Since we don't live at our house year round, when we do make it into town there is A LOT of yard work to do. We spend a few weeks playing catch-up and we even have to start over in some parts of our yard. It is a bit frustrating, but we do enjoy being outside so much that I don't want to just leave the yard as it is until we can finally move up here for good. So, we battle the same over grown, weed battered yard at the start of each summer. We take inventory of which plants the always hungry deer have destroyed, which plants the gofers have eaten, and which plants the slugs, banana slugs, and snails have taken over. Not to mention, we need to figure out which plants made it through the winter frost and which plants have survived the few months we leave them without water (though they get rain a good portion of the time we're gone). I would like to start a vegetable garden, but I am not here at planting time or harvest time, so it seems like a waste of energy. Next year, with the help of a little irrigation, I hope to start some vegetables in my green house. We will see if that happens. So, now we are at the end of the summer, many plants are in their downward swing, and we have reached the end of what we can do before we leave.
Like Erik and I, Grandma and Grandpa Tipple enjoy gardening. Since Grandma Tipple couldn't make it here this year to see how our yard is slowly progressing, I am posting these pictures to give her a look...
The front of the house. We haven't really done much with it, just mow and weed the planter beds.
This is the tree Grandpa Tipple gave us our first summer here. It has grown a lot over the past four years!
Outside our patio, we have fuchsias and geraniums. The nice thing about this particular planter bed is that we do nothing with it and it looks great. It gets water.... once in a while. I deadhead and trim it back... once a year.
There are steps off the slider door we have from our family room to the patio. On the side of the step there was a good drop down to a scrawny, grass infested planter bed full of miniature roses that always looked horrible. Big drop, prickly roses equals not so good for kids. So, this summer we got rock and soil and raised the area into a more kid friendly and more aesthetically pleasing planter bed. I hope that these geraniums and flowering maple take as well as the others.
We also has a prickly fern that wound itself on anything it could that Erik removed for me, so that we could place the more kid friendly red flowing maple. We didn't have luck with flowering maples last time we tried, but I blame that on the deer. I am crossing my fingers this time...
While prickly ferns (I am sure that is the technical term) aren't one of my favorites, I love the regular ferns (another technical term) that grow here. These are ferns that sit happy in the shady area next to out gate, rescued ferns from Lee and Jill's house last year. I think they have taken nicely. We also added a Cecile Bruner climbing rose of the outside of the fence. Hopefully, it will start climbing over the arbor.
Moving along now. One the east side of our patio we have a hedge and a nice grouping of a hydrangea, rhododendron, rosemary (transplanted from Lee and Jill's), something I don't know the name of, and some a Thimble Berry bush that volunteered here last year. It's a bit over grown and not super tidy, but I like it.
The planters around the greenhouse have been hard to manage. Between the deer, the snails and slugs, and the gofers we never know what we are going to find. Several of the plants here have been given to us from the Tipples and a lot of the others have been volunteers. We have a few we bought, too. The round bed by the dog yard is on it's way out... though a few new things (I am not sure what they are) are starting to sprout up. This bed looked a lot more lush last month. It looks a little scraggly now.
On our greenhouse, the nasturtiums have been doing their thing, but they are also starting to die back. However, the Japanese Anemone Grandma Tipple gave us have exploded and are just starting to bloom.
The planter bed in front of the greenhouse and been a bit of a frustration. I had several dahlias planted there, but it seems by the large amount of gofer holes and tunnels that the gofers have gotten them all. The Cats Mint have been doing really well, but the deer have kept my Penstemon from blooming much this year. Erik finally decided to put up deer fencing along the upper part of the yard and the flowers are starting to survive.
Off to the side of the green house, there was an ole planter bed left over from the days of the wooden fence that bisected the backyard. Though we tried when we were here, there was no way to keep the grass and weeds out of it. The deer kept the Columbine that live here nice and short. So, we put in a raised planter bed here, protected it from the bottom from gofers, and planted a few plants. There is a pole in the center that is going to eventually make the base of a bird bath.
Before:
After: (Ignore the grass, Erik hasn't had a chance to edge, yet)
As usual, the fuchsias in our yard look great... and we have to do nothing to keep them that way. :o)
... and the apples trees are starting to burst with apples.
One of my pet projects this year was to get Erik to move his ugly wood pile and make the north west corner of our yard a little more pretty. I was tired of looking at the fencing from my bedroom and I wanted the area to look a bit more finished. So, some rocks, soil, and plants later I now have a nice planter with a lot of promise. We planted Lilacs, Snowball Bushes, Hydrangeas, Astillbees, an Azalea, Princess Flower, Sweat Pea Bush, Penstemon, Cat's Mint, and Nasturtiums. In the part of the planter that was already there, the mint, Columbine, Lilies, Irises, and other orangy flower that volunteers all over continue to thrive in their tangled mess.
Before:
After:
Next to the shed that we stripped and painted, the planted blueberries. Erik's vision is to have lots of edible things growing in the yard. Plus, if we don't start planting and growing our own blueberries, we won't be able to keep up with the kids' blueberry appetites.
The upper planter on the hill got very little attention this year. Erik did a quick and partial weeding earlier in the summer, but it wasn't until last week that I really got in there and cleaned it up. The deep have been kept out of it, but a few plants could have used some replacing.
Looking from the upper yard to the front, through the upper planter bed-
Aside from a yearly weed whacking the upper yard (or the lower part of the upper yard) is just left alone. This year Erik cleared out all of the volunteer trees, cleaned out the brush, and put up deer fencing. Trying to fence in our entire yard would have been very difficult. From the fence in the picture, our yard goes up very steeply. Aside from a future fort location site (when the kids get a little older) this part of the yard isn't very usable. Plus, we didn't want to cut off all the deer trails up there. So, our yard has been bisected once again. Erik's future plans for this space are fruit trees and some vegetable planter boxes. The climate up in this part of the yard is a lot different from the lower yard, it is a lot warmer up here.
Next year's plans? Irrigation and more weeding....
