My Garden

Before - March 1997

  This is how the house looked the day I signed the papers.  Ick!! Really horrible.  There was nothing growing in most of the yard, there was a huge pit right outside the back steps which were crumbling, the covered porch was downright scary with musty lattice and parts of the floor rotting away.  The things that were growing were masses of trumpet vine, poison ivy and a tiny patch of grass no bigger than 3 feet square.  There were tiny holes all over the back yard that indicated a severe case of grubworms.
 
 
 

Here's a view of the little garage, with it's decaying roof and the huge cottonwood that had a bumper crop of poison ivy growing all over it.  We had just begun to set up scaffolding to re-roof and put new gutters on.  There is also an inconvenient walkway on the very right of the property, that ran from the front sidewalk and along the house, then back to the alley, leading us nowhere useful.  It was sunken and buckled in several spots - it definitely needed to go.
 

I've replaced the nasty old lattice on the back porch with screen, which keeps that area nice and airy.  We replaced the rotten floorboards (finding carpenter bee nests!) and repaired the back steps.  We rented a jackhammer and broke up the sidewalk, making piles all over the backyard, trying to avoid that tiny little patch of precious grass.  We had the cottonwood tree professionally trimmed, which opened up some light onto the yard.
Meanwhile, the little kid next door keeps running over into our yard to play, so a fence is definitely in order.
 

Same view as above, only this is a year later!  We broke up the awful little sidewalk and used the pieces to put a nice crazy-patch patio at the front of the garage, and used some pieces to make a stepping-stone path.  The soil we dug to lay the sand and pad for the patio went to the create a raised bed at the base of the maple tree. Oh, and we have grass!  Well, sort of...this continues to be a real struggle.

Here's a view of the raised bed, with a glimpse of my funky 'gazing ball' (it's really an old leaky basketball, covered with cement, with mirrors, marbles and colored glass bits glued all over it!)  The rock border was collected a load at a time during our fishing trips.  The birdhouses on the fence are different ones we made one crazy weekend.  Most of my plants are from friends - which was a wonderful way to get a completely barren area planted.  I have a lot of hostas and ferns.

Here is the same raised bed looking towards the house.  We created a dog run between the houses, because we found that our critters didn't have the same appreciation for plants that we did.  The concrete bench was received as a barter for some calligraphy I did.  We were both happy with our end of the deal!  The ajuga underneath came from the same person - she has a bumper crop every year, and gives it away to whoever can come over and dig it up.  I brought home boxes of the stuff - and have it growing in all kinds of places.  It's doing a whole lot better than my attempt at a lawn - although the grass looks a whole lot better in these pictures than it does in real life!  
 

One of my favorite things we've done is build a pond - we have 26 goldfish and 4 koi - it's right outside the steps and we go out there first thing in the morning to feed the fish and enjoy the view.

 
 

My favorite view out the back door!






 

One of my waterlilies in bloom. I got these water lettuce through mail order, and while I was putting them in the pond, I turned around and the evil Electra (my plant-loving dog) was pulling them out behind me as fast as I put them in!