Bear here...

The next stop on the Yarden Evolution is our white picket fence area in the front yard (fortunately Theresa edited this post and told me it's not spelled "picked" fence).
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Theresa said she wanted a house with a white picket fence (although she insists she said no such thing). My mind went back to the movie "It's a Wonderful Life." Anybody remember the gated yards and the nice, waist-high white picket fences around it that one could chat over with ones neighbors? In reality, we no got gate and the fence is a little short (about knee high), but that's OK, we like it. Theresa says that since our house is so close to the public sidewalk, she wanted a small fence because it makes a good psychic barrier. I'm not sure what she means by that.

Below is our starter picture of the same front yard space in 2005. The first year we were doing a lot of indoor work, so we just put down some railroad ties to separate the yard from the driveway.

The next two pictures are from 2006. Theresa wanted to have a garden to attract bees and butterflies. We also wanted it be good looking so hopefully the neighbors would forgive some of the things we knew they wouldn't like as much that we'd be doing in the backyard.

Don't that next pic from 2008 look nice? The stone path is a decorative spiral that let us walk in amongst the plants for watering. 

Eventually the plants filled in, and buried the spiral path, but the garden still looked cool. Every year some plants would be the same and others would change. See the blue plant (Theresa says it's a delphinium), that was there in 2013?

Fast forward to 2016. We didn't plant anything different, but the delphinium bloomed in two shades of blue and some of the flowers are white. These were my favorite flowers for a while because they seemed to attract several bumble bees that I would watch from my car when I got home from work. Around 2019 they died off and I kinda miss them... Theresa has tried replanting others (she says it was amazing that I actually noticed that a plant was gone) but nothing new has survived.

But we still have lots of other things that are good bee attractors (and I don't mean me in the shorts).  The pink flowers feed the bees in the early spring and summer (Theresa says those are purple coneflower/echinacea)...

... see , told ya... bee food...

The asters feed the bees in the fall. They also tend to go past the fence, but that's ok, because I have counted over 10 bumble bees at a time on them.

Can you see the bumble? (Below) This shot goes to show you our fence also needs a little maintenance. Over the years Theresa has touched it up and repainted it a few times. She told me many times, but who's counting since she did the work?

For the last three years the big summer attractor has been the New Jersey Tea bush. (White flowers pictured below.) I've photographed bumbles, other bees, and cool black wasps feeding on it, but those pics are for a Small World Life post.

Hope you liked the history of this garden area. It's amazing for us to revisit the early pictures when the garden looked bare. Keep in mind that Theresa pretty much only planted one of each type of plant, but if you're patient, over the years they spread, and you too could end up with a garden bursting with flowers.

When I figure out what's next I'll type at ya.

Later,
​Bear

Bear here...

I am guessing the first few years of us being new home owners and having a yard for the first time was fun for the neighbors to watch. Though tiring, the yard was also fun for us to work on. I was not into grilling yet, but we were into nights around a campfire, so one of our first outdoor projects was to build a fire pit. Cool, huh?

In the picture above did you notice the stumps? That's where the neighbors come in. One had cut down a box elder tree. We saw the pile and went over to ask if it was okay to take some branches and stumps. (Theresa is shy, I am not, especially when it comes to getting free stuff.) The neighbor was a little confused and amused. Most people don't want to drag yard waste onto their property, but he said sure, take whatever you want. That "yard waste" lead to quite a few yard art projects. One was behind our white shed. This is just an ugly pile of branches, you say? 

A little imagination and effort and we turned it into a garden room with a view. We spent many nights here on that love seat watching the bats fly at dusk over the field behind our house. We called it bat TV.

The next yard art is in the front yard. It was also known as Stump Henge.

We weren't ready for a Stonehenge project, but at least the wood was a little bit lighter. I thought Theresa was crazy to line up dead stumps in the front yard, but she thought they were beautiful and said they would create great habitat for the wildlife. She also said something about how they started to suggest a circular area under the pine tree that balanced all the straight lines of the sidewalks in the front yard. I don't know what she means, but it seems to make sense to her. We surrounded the stumps with some very cool rocks we bought from a geologist who was having a garage sale.

Those stumps lasted at least 10 years before they broke down, there are still some ruins there that look kinda cool. Below is a better overall early shot of our front yard under the pine tree. See if you can spot how we used the picnic table we got from some other neighbors (shown in the fire pit photo above).

The table wasn't a very comfortable bench until we made adjustments, like the large stump on the right that makes a great footstool when I lay down on the bench. This was when we also decided- why cut the grass when the pine needles would do the same job? When Theresa was researching what would grow under a pine tree (where it is dry, shady, and has acidic soil) she read that the best thing to have under a pine is really just the needles. And she loves to walk barefoot in pine needles, which she did a lot when she was a child in a pine forest where her family went camping. She says they make a cool sound.

Some of our furniture fixer uppers weren't so cost effective as the bench around the pine tree, which was free. For example, this other bench (below) we got at a garage sale for $5. But then the paint and the 2x4s we bought to create leg supports cost so much that we could have just bought a new outdoor bench instead.

You will notice after we painted the bench, it fit in fine in our shade garden, where you'll see Theresa put more of our acquired stumps and rocks. Oh yes, the rocks. We also acquired a lot of rocks for our yard art. Below is a rock spiral that was the first decoration in where the future Catio 1 would be built.

We like stone spirals and we thought one would be cool for the entry to our big shed, so I dabbled in pebble art...

What I neglected was the cement to hold the pebbles in place. It looked good for the summer but was gone after the first winter. Live and learn. Seeing this again is making me want to try the pebble art again. Who knows what we can come up with?

Hope you liked the art tour. When I figure out what's next I'll let ya know.

Type at ya later,
​Bear