the long-range plan is to create a garden fit for an
old lady. which is to say, low-maintenance, minimal stooping-and-bending,
and a generally pleasing place to sit and listen to the birds. that,
and to apply organic techniques wherever we can. we've got a nice
combination of full sun and shady spots, so we're playing with lots
of things. my sister and roommate, toni, is a horticulturist; thank
goodness she knows what she's doing, because i sure don't.
| 
summer 2000
here's what the back yard looked like when i moved in, before
we rebuilt the deck.
|
upper deck
opens off the bathroom. in the long run, i want to replace this
with a bi-level deck with a hot tub. maybe when i win the lottery
... |
summer 2001
the deck got 'set dressing' treatment, complete with furniture
and solar lanterns. since it gets full sun most of the day,
it's also a great place for pots of sun-loving herbs and plant
starts |
| 
herb garden
a few steps down from the kitchen door. in the background, our
raised bed and a pea-and-bean border along the fence, which
also has a couple of artichoke plants, bee balm and edible flowers |
herb garden
closeup. i wish the glaze on the pot to the right showed - it's
a rich cobalt blue |
the deck in late afternoon
is a shady retreat. |
| 
the vegetable bed
toni and i designed, built and hauled two-plus tons of dirt
to create a 4'x12'x24" bed in the sunniest corner of the
back yard. |
ferny corner
with one of the solar lanterns - they cast a dim, amber glow
that keeps me from tripping in the dark but doesn't interfere
with star-gazing. hm, that fern bed needs a little cleanup,
doesn't it? |
shade garden
tucked in a corner of the deck outside the basement sauna's
changing room, pots of fuschia, dicentra, violas, ferns and
hosta |
| 
aquilegia and iris
in front, in a sunny spot beside the porch |
|
 |
| the gardeners:
pat (left) rests while
toni (right) works.
some would say this is typical. |
| summer 2002
my, how things do grow ... |
tomatoes, eggplant, cucumber, marigolds and
basil ... |
beyond the bed, pole beans, eight-ball zucchini
and monarda |
we put tomatoes everywhere this year - including
the rosemary pot |
remember the border
against the east fence? the monarda took off, and we added sunflowers,
plus gorgeous purple runner beans along the fence |
check the 12-foot sunflower on the right! |
the shade garden, 2002.
the hosta needs to go in the ground before next year! amazingly,
all the fuchsias survived the winter |
around front ... we've been
adding lots of floral oddities like this amazing "black"
hollyhock (nearly 8 feet tall) |
a dazzling scarlet crocosmia |
i really don't need any more fuchsia, but
i couldn't resist this dainty but hardy upright, named "galadriel." |
Summer 2003
the garden matures |
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 |
 |
| remember the raised bed? you can hardly see
it now for the foodplants. seen from the west, with lemon cucumber
overflowing the bed, tomatoes looming and okra in the background |
closeup of tomatoes in late july. two more
weeks and they'll be coming out my ears! |
last year's sunflower crop is replaced by
purple runner beans, more tomatos and eight-ball zucchini, plus
some experimental soybeans (on the left) for edamame |
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 |
 |
| the shade garden continues to be one of my
favorite spots. we moved the galadriel fuchsia there, and still
haven't moved that hosta |
the irises (including some I'd forgotten planting)
really took off this spring in the small bed by the deck, so we
made the bed bigger. an old washbucket holds three kinds of mint
(we're keeping it in containers to prevent it from taking over). |
last year's pots with this year's flowers:
some pretty violas, a mixed planting of heliotrope and old-fashioned
annuals, and a dazzling lobelia rescued from a parkig lot. rosemary
thrives at the back of the bunch. |
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|
| the bamboo along the back fence is getting
out of hand. i've hired a friend to try trenching and containing
it. the red line marks where he plans to sink sheet metal three
feet deep in hopes of stopping the spread (we'd cut down two-thirds
of it before the picture was taken!) |
this closeup gives you some idea how dense
the stuff is at the fence line. the neighbors who built the fence
are glad to see us tackling this project - it comes up in their
yard, too. |
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home improvement 2
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