BPOH: Flowery Goodness!

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This week is the final week of Shannon's Bloggy Parade of Homes is

Decks, Yards, and Patios!

Ok, since I'm supposed to already be in my car and on the way to work, all I can do is post some before and after pics for now, and edit the content and captions later.

So here it is in all its flowery goodness, the yard I have worked *So. Very Hard.* on. Hubby was also a tremendous help, providing some much needed muscle. There was NO vegetation in our yard when we bought the house (except the hostas)... everything else you see has been added by me and Hubby!

The day we first saw the house:

Looking out the back slidng doors off the kitchen...

And a pic of the deck taken from the far corner of the yard...

This is the view from the sliding glass doors off our kitchen in the wintertime (below) ... In the summer, everything is grown over with leaves on the trees in our neighbors yard behinds us. Funny thing is though, those are our trees... Our property line actually runs along the base of those bushes and trees, in what I'm sure my neighbors think is their property (about 6 feet past where we put the wooden fence up). There is actually a creek immediately behind that fence. We didn't want a creek running through our yard, so we put the fence right before it. There are jet skis and boats that travel through here all the time during the summer (not the creek, the lake behind it), and at night you can hear the geese calling out to each other. At least I think they're geese - they don't sound like loons, but I'm really not sure if they're geese or not... And they definitely aren't frogs, because these suckers are LOUD! It's pretty cool to listen too though... I tried to convince my friend Pam that they were aliens who were communicating to each other, but she wasn't buying it. This is after we put up our 6 ft tall "leave us alone" fence! lol:

And this is what it looks like (below) after tons and tons of backbreaking work (and I won't tell you the expense...plants and flowers are NOT cheap... we probably won't be buying tons of stuff like this next year because with the little Chickadee coming, we won't be able to afford it - good thing the garden is all perennials!). At the top of eaves, where the siding meets the roof, we have HUNDREDS of BATS!!!! They live under the little metal flashing along the top rim of the house. At first we were totally freaked out about it. I mean, you kinda never want anything living IN your house (like the family of squirrels we had in our attic that first winter), but we are in the mosquito capital of New Jersey, so I figure "Live and Let Live, and let 'em eat the bugs!" The only bad thing is all the "guano" they leave on the roof.... YUCK! It's almost time to hose that off (Honey, didn't you say you wanted to do that?). Yeah, now I think it's totally cool. I'll actually go out there sometimes at dusk, just to watch them fly out. They take their tme, and they come out 2 or 3 together, and you could stand out there for 45 minutes and see bats just constantly flying out. Sometimes they confuse you with food and they will initially come towards you but then they realize you are too big to chew and they change course at the last minute.... sooooooo cool!

Notice all of my "implements of destruction" sitting there by the hose, with other plants waiting to go in the ground...

There was nothing in this corner when I started (below), and the before pic has the two trees in their containers straight from the nursery. I used the smaller leftover pieces of fieldstone from the front walk I built, and I made this 8" tall retainer wall with them! I also bought the two River Birches you see, and they have flourished there, growing - I kid you not - about 6-8 feet in 2 years. I did a LOT of research before planting them, because as you saw from one of the earlier pics, we are in a VERY wet area (flood zone, mandatory flood insurance) and I needed to find a tree that was a fast grower that liked to get its "feet wet" (aka roots are ok to actually grow in water). Oh, and if you look to the right of the trees you will see the hillbllies shed. Look really closely just above that, and you'll see the roof of the "fort thingy" that is the swingset for their kids (or rather, her grandkids, but that's a different story for a different blog). When we put the fence up, it blocked most of the view, with the exception of the roof of the swingset fort thing. So, since their kids could no longer see over the fence and into our yard, THEY LIFTED IT BY 2 FEET!!!!

You may also notice the strip of green along the edge of the pic on the right. This is a honeysuckle vine - one of 4 - that I've planted along the fence. What I did was this: they went away one weekend and I went to Home Depot and bought 8, 10 foot copper pipes, a 50 foot roll of 4 foot high green plastic coated wire fencing, some galvanized wood screws and some zip ties. What you can't see here is the thing I constructed with all those materials: an extra four feet of "invisible fence" on top of our already 6 foot high one! And, the vines will now grow all over the wire fencing and create a "living wall" to block out those horrid kids who scream at us, throw their toys in our yard, and throw rocks at the birds on my feeders.

These three hostas (you can only see two of them below) were there when we bought the place, but we had no idea they were there until "The Big Thaw" of winter, and spring "sprung". This is the begining of the season, when they are still relatively small. These babies get to be almost 5 feet in diameter, and I LOVE IT! Although I'm sure I'll have to split them next year because I've since planted butterfly gardens inbetween them and I know they'll crowd them out (see the last - and blurry - picture).

