osprey94's Blog

A tour...the before photos
Mar 21, 2008 | 1:52 PM PST

Weather update. This morning there was frost. Might be the last one, though.

I thought since the look of my property is going to change (hopefully A LOT) in the future, it'll be nice to keep a record of what it used to look like. Come along with me on a tour. I warn you. It's not pretty, organized or neat. But, it does have potential. Prepare to be bored to tears!

This is the back of the house, facing an expanse of boring lawn and the 10 acres of our woods beyond. One thing I'm trying to do is tie the woods into the lawn more and reduce the lawn with plantings. This is the deck I want to plant around. Look how boring it is. You can see the ugly foundation of the thing and the trash cans are a lovely addition. There's the daybed I bought minus the cushions and the shade cloth.

So, going around to the corner of the house, you can see a bit of a camellia there next to the house. I have 3 there. They grow very slowly, though and I wonder if they would like a different location better.

Walk around the end of the house there (the end with the trash cans) and you will see our 4 hydrangea bushes. There's one on the very end cut off in this picture that didn't come back last spring/summer. If it doesn't come back this spring, either, I'm pulling it out. It was my favorite, too. The flowers started out white, turned pink and finally, greenish before the end of the summer.

 

Okay, keep walking a few feet, and you see our side door. That's a lilac next to the door and boulder and a rhodie below it. This is the northwest side of the house. See all the moss?

 

Around the corner is the front of the house. We have 3 different kinds of rhodies planted here on either side of the front door. Not very exciting.

To your left is a plot of land we've used for wildflowers and most recently a big pumpkin patch. It's covered now (for the winter) in black plastic to kill the weeds that are constantly threatening to take over. I don't know what we'll do with it this year. Probably pumpkins again.  My birdfeeders are in this area because they are easily seen from the dining room/kitchen area.

Here's a shot from the other direction. You can see our detached garage from here. I want to remove those "boxes" near the birdbath in favor of large, more naturally shaped raised beds.

If you keep going around the third corner of the house, this is what you'll see:

More, weird, geometric boxes that I want to get rid of as soon as possible. The birds love those big green California Lilacs in the middle of the pic. They grow like crazy and don't need anything to flourish. The blue flowers are RIDICULOUSLY pretty, too and each bush is absolutely covered in bees while in bloom.

To your left is the shop and the veggie garden. The shop is to the right of those whiskey barrels. Those are butterfly bushes in the whiskey barrels. They're just for the hummingbirds. The rectangular box behind them is coming out, too.

 

And, here is the veggie garden. The footprint for the greenhouse is in the foreground. You can see the railroad tie-like timbers there that will form the foundation of the greenhouse. Beyond that you can see my raised beds for veggies and beyond that is the berry patch (12 blueberry bushes, tristar strawberries in containers and 3 raspberry bushes).

 

And, that's the tour. Are your bored to tears? Ready for a nap? I am. I'm stuck in bed with this cold. When I drift off to sleep, a coughing spell wakes me up. Lots of fun.

D bought about 30 mason bee cocoons and a mason bee house today. It'll be fun to watch their lifecycle. He put them on the west-facing shop wall. Pretty soon, they'll hatch and the females will lay their eggs in the house, cementing them in with mud. I think they'll find that we have PLENTY of mud for them here.

The hummingbirds (two males, now) were very active today. Going back and forth between the two feeders over and over again. A nuthatch kept flying from the woods to the feeder. Every time he'd fly back to the woods, he'd fly RIGHT over our heads, "yanking" the whole time. I also saw one pecking away at our fence like a legitimate woodpecker.

The chickadees seemed to be chasing each other (courtship?) today, too. We ALSO saw harriers soaring over the pastures nearby.

Very active bird day. Wish I felt better. Dangit. Oh! D also bought a spotting scope. We watched a nuthatch from a good distance and could see it in the scope as though I was standing within one inch of it. Amazing.