3 stages of Lemongrass from my rooting of the the stalks for about 2-3 weeks and planting them at the beginning of April to now. These guys need lots of sun and water. It’s best to water things when the sun goes down in the afternoon or really early before the sun beats down so that you don’t sizzle up your plants. It’s like asking the sun to bake the plants!
Today I woke up and saw water dripping from the windows. I guess I shouldn’t have fertilized the garden last night! I don’t want to keep water-logging everything! We had about a day or so of non-rain, which was nice for a change. Below are some pictures from around the outside of the house and backyard:
Here’s a little flashback of where it all began. Essentially we had mud, weeds, leaves, branches, poison ivy, a bazillion petals from the cherry blossom tree and tree roots instead of grass.
Yes, this was our backyard 2 years ago. Just this summer have we really put more attention to fixing it up.
We spent forever cleaning it up to make it to look like this. A slight improvement.
Building the raised garden planters and planting the first herbs/fruits/veg (May 29, 2009)
We positioned the planters at the very rear of the yard since that is where the most sun comes in. We were a bit limited since there is a tree in one area of the yard and the yard isn’t huge. It’s actually a good size since I don’t like to mow lawns. (Sorry the pictures were askew.)
The “babies” waiting to be planted. I purchased everything from Hickory Grove Nursery except the flowers.
Front and side of house – mixed planters with a bunch of things that I don’t remember the names of!
On the front porch: Lemon Catnip, the Palm plant that Toonces keeps devouring and a bunch of these other things I can’t remember the name of. The rocks are from places that I visit and bring home because I like them. The black one on the left was from Jen & Steph’s wedding. Also, it helps keep the squirrels from digging. The cat grass I aptly planted in the cat pot. Looks hilarious to me!
This is what the tree base looked like for about a year or so. The people who owned the house previous to us would scrape all the leaves up against the tree I guess to mulch it. We got rid of their mulch as there was too much to decompose and we put rubber mulch. That eroded after about a year so wound up doing the same thing they did and raked the leaves against the tree until we figured something out. This is to the left of the garden area.
We now have 2 birdhouses and a hummingbird feeder. The chairs and stuff are temporarily there and are going to be refinished. Eventually we’d like to install a paved sitting area with a table and fire pit. That will have to come when we have time to do it and an afford it! The Coleus on the side of the tree is there so that it can help cover the exposed roots. Those roots are extremely annoying because they reach the ENTIRE yard. There are no level surfaces basically.
These are 2 bird baths or squirrel drinking fountains. They get muddy when it rains a lot. I paired up a cute lime green iron side table with the iron bird bath. They are heavy enough to be secure when it is windy and I stuffed the legs about an inch into the ground just to be safe..
My Coleus grown from seed – took like 3 months for it to start to look like this! I almost threw it out since it seemed like nothing was happening. On the right is my Thai/Asian Basil that I saved from a take-out bowl of Pho! This one was another late-bloomer. It took about 6 weeks of keeping this guy watered for him to grow a nice root system. I almost just ate him but when I lifted him out it was like “Whoa! When did you grow these roots?!?!? You are spared….for now…”
The 2 girls watching us from the bathroom!
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