landscape
It's a beautiful morning, and I'd like nothing more than to take my kids to the park, but instead I'm waiting at my house for the landscaping crew to show up.* I was told they would be here by now and so far there is no sign of them. I'm also in desperate need of a post-run shower, but I know that as soon as I get that started, they'll get here and it will be awkward. At least Daniel is wearing pants today.
This is the last stage of the renovation, which started the first week of September last year, so we're a good nine months in to the actual work, though the planning and mulling and sorting of finances to make it all possible took years. Large holes were dug, concrete was poured, the kitchen was ripped apart and put back together, the exterior got a total redo, but right now, finally, the inside of the house is really, really nice. The house is a little bigger than before by a couple of hundred square feet and much, much more functional and comfortable. Our bedroom is still badly in need of a refresh, and we need new furniture and a rug for the living room, but those things can wait.
Last month the new shed was built in the back yard and permanent steps and railing were installed off the front porch and back landing to replace the temporary ones we'd been using all winter. Now we just need a patio and retaining wall instead of the sea of mud that is our back yard, and a smaller patio and retaining wall off the front porch, and we'll finally be done paying other people many well-deserved dollars to do these various improvements to the property.**
Once the hardscape work is done, all that remains is the yard and garden. Right now it looks pretty terrible to be honest, especially in the back. With most of the construction junk out of the yard - including the old shed, which took an entire Saturday morning to haul out, but it remained intact and has gone to another home! (that's a whole post right there) - and the new shed all done, the back yard looks better now than it did ten months ago. Still, I have a long way to go before we're living in the urban homestead edible landscaped utopia I've been daydreaming about since we moved here.
Want a tour, then? Let's start in the front yard, which is a bit eccentric, but not so terrible, really.
Here is the front of my house. Note the new covered front porch. Note the dark gray siding. Note the unwieldy shrubs. The lighter colored one is some kind of Japanese willow; I planted two of them five or six years ago, but the second one didn't survive its first winter with hungry rabbits, and now this one is getting too tall. The other thing is a scraggly wyzalea (or something like that) and I'm not attached to it at all. Underneath are boring hosta plants and a crazy invasion of snow-on-the-mountain that is absolutely impossible to get rid of.
Next to the raised beds I have a new asparagus patch, planted early in May. Perhaps it wasn't the wisest thing to plant a perennial smack in the middle of my garden space that is still in flux, but I was eager and the time was right. An online search for a companion planting guide tells me that asparagus grows well with tomatoes and basil, so I have those very things growing amongst its spindly spears. Those are growing well, actually.
I truly did not mean for this post to get so long, and I guess the laundry list of goals and improvements might be boring for some of you. If you've made it this far, you deserve a prize of some sort. I'll be sure to post an update when the patio work is done. Even if the weeds are insurmountable, at least it will be progress!
*I started this post yesterday.The crew finally did show up, five hours late, to drop off equipment before leaving for the day. They called a rain day for today because we were supposed to get heavy storms all day, but the storms never materialized, and neither did the crew because it was too late to call them back.
**When it comes to home improvement, we're more than happy to pay actual professionals to do the work. They do it far better and faster than we ever could. I know that DIY is the thing to do now, that you can supposedly learn everything on YouTube, but I just know better than to try and install flooring or level a countertop on my own. You know how people go through years of training to get licensing for that stuff? There's a good reason for that.
This is the last stage of the renovation, which started the first week of September last year, so we're a good nine months in to the actual work, though the planning and mulling and sorting of finances to make it all possible took years. Large holes were dug, concrete was poured, the kitchen was ripped apart and put back together, the exterior got a total redo, but right now, finally, the inside of the house is really, really nice. The house is a little bigger than before by a couple of hundred square feet and much, much more functional and comfortable. Our bedroom is still badly in need of a refresh, and we need new furniture and a rug for the living room, but those things can wait.
Last month the new shed was built in the back yard and permanent steps and railing were installed off the front porch and back landing to replace the temporary ones we'd been using all winter. Now we just need a patio and retaining wall instead of the sea of mud that is our back yard, and a smaller patio and retaining wall off the front porch, and we'll finally be done paying other people many well-deserved dollars to do these various improvements to the property.**
Once the hardscape work is done, all that remains is the yard and garden. Right now it looks pretty terrible to be honest, especially in the back. With most of the construction junk out of the yard - including the old shed, which took an entire Saturday morning to haul out, but it remained intact and has gone to another home! (that's a whole post right there) - and the new shed all done, the back yard looks better now than it did ten months ago. Still, I have a long way to go before we're living in the urban homestead edible landscaped utopia I've been daydreaming about since we moved here.
Want a tour, then? Let's start in the front yard, which is a bit eccentric, but not so terrible, really.
