Watering in

No new pictures today.  Mostly I am just watering in the current azaleas and persimmon tree.  I did go to HomeGrown Foods today because they were giving away free Purple Coneflowers and there are quite a few in my design.  I went ahead and planted them in the holding bed for now.  Maybe I will throw in a picture of my holding bed, ie the first bed my brother Matthew built for me this spring!  Things have moved in and out of this bed and it has settled down almost a foot, so I will have to pull everything out when I have more leaves to pile in it!

Birthday present!

For my 60th birthday this year my Mom and I visited my sister Jennifer and her husband Nick in Santa Cruz, CA.  It was a wonderful trip and included a very sucessful whale watching cruise on the Monterey Bay and lunch in Big Sur.  A highlight for me was a visit to the UCSC Farm based on Alan Chadwick's "French-intensive/biodynamic" method.

For my birthday they gifted me with the first fruit trees to go into my new permaculture yard!  Thank you so much!  Jennifer also named the trees for me, so here are the first pictures of Pumpkin, the Persimmon!

My birthday card!

From the corner, looking at my house.

PUMPKIN the Persimmon tree!

First two work days!

Dogwood from front by driveway

Cutting down the storm damaged Dogwood and the dying Japanese Maple.

Japanese Maple by driveway

Sunchoke by the shed

Clearing and berming for first Persimmon tree

Riley and Drake prepping for mulch

Getting there!

Mulch going down

Rory patching in Maple hill after grinding the stump

Clearing for the Plum in front yard

Putting down paper and mulch for Plum and azaleas

Azaleas going in

Front Yard- Before

From the front door, looking north west.  The large overgrown Crape Myrtles are on my neighbor property.

 Looking straight west.  You can see the dark maple, I am not sure what it is.  The lamp post is going to go away.  The picture below is looking south west to my rounded corner. Then we have some pictures taken from the trunk of the tree or out at the corner of the street.  Changes are coming!

From the driveway looking west.

Side Yard- Before

 This is the side yard from the corner of the driveway.  We are looking Northeast here, at the back of the shed and the shelter for the swing.  Up against the shed on the south side is one Sunchoke that I planted this spring.  It has a thick 3-4 inch trunk that fell into the shed and has sent up a bunch of branches from that.  It is blooming now and showing it's sunflower heritage.  After the first few frosts it will send all of it's energy to the roots, and anytime after that I can dig them up.  Looking forward to seeing what that one plant produces.  Next to it in the corner is a forsythia.  It will probably be coming out, as this is where the plans show a high hoop house and a potato contraption!

 Above is a picture looking north from the end of the drive.  In front of the gutter trellis is the small Japanese maple.  It is planted on a little hill.  You can also see the Pampas grass at the corners of the shelter.  We cut them back to 8" this spring, so they will be a good source of mulch!  The picture on the right is taken from the gutter trellis looking east.  The light building is my neighbors garage.  The square on the right edge is a load of bricks I had delivered for a flower border along the fence.  In front of it is a ground up tree trunk and roots. In the picture below you can see the second pile and in the middle is the current flower bed with hostas, daylilies and autumn sedum.

This picture on the right is looking south to the street and shows the Japanese Maple and the redbud.  This whole side yard will become the orchard with lots of lower level plants and paths throughout.

Sustainable by Nature

Sustainable by Nature is a local company that has done a design for my yard.  Their latest newsletter features the design.  We started today taking down the dogwood and little Japanese maple to make way for more productive plants!

Back Yard-Before

This is looking from the raised beds to the south, down the east border fence.  The shed is about 14x16 and the swing is in the trellised fixture next to it.  There are Clematis and Morning Glory climbing all over it.   Below is the north fence line between my house and the rental property next door.  It is over run with honeysuckle, mulberry and assorted seedlings, along with some pokeweed.  I hope to put up a privacy fence here, and do water catchment along the north wall of the house.

 This view is from the swing house looking north east to the far corner of the property.  I want to keep the clothesline.  There will be two more raised beds.  The center area is going to mostly perennial veggies and herbs.

Below is a shot looking slightly north west, and you can see the covered swing on my deck and the rock border.  The border will all go away, along with most of the non productive plants there.

Spring 2015

These three trees opened up this spring and I was very pleased to see them leaf out!  However, the dogwood has split limbs from some ice storm in the past, and will be coming down in the new plans, to be replaced with a Persimmon tree.

The Japanese Maple below will also be leaving because it only has a little bit of life left in the trunk, and has been dying back all summer.  The Redbud will stay as part of the new design.  There is also a larger maple out front with very dark leaves and dense shade.  It will also stay.  I am looking forward to seeing if it's leaves turn in the fall.  Current photos will be in the next post.

The Beginning

The Beginning

I don't have a picture of the yard before my brother Matthew built my raised beds, but I do have some construction pictures!  I was recovering from knee replacement surgery so we went HIGH!  I had seen a picture on pinterest and knew that was what I wanted.  We put cardboard down in the bottom, followed by several bags of leaves.  I then layered 6-8 in diameter logs on the bottom and covered with more leaves.  Once it was filled with leaves I mixed Mel's Mix for the upper few inches.  I planted it with lots of plants from my house in Illinois and just used it as a holding bed this summer.  I learned that I should have covered it with topsoil and let it settle because I found it sank about a foot as the leaves broke down.  The next two beds have the cardboard and logs in them and will get filled with leaves this fall. I will be putting in two more of these so I can rotate my annual crops through them.  I couldn't be more pleased with how these worked out.  I will have a soaker hose hooked up to each one.

Sinking them in and making sure they were level.  I really like the fact that I can sit on the sides and reach across each bed.  They are 4 feet by 8 feet and hold a heck of a lot of dirt!

I am putting all of the grass clippings from the catcher on my battery powered mower in between the beds.  I can do one third of the yard on a single charge, which means it takes me 3 days to mow all of it.  Looking forward to creating a more productive landscape.  I would rather be weeding and harvesting than mowing!