4325 Gladwyn- A customized brick house on Gladywn was taken on Monday, Nov. 19th This was another home that was vacated within the year. This house stands out to me not only because of the unusual brickwork, but the intensive gardening the residents had done. All kinds of beautiful and edible plant life existed in their boundaries. I believe it was an older couple who lived there- I would often see the lady outside working in her yard. She must have tended to her flowers until the day they moved. A story about gardening: My mom remained in our house on Brumley for almost a year after acquiring her new home. The house she wanted needed major work (like taking out a 1960s inground pool for starters) and she didn’t want to be in the house while work was being done. My mom also loves doing yard and landscape work on her own. So, for the last two Spring seasons she was in Carrollton, she and I would dig up flowers and small bushes in the empty lots to use at her new place. I also found myself engaged in the yard raiding practice for my own home. One day, we were digging up some Lily-of-the-Valley off Gladwyn just a few home lots away from the brick house. The lady was in her yard watching us, but my mom just kept pulling up the leafy plants. I tried to ignore the woman at the brick house, but once I looked up, sure enough this woman was staring right at us. I was mortified… here we are, stealing from the land of her former neighbor’s and all this poor old woman could do was to watch. I waved to her in a way hopefully to say, “I’m sorry, I just now realized how terrible this must look.” She just smiled at me, waved happily back and carried on with her own gardening. Maybe she wasn’t angry at us taking the plants after all and just wanted to offer a friendly hello to some fellow frugal gardeners.
At first I did have mixed feelings about digging up the plants in the area. Even though no human structure remains in the empty home plots, the owner’s personalities still remain behind in the form of their landscaping choices. Every spring up comes patches of daffodils, tulips, alliums, columbine, and every other imaginable flower planted by someone who once lived there.
However, maintaining and mowing large tracts of land is costly and time consuming. The airport employs companies who uses lawnmowers the size of tractors to thoroughly comb the place down, leaving only the larger trees intact. So every rosebush that doesn’t get dug up will eventually be ripped away. Tulips barely get a chance to bloom before they too are cut to the ground. So even though the flowers are there, they get maybe a couple weeks worth of grow time before its mow time. So I guess in that respect, I’ve come to justify the rose bushes and irises I’ve dug up and put in my yard. They have a better chance here than if they remained. Hopefully, the lady in the brick house would agree.
J. Desy Schoenewies
56 Houses Left 
The house you were referring to is my parents (and mine obviously) and the number was 4325 Gladwyn. I had to laugh that you gave credit to the wonderful gardens to my mom… as my dad did most of the work, lol. He used to find wildflowers, where ever, and bring them back to plant in the yard. He did take quite a few things with him and it is nice to have a piece of my childhood go with them.
My dad is a retired brick and stone mason, so he and his friends did all the brick and stone work on the house. The gorgeous brick archway, stone wall by the garage, the stone walkways, and all the brickwork around the trees (which are all sadly a memory now).
But I still dream at night about the loss of childhood home, the pool I played at (& my older brother and I worked at– although I was only there 1 year and he was there so much longer), and even the elementary school I went to.
I have lots of pictures of moving day and even days after, but I wasn’t around the day they tore it down… and I am glad I wasn’t as I wouldn’t have been able to handle it. But thank you for posting the picture and blogging about the loss of the great community we were both blessed to have grown up in.
Thank you Brenda for your great comment, and for correcting the street address for me! This one was one of my favorite places in Carrollton! You and your parents had a wonderful house!
I have the same view as you regarding the flowers and other plants and I’m glad you saved some of them just as we did.
I got to your blog after watching the HBO doc about the land fill. I looked at Google maps and saw that none of the houses were in Carrollton. I have not found the street address we lived at but we lived there from 1960-62 and I remember playing in the woods along the creek.