persists under the pressure of heat and drought, and has sustained its beauty throughout these conditions.

“I do the best I can,” she said.

She does a very good job at that.