Next week I get another load of woodchips, then I will photograph the bottom of the yard. We still have lots of odds and ends to clean up, but if you click the link it should take you to a gallery of images for those of you who have asked about the main part of the yard. Of course some roses from around the house too

Veronica

Kate

Thank you so much Kippy. When was the house built? It reminds me of SoCal homes I knew growing up, and which I now see far less-often.

The roses are doing wonderfully -- but it's not just the roses. It's a loved garden, and it shows.

Jeri

Reading all of your posts and seeing photos as you have worked has been wonderful.

Seeing these photos showing all of the rewards your garden is giving back to you and knowing love sharing your garden is such an inspiration. Congratulations for being so very persistent in creating your vision and thank you so very much for sharing it with us.

Smiles,
Lyn

:-)

~Christopher

But when I think back to what I started with, the change is amazing! And we get more usable space and it is safer. Everything there was like an onion, peeling back one layer at a time. And doing it all yourself with a shoe string budget meant it has taken forever. It keeps mom at 90 outside for a good part of the day enjoying and not sitting still in the house and that is important. Things like the veggie garden fencing have been gifts too. We started with some green plastic fencing found at the sidewalk of a High School after they finished a construction project on our way to the dump. Then repurposed chainlink and a roll of garden fencing. Then a gift of used picket fencing and a steal on field wire from HD ($10) and suddenly a whole new look appeared.

As far as the house, I think it was a workers house for the mansion that used to be next door. The house was built to look nice from the outside, but inside they cut every corner they could. The mansion was built in 1896 aprox. guessing the house is of the same date. It faces the main street below the property and not the road it is on currently. The mansion had a quarter circle drive way when we moved in, guessing that was originally a half circle loop.

I hope that next year we can invite more people over, some to get an idea of what can be done with a garden and others just to enjoy the space. I look forward to my grand kids being able to play there something my sons and I never could do in the past.

The lot is kind of split with the first 1/4 at the top of the hill with the house, the next 1/2 is the main orchard and garden (chicken zone) and then the bottom 1/4 that we are not doing too much with, though next season I hope to have one fun pumpkin patch down there by the pomes and Madame Berkeley.

The chickens are fun, Just grab a shovel and head down the hill and you can hear the "thundering feet" racing down the hill after you.

I was curious. Maybe you said but if so I missed it. What are the white cylinders? At first I thought buckets, then pots, but neither seems exactly right.

Rosefolly

Those are something dad picked up and cut. He used them some to start trees in, only I think they work out perfect to start veggie seeds in. bugs seem to crawl up them less and mom sees where not to walk. I think one set in the garden is cabbage and the other is? Kale. I remove them as the seedlings get bigger. They also help should a chicken discover a weak point in our moat and hop in. They are placed over the drip emitter and also keep the handful of garden soil covering the seeds from blowing off (the hillside faces a pass and we can get some pretty wicked winds)

Ingrid

Ours loses some root every spring to gophers, which frustrates me to no end. She's one of the few roses we have "un-protected" in the ground, and I am sorry.

Jeri

Diane

LAK is a surprise at just how happy she is in the garden. I purchased her and Archduke Chuck at the same time. He is still small and I would have taken a photo, but then you would have seen what he is mulched in.....Here horsie horsie...

They are both in the same bed with mandarins and the Red Baron peach tree along with some lavenders. The chickens hop the short fence and dig around regularly for worms. I have antique wire milk crates over them as chicken cages. She has a bunch of tall but very skinny canes. I enjoy her very much. Her end of the bed was closer to the location of the decades old former chicken coop so that is probably some special soil too. I love that she has such pretty burgundy canes (twigs as Jeri says-very true)

I enjoy the garden probably more because of all the things going on in it. Today was fun, I picked a luffa gourd. Peeled all the dried skin off it and sure enough a luffa sponge appeared! I did it while showing the neighbors, so everyone left with a handful of seeds and a plan for next spring.