Showing posts with label 2004. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 2004. Show all posts

Thursday, June 21, 2007

2006 pix of yard progress since Nov 2002.

We bought this house in Nov 2002. Now in 2006, I have an acquisition of photos that show changes in the yard. Photos below are from 2006. I will need to backtrack to add slideshow photos from previous years.


RockYou slideshow | View | Add Favorite



We bought this house in Nov 2002. In Spring 2003, began work in the yard, very modest beginning, mostly adding a few annuals, some containers, cutting back rhodies and some other overgrown mature specimens. For vegetable garden, I used split-bag topsoil, planting seeds directly into the split bags.

In Spring 2004, work in earnest began to shape up the yard, retaining the flavor of the original owners vision. Also did not want to take out, prune, remove plants until we knew what they were - using that axiom to wait a year and see what's what.

In Spring 2005, more work in earnest, serious pruning, removing, and began actually rearranging, creating and starting to claim yard more to our vision, rather than preserving integrity of original owners vision. Learned original owners stopped living in the house, using on occasional weekends, so yard upkeep had lost it's shaping over the years.

In Spring 2006, we are now engaged in claiming the yard as our own. We have been one-income family since May 2003 when I left my career employment. It has put a serious damper on spending so working the yard has been on extremely frugal budget.
Patience and bit by bit, plant by plant, back-breaking labor, we are very gradually getting somewhere towards our yet unrealized vision for the yard and house.


RockYou slideshow | View | Add Favorite
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June 8, 2004 - Permanent vegetable garden space - Garden Journal entry

June 8, 2004


Well here goes my new journal for my gardening efforts. Like Pinocchio, I want to be a "real" gardener some day. I've had a hand at growing some vegetables in container pots. Last year I tried the split open top soil bags and planting the vegetables directly in the bags. Hey that worked! I had nice amount of summer squash, zucchini, pickling cucumbers, and even a hint of cherry tomatoes.

This year my husband cleared a garden space for me, I don't know the dimensions, will ask him and post it here later. The grandkidlets are staying temporarily with us and took over the newly turned garden space into their own personal sandbox.

We had a family medical situation so I got a late start on the gardening this year. I claimed back 1/3rd of the garden space, laid down newspaper then dumped all the old last year's potting soil from containers on top of the newspaper. Well, of course that was not near enough.


I asked my sweetie to buy some more potting soil, and he obliged me by purchasing 10 bags plus the 3 bags of topsoil I already had. Was enough to partially fill the newly claimed back garden space.
With such a late start, I didn't think seeds would work out, so bought some starter vegetables and planted those. Okay, so now I have a tiny little wee garden woo hoo... and I thought I'd keep a journal of things that go wrong, and things that go right and things I learn along the way.


What I learned from last year, planting seeds is that it's not wise to use cheap seeds, cause they are exactly that..cheap and don't grow too well. So I'll upgrade to better quality seeds. I did save the seeds from my mammoth russian sunflowers last year and planted them again this year. They seem to be sprouting again for 2nd year ..woo hoo for me.

See photos here


(Sidebar note from summer 2004 - my sis (sil), Cinda, came out to spend a summer week with us and brought me a sweet birthday gift - a retro, 1950s, pink mixmaster to go with some of the other retro, 1950s pink items in my kitchen. When we were renting, I had a great kitchen with flowered wallpaper with pink flowers, and I was capitalizing on the Craftsman house era of the house, so I started a kind of retro era kitchen. Bought a chrome and copper formica table with pink chairs; a pink breadkeeper; a pink square cake taker and a pink Bauer chafing bowl.

We bought this house and the layout and decor just doesn't fit well with my retro pink effort, but I haven't the heart yet to give it up. So sis brought me an addition for the 'pink'.



birthday gift - retro,1950s, pink mixmaster
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Hydrangea

Hydrangea

Dahlia

Dahlia

spring color bowl

spring color bowl

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