Greetings everyone and welcome to our gardens! In case you forgot (or hadn't seen) what the side of our house looked like a little over a year ago, here's a reminder - this was April 2005:
Since then we've hauled out those bushes and had the exterior painted, so in May of 2005 the house looked like this:
Here's a succession of photos along the side in the spring/summer of 2006, starting with April 20:
Here's a photo taken May 13th:
And here is the side of the house June 9.
And here it is July 1st....
And July 19th!
In the meantime, in our mini-backyard, Neil took down a few "volunteer" trees along the fenceline that really weren't supposed to be there. That's one in the middle of the frame; here he is working on finishing the work on a stump growing into our neighbor's shed (what a nice guy!).
Success!!!
In the above photos you'll notice nice 3 foot border beds (edged with brick). Well, we (we meaning Sandy) decided that THAT was going to cut it anymore. So, we dug up all the brick and grass (we meaning Neil).
My hero!!
The south side of the backyard, for our newly expanded future veggie bed:
After digging out all of those bricks and sod, we (we meaning Sandy) and our many pair of gloves made a NEW border with the bricks (photo taken from Chopper 7):
Here's what the north side of the backyard looks like now (roll your cursor over the image to see the before shot).
And here is our new and improved veggie bed complete with bush beans, carrots, peas, tomatoes, peppers, and eggplant (ditto the above for the "before shot"!).
We also made some "Flintstone" tables from some big pieces
of flagstone (free courtesy of Craig's List) and leftover brick (free
courtesy of the house's previous owner and probably the city of Evanston
when they re-did the brick streets).
After all of that, we installed our NWF and Illinois Audubon Sancturary Signs, as well as our Monarch Waystation sign. For more info on these signs, click here!
Joe Pye in all his glory!
That's all for now... we need to take down a few more "volunteer" trees in back and plant that area with shrubs... and then we'll be ALL DONE!
(kidding!)