Why I Oughta...

In December of 2023, I started to notice that the bluestone chip garden path that runs from our driveway back to the boardwalk on the north side of our house was starting to 'sink '.  The gravel started as a thick, full layer started to sink into the ground and mud was starting to peek through.  In 2024, I added even more Bluestone chips to the path, but it still didn't stop the sinking.   Last March, I decided to act and began to 'pull back' some of the bluestone chips and lay down some larger gravel .  Then, I pulled the chips back over the top.  But, that hasn't stopped the sinking.  I've long resisted using any sort of landscape fabric.  On any project.  There's TONS of research showing that it doesn't work to supress weeds and it doesn't allow the soil to breath and regenerate with organic material.  Why?  Because, it creates a barrier.   A barrier.  Wouldn't that help with the gravel sinking?  Yes, it turn...

Before the snow totally melted this week, I noticed a phenomenon in our backyard:  I had created a ' Desire Path ' between our house and the compost bin in the back of our yard.   What are desire paths?  Check out this post from U-W Madison .  They talk about desire paths are an example of the relationship between people (me) and place (our backyard): But desire paths are not inert histories. Once established, they influence how pedestrians use and interact with their environment going forward. To the dismay of some planners and to the fascination of others, desire paths are representative of the constantly evolving relationship between people and place. Below is a photo showing our 2023-2024 Wintertime Compost Bin Desire Path: Speaks to the continued kitchen-scrap composting that we've done all Winter.  Egg Shells, coffee grounds and vegetable scraps all found their way to the bins and put in the bin with the "Feed Me" Compost Bin sign .  To date, th...

I've talked about how our yard, beds and even view of our house from the street has changed since we moved in back in 2017.  At that time, we had a house next door (to the north) that was sitting closer (than our house setback-wise) to the street and had a driveway that wasn't right on the property line.  With our new neighbors building and moving in a couple of years back, that changed.  They upgraded the property and house in a MASSIVE way.  And...they're just good neighbors and nice people.  But, they did upgrade the property in so many ways.  In doing so, they built their new house a bit further back from where the old, smaller house was situated.   As a result, that 'view from the street' that I mentioned changed a little bit.  It changed when you are coming south on our street/sidewalk and 'see' our house.  What used to be hidden (mostly) due to landscaping and the old house was the side of our garage.  It is a big, mass of wa...

Yesterday, I walked through an exploration of an area in one of my beds that calls for a mix of Tardiva Hydrangea and (now) an upright evergreen layer .  That requires the moving/transplanting of four Lilac shrubs that have never taken off due to shade.  My #1 backyard priority for 2022 is a focus on shrubs and being deliberate about buying and planting them - versus say...perennial flowers.  I've talked about buying and adding a series of Arrowwood Viburnum shrubs in various spots, but there's a segment of our landscape plan that is directly adjacent to yesterday's Lilac replacement area that calls for a mix of hydrangeas and evergreens.   Here's a look (below)  at this 18-20' area that is bound on one side by the Kwanzan Flowering Cherry tree and on the other by a large (2nd largest on our property) Northern Red Oak tree.  You can see the tree here in this post showing some winter/snow damage .  That Oak is on the right.  In Yellow is a ...

Earlier here on the blog, I posted about the idea of a 'fountain wall' right next to our patio and mentioned that I thought there was an 'order of operations' post that needed to come first to ensure that I had all of the pieces sorted out and that any project that I took on would not have to be REDONE when I moved on to other projects.  However....in order to get to that 'order of operations' post, I think I need to lay out a few more of the building blocks/underlying projects that make up the choices I have to make.   One of the biggest ones is to finish up solving the 'entrance' to our backyard.    I've gone around-and-around on how to best solve the situation I'm facing:  a gradient that transverses the path we need to complete from our front yard (driveway) back to our patio. Last year, I put in a gravel walkway that covers half of the area .  And, we love it.  But, I can't simply lay down a gravel walkway for the rest of this walkway b...