This is a closeup of one of my little garden focal points. I got the chair at an antique sale for $10, and the milk can I bought for my neighbor as a thank you for watching our house and cats when we were on vacation. She said she'd wanted one on a few different occasions so we bought it for her. Well, she picked up and moved, literally abandoned her house, and one of the only things she left was... the milk can. I ran over there and snatched it up, and now it's mine...ungrateful little b%$ch...

See, you can kinda see the "living fence" happening in the background in the pictures above and below, to the left side of the pic...

All of the rocks we used for the retainer border here either came from the local recycling center or came from the ground when we dug up the SLABS OF CONCRETE that were only 4 inches under the dirt everywhere you see garden! Apparently there was a concrete slab patio at one time and the previous owners just dumped a thin layer of dirt over it and built the deck. When we started digging, we thought it was going to go sooooo smoothly. Then we hit the giant slabs, and Hubby was the hero and nearly killed himself breaking them up with a sledge hammer and hauling the back breakingly heavy pieces to his truck. Some of the rock in this pic weren't totally organized at this time... this was right after it was finished, which was in May sometime. Since then these plants have just flourished and blossomed, and all the rocks are in their permanent place.

The flowering plum tree you see in the above pic was added for privacy. It is the single best home improvement we have made - it is now the "Hillbilly Blocker". Yeah, our trailer trash neighbors used to sit out on their deck and stare at us everytime we were out there. And when we had company it was like they were going to the movies or something. Their kids would be out there screaming til 10pm at times (at 6 and 5 years old). So when we put this tree in and they couldn't see us anymore, they literally moved their patio furniture that was on their deck, to their ground level patio!!!!!

This is a close-up of one of the "people rocks" I got from The Christmas Tree Shopp. How cool are these guys? I intentionally planted some Catmint behind his head so it would eventually look like his fuzzy hair... (you should see it now, a year and a half later... it's HUGE!)

This is my deck (below), which I would like to say I love to sit out on, but I don't often do that... The neighbors are so bad that there is never a private or quiet moment out there all summer, from 8am to 9pm. And there is no way you can go out after the sun sets - unless you've just bathed in DEET laden bug spray. One day either they'll move or I will, and happiness will be restored to good old "me and mother nature". I also planted 90% of everything with the intention to bring butterflies, birds, and hummingbirds into my yard. I'd never ever seen a hummingbird before in my life, and once my girlfriend told me she gets them at her house (which is 15 minutes away), I decided to plant things that would attract them. I'm happy to say that I see at least one hummingbird every day, or, at least whenever I'm looking for one - there they are! It is AMAZING to watch them, and they are VERY friendly. They will fly right up to your face to check you out if they see you watching them. It's terrifying and incredibly exciting all at the same time...lol... They sound like giant bugs when they fly around and they're so tiny that you almost want to swat at them out of habit. I now have a few feeders out for them and I make my own nectar (1 part sugar, 4 parts water. Bring to boil, let cool in pot, pour in airtight container, add red food coloring -which is optional but easy for them to see- and store in fridge). I saw one just yesterday morning, dining on my deck planters :)

This my friends, is my most surprisingly satisfying idea I dreamed up this year. This is a 36 inch (yes, 3 feet long and humongous) half circle hayrack planter that I bolted to the side of my house up on the deck. Before, it was just a big old ugly and empty space. The plants inside are all coleus, the shade gardeners BEST friend. I am very drawn to foliage, even moreso than flowers, and coleus is king when it comes to variation. The trailing vines on the side are sweet potato vine, which also comes in many different "flavors". This is again, the early part of the season when I snapped this photo, about a month after planting. This beauty has grown so much that the vines are now trailing onto the deck and the coleus has grown to the top of the sun ornament (which by the way, is 30 inches in diameter, just to give you an idea of how monstrous this planter is).

And this is my sad little fuzzy pic of a beautiful butterfly garden that Hubby built for me. He made two of them one day while I was at work, and when I got home I planted them. The sunflower was already growing there though - thanks to the squirrels hoarding my bird seed and stashing it in the soft spots in my backyard! If the squirrels don't come back for it, I get sunflowers! They look a little bare right now, but all gardens do when you first plant them. But they've already grown a bit and they will look just beautiful next year. Some of the echinacea have alreay gone to seed and I've taken the seed heads and sprinkled the seeds all throughout my gardens where I want them to grow next year :) If anyone wants seeds, just email me and I'll send you some - I have PLENTY!!!!

And that my peeps is the reason I sleep so well all summer long :) Now that it's all planted, I'll have to come up with another project for next year!