Monday, April 23, 2007

The Backyard

So I posted about all the yardwork and gardening I've been doing but I didn't add any pics. Fellow houseblogger Litter Box House totally called me out on it!

I was actually thinking that I should add some when I made that post, but as usual, I wanted to wait until everything was totally perfect before posting photos, lest someone think "hrm, that doesn't really look so great, how many hours did you work on that again???"

Or maybe that's just my inner critic!

Anyway, if I wait until things are perfect, I'll be dead before anybody sees anything, so screw it.




Here is a little flower bed I made out of "re-crete" gathered from the crumbled edges of the pad from a former garage. (Now reincarnated as a patio, since I don't feel like jackhammering it up.)

The flowers are white columbine which I planted from seeds gathered from my mother's garden several years ago. I'll plant some other stuff in there too, but I still don't know what.






These are my raised beds. The small one in the background is a nursery bed, where I've planted other flower seeds for future transplantation, as well as a few rows of gathered seeds of unidentifiable genus. (I forgot to label them when I gathered them. Oops!)

In the foreground bed I have cold crops such as lettuce, mesclun, radish, turnips, kohlrabi, and various herbs.

I need to build AT LEAST two more such beds, since I have a dozen eggplant seedlings at home which are beginning to flower already, plus roughly two dozen brandywine tomato seedlings which are bursting their peat-cups.










This is the weird mound to which I referred in my previous post. It's kind of hard to see how high it is in this photo, but suffice it to say that when I stand on it I can see OVER THE FENCE.
Bizarro. I suppose it could be the result of some earth moving which came from the demolition of the garage... Who knows? At any rate, I intend to dig it down and spread the dirt around in an attempt to reduce the rollercoaster-like unevenness that characterizes my yard.

After that fun task, I'll probably just seed the lawn and be done with it. (My ideal yard would be landscaped with no grass at all, but one must be practical when one is operating on a deadline!)

I didn't take any pics of the boulevard garden yet, since there's not much growing there at the moment. (Stuff is still under the dirt!) As soon as things begin to come up and I get it mulched, however, it will be properly immortalized on this blog. (Being sure, of course, to avoid shots of the front yard proper, which is a disaster right now!)

4 comments:

The Litter Box House said...

Good job girl! Thanks for the photos. I love to see what other people have done. But I shouldn't talk, I have a gardening blog entry waiting to go but I've got to find time to work with the photos that go with it. Maybe tonight...

Seeing your large veggie patch has me thinking more about veggies. I've wanted to plant vines to hide my ugly porch railings. I was going to do all flowering vines, but I've decided to switch to purple pole beans and cucumbers. But I'm also considering mixing in kale with my flowers in the front yard. We'll have to wait and see.

Ranty said...

Oh-oh-oh, vines are so much fun! (Except for Morning Glories, which have invaded one too many of my yards and eaten the landscape :-)

One of my dream garden projects, which I don't think I'll get to do at this house, but hopefully the next, is to make a pergola. I want to combine some various squash (with sturdy vining tendencies) with flowers, and have them grow together. I want to have squash fruits hanging over my head, intermingled with blossoms!

Anyway, landscaping with edibles and edible-mixes sounds like fun, and I can't wait to see your pictures too!

Anonymous said...

Hey, I have a re-crete border, too--my front stoop fell apart, and now it's a flower bed about two feet away :)

Ranty said...

That's awesome Michelle. Did you use any sand, pebbles or other mortar-ish type thing?

I did not - I just stacked up the pieces. So far it's okay but I might re-do it later if it gets wobbly. Lord knows I have enough debris of varying sizes, plus pebbles and sand everywhere. (The yard was like Beirut when I started, and it seems as though I've barely made a dent.)