  Getting this project done was *NOT* on my 2021 to-do list , but it should have been.  Although, I'd hesitate to call this project 'done', rather more like (this part) being 85% done.  The edging is installed (and has been for a month or more) and now I've put down the minimum amount of bluestone chips gravel, so the path is no longer a muddy mess.  The dark spots you see above are because I tried this path with larger paver/steppers laid in the ground with gravel around them, but it wasn't working.  So, I yanked them out and put down additional gravel.  They will dry out and the whole thing will look uniform in a half-a-day or so. This area has the firewood racks on the left and some random hostas and ferns that I've stuck here over the years on the right.  But...in looking at the inspiration photo here ...not too bad, right?   I still have to extend this path all the way to the driveway, but for now we've solved the most pressing part of t...

Last month, I posted some photos showing off the new shape of our backyard beds - in a curvilinear form - and talked about how these were the 'final form' of the beds.  The idea that this was the final shape/form of the beds lasted about three weeks.  We decided we need to add another area and cut out even more turf.  Before we talk about what we're doing, let's first understand the backstory, current state and a little bit of inspiration that Nat found that we're trying to bring to life. We've had a sort-of DIY firepit area in the far backyard that was made up of wood chips that I picked up from the Village Mulch Pit and bricks that we scavenged from our neighbor's house when they tore it down.  You can kind of see that area in this post about some hostas and this post where I showed off the latest firewood rack back there .   That is in one back corner.  And the kids' trampoline is in the other back corner.  We also have a gate in one corner t...

We have an easement behind our property that buffers us from the neighbors to the West.  In that easement we keep our 3-bin compost setup and left most of the rest of it to 'go natural'.  The easement runs the entire block and connects the big pond on the south of our neighborhood to territories to the north, so we've seen critters of all types using the easement to navigate. Recently, our neighbors to the West decided to clean up the easement - and it seems that the folks that they hired to clean the place up also worked our side.  They removed a lot of Buckthorn, trimmed up some of the more valuable trees (think Maples and Walnuts) and picked up a bunch of debris that has appeared over the years. They also uncovered a bunch of stones and pavers.  And, (lucky for us) stacked a whole bunch of them up right outside our fence gate.  There are flagstones of various sizes, but also five round pavers and eight square pavers.  These have 'pebbles' embedde...

Yesterday, I shared a video of our twelve yard mulch delivery and my plans to spread it around our property as part of my (new) social distancing project plans.  One of the areas that I mentioned in that post as a 'net new' bed was in the area by our tree swing - what I've billed as " Priority Area 2 " earlier this Spring.  Here's a new look at that area from our bedroom (zoomed in) that shows how I've take what was once a mulch island (just a ring of mulch around that big Oak) to more of a continuous bed. I took the tree ring - that you can mostly still see and extended the bed all the way to the right where one of our large Chanticleer Pear trees is located.  And to the left, I created a whole new bed that was a mix of thin grass, weeds and, frankly...leaf mulch.  Have a look at this post - featuring that River Birch behind the Oak tree - to see what I'm talking about.  This area was some grass, some weeds and never really defined in any way...

Post where I initially pondered walking path edging On my post yesterday where I scored my yard/garden activity for the year , I included some initial thoughts about what I am thinking about doing next year.  On that list was to build the first section of the backyard 'path'.  I mentioned that I also need to figure out the edging - because what I start with is what I'll end up using going forward. I recently saw this photo from Laura at Garden Answer where she was sharing the beds out front of her chicken coop and was drawn to the brick edging that she's using. View this post on Instagram Chicken coop area is all cleaned up! Next thing to do is add some greenhouse plastic to the top and sides of their run to give them a warmer, dry place to move around for the winter! It’s going to look so classy... 😆🤦‍♀️ Oh well, happy chickens are more important! A post shared by Garden Answer (@gardenanswer) on Oct...