Yard tour

Ah yes, it's that time again, time to try to grow grass in our front yard and time to at least think about what we could potentially do with the back yard. Unfortunately, I didn't get around to writing this post when I first took the pictures a couple of weeks ago so now I can give you an update on recent changes.

I once again tried to seed the front yard. Success? Not so much. A limited amount of grass has appeared but it's very spotty. However, the smoke bushes I pruned very aggressively have made a huge comeback and are much larger than they were when I took this.

Let's take a little tour along the side of the house. I love this red bud tree even as I trim it so it doesn't rub up against the house. Alas, the flowers have since disappeared.

I redid this little walkway last year, added lots of shade loving plants. I've got hostas, bugloss, lungwort, and coral bells in there.

Moving along further toward the back, a bit more variety.

Unfortunately, then we run into the great white wasteland of our neighbor's garage. I've planted some bushes in there to try to cover it over the long term but now, it's just an overwhelming wall of whiteness. I'm trying to come up with something to shield the area a bit.

This year I enlarged and rearranged the bed nearest our garage. We've got our own overwhelming walls of whiteness. Sam and I made the trellises to try to break up the whiteness a bit and planted a clematis near one of them. I hope it gets huge and bushy. The plants have grown a lot in the last couple of weeks so they look better than they do here.

But I'm still trying to figure out what to do with our bowling alley back yard. This was taken from our upstairs back porch. That's Sam's sandbox with the white cover in the middle of the yard. On the right is the hole where he's trying to make a pond 3 feet deep. The neighbor kids claim to have found meteorite pieces in there! It's the source of much neighborhood mud, especially when they decide to add water. There are rocks popping up all over; it's a former quarry with some added topsoil. The house is on ledge.

At the very back of the yard is the compost area and some trees. We can now see our neighbor's house since they cleared out their back yard. The compost area is just filled with an invasive awful weed. I don't know the name but my Norwegian friend calls it "German kale." We'll never get rid of it unless the entire neighborhood works on it at the same time. Highly unlikely. It's impossible to get rid of!

Looking back at the house you get an idea of the size of the size of the yard. I'm well aware of it since it takes nearly an hour to mow that grass. We'd like to put a patio in and I'm debating...near the house for convenience and shade or further out to make the yard more interesting? Right now I'm opting for convenience but I'm not sure how large or what shape to make it. We've got to keep the pathways on either side of the house clear since that's the only access from the front yard to the back. The path between the house and the garage is extremely ugly and damp.

I'd love to have a beautifully landscaped back yard but I'm still waiting for inspiration. The depressing thing is that I found some pictures from before Sam was born and the addition was put up and the yard looked MUCH better way back then. I seem to be starting over.