Longest Post Ever

As usual I've procrastinated until the very last moment to post about all of the changes in our yard this year, and what big changes they were.  I already mentioned the wood shed we built in early Spring.  It's working out splendidly.  In fact it was home to a nest of robins this year and a chipmunk.

Shortly after completing the wood shed, Jeremy built two beautiful cedar raised beds to house our vegetable garden.  They are taller than our previous beds in an effort to discourage rabbits, and the bottoms are lined with hardware cloth to prevent rodents from tunneling up from underneath them.  They're 14 ft long by 3.5 ft wide.  Situated on a previously unutilized section of lawn, they receive full sun from about 10am until 3pm.  To say that I love them would feel like an understatement.

Below is a photo of the location of the old garden beds in relation to the new ones.  This photo was taken this Summer after the old beds had been abandoned and taken over by weeds.  In their heyday these were lovely beds, just not in the location or size that I ultimately wanted.

I should backtrack a little and say that while the construction of the beds was underway, we were embarking on another big landscaping redo.

You can't really tell from this photo, but this back berm surrounding our patio was huge. The fresh layer of mulch makes it look a lot nicer than it actually was.  It was often weedy and I could never figure out how to fully plant it.  There was just too much maintenance and it was out of scale with the rest of the backyard.  So we got a new tiller and started the enormous task of reducing the berm.

We hauled dirt from the berm to the new raised beds and used it to fill up the bottom half of them. We also used it to level out the bottom of our drainage ditch which had always been too steep and full of ruts.  It now has a flat bottom which makes it a lot easier to mow.  Here's a photo of it right after we'd reseeded it.

This is what the berm looked like after we'd reduced the size and graded the soil.   Much better. 

Here's what it looked like when it was all finished.  I planted catmint along the bottom which will look really nice once it fills in.  I also edged the berm with pavers to create a clean transition to the lawn. 

We also regraded and resized the garden bed along the east side of our house.  It looked too deep once we installed our fence and its depth made it hard to maintain.  These before photos show what it looked like after we started to regrade the area and removed the sumac that had become invasive.

Here are a couple of after photos of the same spot once it had been resized and replanted.  I still need to add edging to the bed along the fence.

We also redid the area on the east side of the patio.  That involved removing an overgrown dappled willow and replacing it with a fountain.  Here's what it looked like after we had removed all plantings and regraded.  

This photo shows it edged and reseeded.

Sometimes it's hard to believe the patio area started off looking like this.

And now it looks like this.

But we're not done yet.  One more major project took place this year.  Remember the old raised bed garden?  We started to remove the sod surrounding them and then deconstructed them.

To make way for this.

Yep.  We built a shed!  It will store all of my gardening tools and supplies.  The photos above were taken this month right after we finished it.  Well, it's mostly finished.  We still need to add some trim to the sides and back, paint the door, and paint the inside of the shed.  Those tasks will wait for warmer days.

It's amazing what you can accomplish with a good plan and a good carpenter.

It's been a year of exciting improvements and I can't wait to get outside this coming Spring and Summer and enjoy them all.

Happy New Year!