Bear here...
We bought our home in 2005. The yard has gone through many changes in 17 years. We went from lawn to yarden. We have revamped on purpose and by accident. Other times, Nature has decided what got revamped. What I want to blog about for you is each area of our yarden from start to present. I am calling it "Yarden Evolutions." On our property I have counted around 18 yarden areas. I plan on blogging about at least one area a month, possibly more. Hope you like it.
(Just to let you know, some of the pictures I'm going to use are from the dark ages, when you had to use actual film. The photos were printed on paper at a drug store or on a little laser printer my mom gave us. I scanned some of them into this computer from a real scrap book. Old and scary right? Not sure if kids these days would understand, but I digress...)
You want to see the coming yarden attractions, OK...
Do you remember when I said some things were by accident? My best example is when I ordered gravel for our drive way in 2006. I needed it to fill my driveway, which was mostly grass when we moved in. I wanted it to be about a foot deep at one end to level it off, big enough for our cars to fit side by side, and three to six feet longer than our mid-sized cars. The guy I bought the gravel from said I wouldn't have to pay a delivery fee if I bought 10 yards. Awesome, I hate delivery fees and 10 yards didn't seem like that much. What did I know? But then it was delivered. When Theresa got home from work, it was the first time ever I saw her mouth the words WTF. Below you can see her either playing queen of the mountain or waving me over so she could hit me with the big stick.
We bought our home in 2005. The yard has gone through many changes in 17 years. We went from lawn to yarden. We have revamped on purpose and by accident. Other times, Nature has decided what got revamped. What I want to blog about for you is each area of our yarden from start to present. I am calling it "Yarden Evolutions." On our property I have counted around 18 yarden areas. I plan on blogging about at least one area a month, possibly more. Hope you like it.
(Just to let you know, some of the pictures I'm going to use are from the dark ages, when you had to use actual film. The photos were printed on paper at a drug store or on a little laser printer my mom gave us. I scanned some of them into this computer from a real scrap book. Old and scary right? Not sure if kids these days would understand, but I digress...)
You want to see the coming yarden attractions, OK...
Do you remember when I said some things were by accident? My best example is when I ordered gravel for our drive way in 2006. I needed it to fill my driveway, which was mostly grass when we moved in. I wanted it to be about a foot deep at one end to level it off, big enough for our cars to fit side by side, and three to six feet longer than our mid-sized cars. The guy I bought the gravel from said I wouldn't have to pay a delivery fee if I bought 10 yards. Awesome, I hate delivery fees and 10 yards didn't seem like that much. What did I know? But then it was delivered. When Theresa got home from work, it was the first time ever I saw her mouth the words WTF. Below you can see her either playing queen of the mountain or waving me over so she could hit me with the big stick.
Filling the driveway really didn't make a dent in the pile, so we used the gravel for many projects. By the end of summer we still hadn't used all the gravel, but there was only a bit left. It fit in the back of the driveway and didn't get in the way of us parking the cars there over the winter. Below is a pic of how I moved the gravel most of that summer, with a shovel and a wheelbarrow. On the bright side, I was in decent shape by fall.
One of the big projects that we did on purpose was to get rid of the sidewalk next to our house. It slanted toward the house, so rain water went in our basement instead of away from it. Theresa wanted it gone because it was up against the house, and didn't fit into her gardening plans. Believe it or not, the fun part was breaking up the pavement with a jackhammer. I thought it would take more than all day, but it took less than an hour, and was gratifying. Below is the result of my aggression therapy session.
There was no way for us to just throw or haul that much concrete away, so we did something better. We decided to recycle into to edging and pavers for our paths. First we had to move it to the grass, turn it over, and scrape off the dirt clumped on the bottom of it. Theresa did most of the cleaning (probably all the cleaning, but I want some credit.)
This is how two things, one more planned than the other, led to the start of our unique yarden. Can you spot the cool project in the back of the final picture below?
If you liked the teaser and can't wait to see some before and after (around 2012) shots of some of our gardens we got a link for that. The link can also lead you to pages of Theresa's philosophies about why and how we Yarden.
17 years and an artistic wife who likes the outdoors can lead to a lot of blogs about a yarden. Projects like this can lead me to think that history can be cool sometimes.
(Disclaimer notice, remember when I said some of these photos are from the dark ages or at least 17 years ago? Some of the pictures may also not have the right years on them, but we are doing the best we can, just sayen.)
Type at ya later,
Bear
17 years and an artistic wife who likes the outdoors can lead to a lot of blogs about a yarden. Projects like this can lead me to think that history can be cool sometimes.
(Disclaimer notice, remember when I said some of these photos are from the dark ages or at least 17 years ago? Some of the pictures may also not have the right years on them, but we are doing the best we can, just sayen.)
Type at ya later,
Bear
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