How often do you find a tree frog on your bouquet?
This bouquet was given to us last month by the fabulous Danger Garden. The Fatshedera lizei 'Annemieke' are rooting and will be added to our garden. I love those leaves. Thanks, Danger Garden!
Don't forget to visit our hostess, Carol in a Rambling Garden, to see the rest of the bouquets. Thanks for the inspiration, Carol!
It's time for the big reveal on this season's garden projects. Let's take a look back at early Spring 2007. We moved into our house on Halloween of 2006 and waited until the spring to get started.
The front was a patchwork quilt of spongy moss and lawn. The garbage can adds a nice flourish.
Let's take another look at that mossy lawn and tortured foundation plantings.
I chose our simple ranch house for the backyard surrounded by a stand of Douglas Fir trees. Lovely.
A look down at the small afterthought of a concrete pad patio.
Just a backyard filled with lawn and edged with bark dust.
Barnaby 'helped' with the projects.
We added a roof to the pergola and painted the columns a nice shade of eggplant.
I stepped away from spreading the bark mulch to capture this morning shot in the backyard. Spring 2015
This spring, I debated about growing a different kind of lawn mix aimed for dogs. After visiting Matthew's garden, I realized that I needed to add a water feature with water plants and fish.
So, we rented a sod cutter and tore out all of the remaining lawn in our yard.
A weedy lawn hell-strip was transformed into our first gravel garden. My Pirate has fallen head-over-heels for succulents. He's discussing what to put in our neighbor's yard. I love this man!
This is the gravel garden this morning and our new side yard plantings. It is much more interesting than lawn and requires less care and water.
My Victory Garden received an upgrade this June. We resided it with Juniper boards that My Pirate picked up for a deal at 60% off. These boards can last up to 30 years due to the high pitch content. Fingers crossed.
Here's our new edible meadow, complete with a new gravel patio. We can sit and watch the Crony Brothers sitting in their garage watching us. We toast each other and laugh.
What's an edible meadow? It was our compromise on edibles for me and grasses and orange flowers for My Pirate. The lower level in front of the veggie beds hold a new row of blueberry bushes! Plus I snuck in a couple of pineapple guavas.
The gravel path leads to our backyard gate. The neighbors installed a focal point gate and I'm not certain yet how I'm going to update our gate and fence. I'm leaning towards imitating their fence design and keeping ours a secret entrance.
An old unwanted propagation table makes a strong trellis for an evergreen jasmine.
My theme for our backyard is Picnic in Paradise. And I love to spend time in our oasis. I added a tall table this year that my Grandpa made me out of his old front door. It's tall enough that Mr. Barnaby's tail doesn't clear the table. And we surrounded the area with misters for hot days.
One of the pathways to the water feature area.
My Pirate's favorite view of the garden is sitting in the shade shack overlooking the water feature. No more lawn for us. I'm really happy that we've established the footprint for our garden. Now, I can start fine-tuning the plantings and art. Thanks for following along!
an old bird nest with turquoise glass chunks with Asarum splendens in my light fixture container
The new garden renovations are complete. Can you believe it? We wrapped them up one day before we held an open garden for fifty of my master gardener buddies and students. Phew! Then a week later we hosted a garden party for my garden blogger friends. You can see more about the garden blogger party from the effervescent Patricia over at Plant Lust. In all of my nerves about showing our garden, I never considered how much fun it would be to have everyone over. It was a blast and I plan on doing it again.
I love spending time in our freshly completed garden. I feed our 14 goldfish three times a day and smile down at their antics. The hummingbirds are satisfied with the second feeder. And I feel at peace watching the dragonflies swerve through the air above the new water feature. I'm savoring the last days of summer while the school buses roar past our house.
I'll show you all the new garden projects in my next post. I promise.
Don't forget to visit Anna over at Flutter & Hum to see the rest of the Wednesday Vignettes!
Here is the very last load of quarter-10 gravel and Xera Plants that we need for our garden projects. Last weekend, we spread four loads of gravel onto the paths and patio. Plus, we filled up our galvanized trough with water and played in it like 5 year olds. Simply because we could.
Tonight, I'm placing over 60 new plants into the new edible meadow that I just finished weeding and clearing. I'm beyond excited and hopeful that it goes together easily. Plus, I have a game of tree tetris that I need to figure out. I'm deeply grateful that My Pirate loves me and our garden enough to put in so much time and heavy lifting and to impulsively purchase a loquat.
Make sure to stop by and see the rest of the Wednesday Vignettes at Flutter and Hum.
Here is my favorite vignette in my garden right now. I'm focusing on this completed area with all of my might, because the area to the left of this and the front yard are in process. As in, lots of bare soil waiting to be filled.
My Pirate and I have been in project mode since March and we're getting tired and cranky. But, we're about 2 weeks out from it coming together. Mr. Barnaby has been supervising our efforts.
We are adding a six foot wide round water trough as a water feature. It's going to be surrounded by a gravel path with some stones and more plants. Have I mentioned that my side yard looks like a nursery right now?
So, what projects are you working on in your garden? Please visit the lovely Anna at Flutter and Hum to see all the WV goodness!
