A Yard In Progress, One Year Later

May weather is crazy, ranging from dry summer to cold, grey winter. On the sunny days I spend as much time as possible outside in our garden. On the winter days, however, I spend a lot of time admiring the work that we put into our yard over the last year from the safety of our breakfast room window. We've transformed the space with lots of (stinky) compost, plants, sweat, and blood (but not too much). One of my big goals this year was to remove all grass from our front yard -- it's a pain in the ass to mow, and our yard varies the amount of water and light that it receives that the grass was always scraggly in spots and lush in others. This winter, for my birthday, we put in a much more useable stone path, which is enabling us to really plan out our garden space and take advantage of all it has to offer. Here's our progress from May 2012 to May 2013: 

Top: Front Yard in early June 2012             Bottom: Front Yard in late May 2013

Not all of the plants in the front yard were planted this year, they were added throughout the summer in 2012 and have matured into much larger plants. I spent a lot of time moving things around to accommodate their new size. New plants this year are the little red Salvia, the tiny pink and white English Daisies, small green Heather, and Foxglove to the right. You also can't really see two bushes that we added (because the Crocosmia are so big now), a flaming Dogwood bush with branches that turn bright red in the winter, and a Beauty Berry that will have beautiful purple berries through the fall. 

Top: Side yard in May 2013                   Bottom: Side yard in early May 2013

The side yard is one that took the longest to transform and the most work. Pretty much everything that was there in May 2012 no longer exists, except for the strawberries and the rose bush. The area was a haphazard mix of plants that were too big for the space (the juniper bushes and ornamental pear trees), and ones that were not suited for the hot sun that this space gets in the summer (the still unknown cabbage-y plant to the left). It took little effort to dislodge the trees, as they were poorly planted, and we eased our guilt by replacing them with a much more desirable dogwood tree, two sage bushes, 30+ additional strawberries, raspberries, irises, and daffodils.

Top: May 2012 Helebores and Black Mondo Grass  Bottom: Rhododendron and Fuchsia

I've spent the last year working on the garden space on either side of our front steps. It's a very shady space, so it's taken me a while to figure out the direction I want to go. The side nearest the fence was spent as a Rhododendron triage space, as we had a half-dozen very sickly plants that were put in all of the wrong spots around the house for staging. We've managed to give away five (and still have ten or twelve sprinkled around the yard). For this space, we picked one that has a nice sculptural form and all it wants for now is a nice big rock. It will take some time to pick out just the right one, but for now I'm looking into some lower-growing plants to fill the space -- the fuchsia is just a start. 

And finally, my latest project in the full elimination of all grass from the front of our house is the right-of-way space along the sidewalk. I spent a weekend digging up grass that was constantly shaggy and ugly to find that it was masking a crumbling curb. Oh well, working on finding stones to rebuild the gaps and make my new bed look a little more polished. In the middle is a Manzanita shrub, which is drought and heat tolerant, an evergreen, and has really beautiful sculptural branches when it matures. Around it are annuals that are also heat and drought lovers, which will be replaced eventually with perennials as soon as the Manzanita is large enough to not be completely hidden by larger flowering plants.

Goodbye Plastic (Okay Sort Of)

Don't worry, Mom, I'm not going cold turkey. It will be a gradual process that may take the rest of my productive years to perfect. However, when I think about the two tall kitchen bags of stuff that we produce every two weeks, I get a nagging feeling -- it's mostly non-recyclable plastic encased in plastic. Our two garbage bags produced every two weeks (or about 50 bags a year) is never going to go away (at least not in the next 400-1000 years). 

I feel very lucky that we live in Portland with its fantastic recycling and municipal composting programs. It is the only reason that we are able to only produce one garbage bag of stuff a week with three adults and a toddler in our household. But when it comes right down to it, recycling isn't enough and we need to shift our habits.

Before you close the browser and roll your eyes while muttering "damn hippie" under your breath, there are also reasons beyond the waste that we generate. The plastic toys that our children play with and the plastic encasing nearly all of the processed food that we eat leech chemicals. Some of these chemicals, like BPA, are known endocrine disruptors and others, like BPA "safe" replacements that are now used for baby bottles, etc., may be even worse. As I've learned, when I buy that BPA-free canned corn, I'm likely just getting an even higher dose of the stuff I am trying to avoid. Ugh. Talk about a total downer.

I started doing research a few months ago about how to start weaning myself off of plastics (and start making choices about which personal care products I use -- but that's an entirely different subject). I found a book, Plastic Free: How I Kicked the Plastic Habit and How You Can Too, that was exactly what I needed. I read it cover to cover and decided that I needed to start making a shift, not just for the environment, but for our health too. I'm not going to collect all of the plastic that I use each week and count the items, as I have neither the time or the inclination, but I now think about every single item that I purchase at the grocery store and whether its wrapping/box/container is recyclable or not. Realistically, I'm not going to eliminate plastic from our lives. It's not reasonable in today's world, and I'm not going to wear tin foil hats and live like a survivalist. However, I am determined to make a change and one that does not involve being all high and mighty about my "greenness."

Look at me, I'm a flawed being; our nuts/dried fruit/nut butter section of the cupboard is jammed with plastics. Clearly, I have a lot of work to do. Bulk bins, meet Brasilliant. Brasilliant, meet bulk bins. I have my cloth bulk sacks ready to go, but it is so hard to quit Trader Joe's prices and selection (shaking fist). I do feel very lucky that we literally live across the street from Whole Foods and a New Seasons Market is opening five blocks away by the end of the summer, both of which have great bulk selections. Paycheck meet your new home, Whole Foods. It's taken a while, but I've learned to make peace with the 15% increase in our grocery bills, because when it comes right down to it, if I have the choice to walk across the street or get in my car and drive, I'm going to walk every time. 

Wow, that was a long-winded way of saying that I'm going to try to stop using as much plastic. This is my attempt at holding myself accountable. I'm banking on it getting easier with time! It gets easier with time right? Right?

Building Fences

J and I have spent most of our free time and effort over the last year digging in our yard. I'm pretty convinced that it hadn't been gardened in over a decade, so most of the soil was hard-packed clay with layers and layers of plastic and junk. We started with our side yard, moved to the back yard, and then slowly made it to the front this spring. 

After planting raspberries this fall we realized that the pre-fabricated ugly fence panel separating our front and back yards was blocking the sun in a major way. Also, did I mention that it's ridiculously tall and ugly? At one time it was necessary to keep a dog from mauling other people and animals, but in our yard was not necessary. J and I had been talking about replacing the segment for months before we decided to just take it down a couple of weekends ago. First we thought of replacing it with another wood fence, but having the front yard open to the back changed the space for the better. So, we walked around our neighborhood, gathered ideas, and settled on a lower fence composed mostly of a metal mesh so that it turns nearly invisible. Our next task is to run a cable along the top of the posts to train vines.

Little was an eager helper when we were building the fence frame. Hammering everything but the fence was his specialty. We finally coaxed him from hammering dents in the garage siding to hammering scrap concrete that we dug out of the side yard. Behind Miles, you can see the supports for our pole beans and in the foreground, our happy rose and raspberries. 

More garden shots to come. It's amazing the difference a year makes.