Onto the next installment of “show me your yard”.

This is the area the is by our deck, which itself needs to be refinished or redone.  We are leaning towards “redone” with the no maintenance deck boards.  It’s on the “to-do someday hopefully soonish” list.

This area was pretty much just mulch when we moved in.  We ripped up the landscape fabric and tilled it up.  I had visions of a garden here, but it is a bit damp so it didn’t work well for that.  Now we plant our canna and dahlias here, and are slowly adding perrenials to the mix.  It’s definitely a work in process.  Brian added the path last summer and we transplanted a bunch of hostas under the pink crabapple tree at that time, too.  The edges are lined with Herman’s pride and silver lamium, which flower pink, purple and yellow.  I planted tulips and bearded iris a few years ago and they are valiantly trying to survive.  The iris FINALLY flowered in June, after waiting for 2 years.  It is so pretty!

Right now it has a lot of cannas and dahlias to fill in the area.  Kai and Anya helped me plant them, which you can see all the bamboo stakes.  They are usually big tall plants by now.  This summer hasn’t been good for growing.    I told the kids we would have a forest of dahlias and cannas.  They told me they would be the wild animals in the forest.  How true is that??

I think it needs a layer of mulch to cover the bare dirt areas, so I need to talk Brian into that one. We pretty much need a dump truck to come deliver a load of mulch. What was here in all the areas when we moved is turning into dirt.  Weeds like dirt.  It’s not looking all that fabulous anymore.  Mulch is a bit of pain, especially when you have as much as we do.  We just can’t add a new layer every year, because we would honestly need a dumptruck full every year.  I’m less than thrilled with that outcome.

In the middle of the yard is our water birch.  It has very thin branches and sheds as much as I do.  In the windy spring and through the summer storms there are tons of branches on the ground around it.  Most of those are dead branches, so at least it is getting rid of the bad stuff to make way for it’s new growth.  It works great as kindling for our little fire chimney.  The tree is really pliable, too, which works out well when you have straight-line winds of 80 mph.  It only lost a few live branches from that one.  It’s a bit worrisome when you see your tree blown almost horizontal, though.

The yard really is in it’s glory mid-summer through the Fall.  I love having our little sanctuary back here, but it is work.  The weeding…oh, the weeding!  It gives us a reason to be outside, though.  The kids love to play outside so we can weed while we watch them play. It works out in the end. 🙂