Progress on the Garden

As promised, to continue my discussion on the progress we've made on our yard, here's some of the progress we've made on the gardens.  Basically, the previous owners of our house did nothing to keep up with the landscaping of the property, and we've been fighting quite the battle with overgrown gardens filled with weeds, shrubs, and other plants that I can't identify, and therefore, don't really want even if they might actually be something nice. 

I'd like to start by refreshing your memory with a picture of the back of our house as we saw it when we went to view the house for the first time.  Take note of the garden behind the garage and in the corner of the house.

They look a little better now.  I've pruned the shrubs behind the garage significantly, and they look much better.  There was also a plant at the front left corner that I moved to a garden at the side of the house. 

And I completely removed the euonymus bush that was in the corner of the house as well as another plant that was growing there, but I don't remember what it was.  I have no idea what I'm going to do with this little corner yet, but the rocks are kind of fun.

The garden along the fence in the backyard still requires much work. I've cleared out about half of it and put in some tomato plants for a friend that is moving soon and has no place to put them.  We also picked up a bunch of annuals, and I've put two of them at the end of the space I cleared out.  There are three sections of peonies, but I think I might cut that down to one.  They are huge plants, and I'm learning that I'm not into huge plants.  Also, the one set is blocking my rose bush, which has actually done rather well, but I haven't been able to enjoy it because of the peonies standing in the way.  I also have a small lilac bush/tree that I'll keep, but there are a few other miscellaneous shrubs and plants that I think I'll just get rid of because everything is just such a mess.  I think it might be easiest to start from scratch.

Also, the one set is blocking my rose bush (seen below), which has actually done rather well, but I haven't been able to enjoy it because of the peonies standing in the way.  I also have a small lilac bush/tree that I'll keep, but there are a few other miscellaneous shrubs and plants that I'll probably get rid of because everything is just such a mess.  I think it might be easiest to start from scratch.

Here's a close up of my barrels.  I've planted herbs in them, and I'm pretty excited to have fresh herbs to use in my cooking.  In the barrel on the left, I have cilantro (aka coriander, which I didn't know), lavender, aloe, and chives.  In the barrel on the right, I planted two kinds of rosemary, parsley, and basil.  I already used some of the basil to make bruschetta on the weekend, and it was lovely.

The last garden I'm going to show you is the one around the big tree in our front yard.  This tree was surrounded by massively overgrown euonymus bushes, which I cleared out with the help of Tim and my dad.  THAT was a chore, let me tell you.  I will never plant euonymus.  Ever.  The rest of the annuals we picked up went in this garden, as well as a hosta that I had in a pot from our old house.  I'm hoping to get more hostas to put in between all the annuals.

And that's the progress we've made on our gardens so far this year.  I haven't shown you the garden along the front or side of the house because we haven't really done anything with those yet.  I'm hoping to do some planning over the winter to figure out what I actually want to put in them.  It's a bit exciting to be able to plan my own gardens, but I can definitely see why the previous owners let it all go so much.  The amount of foliage we have to keep in line is crazy!

Well, I hope you all are having a good week so far...

Progress on the Yard

When we first moved into our new house, the yard was a mess.  Actually, the yard is still a mess.  But we are making some slow but significant progress.  Allow me to show you with a few, somewhat not great pictures.  I really wish I'd been better at doing the before and after photos thing.


This is a picture of the back of our house.  If I may direct your attention to the actual yard portion of the picture, you can see a couple of things.  First of all, we're not sure which owner previous to us did this, but there used to be an above-ground pool in this backyard, and when it was removed, they didn't bother to remove all the gravel and plastic sheeting that surrounded it and replace it with something like, I don't know, GRASS.  You will also note that at the back of the garage there is a garden with shrubs that is looking very, very overgrown, and way at the back corner of the house is also another garden that is very overgrown.

 This is the view looking from the deck out to the back of our yard.  Believe it or not, this is actually somewhat of an "after" picture -- okay, more like a "work in progress" picture.  I'll get you an actual "how it looks currently" picture in a minute.  The fence-line of our yard was basically a long row of trees and shrubs.  There was actually a cedar hedge here that had completely overgrown and then died.  Tim could actually rip the stumps out of the ground with little to no effort.  Here, you see my studly husband in action using a chain saw to cut down one of many trees that have been removed from back there.

Here's the "what it looks like now" picture.  Please excuse the toys.  There's still a lot of trees back there, but clearly, we've removed a lot.

Here is a shot of Tim in action again, as well as his friend Tak who gave him a hand for a few days.  At this point, they have removed all the gravel and plastic sheeting from where the pool was, and they rented a roto-tiller for a few hours to plow the area under.  Behind them, you can see our garden along the fence.  This picture was taken early in the spring before anything had much of a chance to grow, but let me assure you, I fight a constant battle to keep the overgrowth at bay.  ...but that's a post for another day...

 

Here's a view from the deck of the area where they are roto-tillering. 

Unfortunately, since they've roto-tillered, we haven't had a chance to plant any grass or make a whole lot of progress, mainly because of this massive pile of brush that came from all the stuff we've chopped down or ripped out of the gardens.

The brush is accompanied by a large dead tree, and we are waiting for the tree guy to come chop down the tree and remove the pile of brush for us.  We called him a couple of weeks ago, and we're starting to get a little anxious for him to come so we can get some more work done.

Anyway, that's the yard progress that we've made so far.  Tomorrow I'll show you the progress I've made on the gardens so far...