Here is the front of my house. Note the new covered front porch. Note the dark gray siding. Note the unwieldy shrubs. The lighter colored one is some kind of Japanese willow; I planted two of them five or six years ago, but the second one didn't survive its first winter with hungry rabbits, and now this one is getting too tall. The other thing is a scraggly wyzalea (or something like that) and I'm not attached to it at all. Underneath are boring hosta plants and a crazy invasion of snow-on-the-mountain that is absolutely impossible to get rid of.
You know what I really, really want growing here instead? Low-bush blueberries. I'm going to try and make that happen.
If you turn around and look towards the street, you see all kinds of stuff growing. My goal is less lawn, more wild plants and edibles. The perennial bed, once a carefully curated collection of boring cultivated flowers, is now crammed full of aggressive native prairie plants vying for space. I have common milkweed, bee's balm, two kinds of echinacea, daisies, lemon balm (that may not be native, but it's doing JUST FINE), phlox and brown-eyed Susans growing so densely that even the Creeping Charlie has a hard time finding room. A few other not-so-aggressive native plants live there, too, and periodically I clear space around them to grow, but otherwise I basically leave it all alone. It's a little jumbled, a little wild and not so organized, but I've decided this is actually a pretty accurate reflection of my gardener personality, so I'm okay with it. This part of my yard also tends to attract many beneficial winged creatures (bees, butterflies, finches, and more), especially later in the summer, and that makes me very happy indeed.
As you can see, I also have potted mint perched atop a birch log from the tree we had removed about a year ago. That mint is just dying to get out and take over, I can tell, so I set it up high, further out of reach from the ground.
Another section of my front yard is more or less devoted to edible plants. I have four raised beds in which I ostensibly grow herbs and greens, but right now it's more of a forest of sunflowers that have managed to reseed themselves the last couple years, and I don't have the heart to pull them up.
Tucked under the wild flowers are nasturtiums, dill, cilantro, parsley, kale, spinach and chard. They all seem to live together pretty well.
Now, the back yard is the real mess. LITERALLY. The picture below shows the climbing dome in a temporary spot while we wait for the landscaping to get done. You can see the junk and the pile of firewood in front of the brand new shed. The new shed is actually really quite nice, and SO much more spacious and sturdy than the old one.
The picture below is my attempt at getting creative with a raised bed for vegetables. The back half of our back yard used to have 7 spruce trees and a giant silver maple. Now we're down to two spindly spruce and a giant patch of that cursed snow-on-the-mountain and creeping Charlie, both of which I think I'll be fighting for the rest of my life. You can't even use weed killer on those things (not that I would, being the all organic hippie that I am when it comes to weed control) because they grow back so quickly. I've resorted to piling thick layers of cardboard over the worst spots, which is every bit as attractive as you can imagine.
Anyway, the raised bed has landscape cloth AND cardboard under the good soil, and I edged everything with random stuff I found in the yard. Not wanting to spend good money and time on something permanent, I thought it better to use logs and planters and concrete cinder blocks, all of which were lying around the yard, instead. It would look a lot better if the vegetables were growing better, but it's a little slow going.
Next to the raised beds I have a new asparagus patch, planted early in May. Perhaps it wasn't the wisest thing to plant a perennial smack in the middle of my garden space that is still in flux, but I was eager and the time was right. An online search for a companion planting guide tells me that asparagus grows well with tomatoes and basil, so I have those very things growing amongst its spindly spears. Those are growing well, actually.
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| Ugh, cardboard is ugly. |
And here? Here is the back of my house. It's a vast improvement from a year ago, but you can see the uneven ground and the bare patches. What you see is actually just a fraction of the bare spots, ravaged from excavation and heavy equipment going in and out. Within the next two weeks a lovely and expensive patio will be built, and then we'll have the perfect place to grill burgers in the scorching sun with no table to eat them at. One thing at a time, am I right?
I truly did not mean for this post to get so long, and I guess the laundry list of goals and improvements might be boring for some of you. If you've made it this far, you deserve a prize of some sort. I'll be sure to post an update when the patio work is done. Even if the weeds are insurmountable, at least it will be progress!
*I started this post yesterday.The crew finally did show up, five hours late, to drop off equipment before leaving for the day. They called a rain day for today because we were supposed to get heavy storms all day, but the storms never materialized, and neither did the crew because it was too late to call them back.
**When it comes to home improvement, we're more than happy to pay actual professionals to do the work. They do it far better and faster than we ever could. I know that DIY is the thing to do now, that you can supposedly learn everything on YouTube, but I just know better than to try and install flooring or level a countertop on my own. You know how people go through years of training to get licensing for that stuff? There's a good reason for that.
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