Category Archives: Gardening

Fired Up to Create a Backyard Escape

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Do you have a specific part of your home that you avoid sharing on your blog? 

I know I do . . . and it’s the outer limits of our backyard, between our two sheds.   Only our closest friends, who come over in the nice weather for backyard bonfires, have been privy to the view – and that’s because the embarrassment helps fuel our fires.  Literally.

You can’t see the mess here, because this was taken before it got bad, but this is our backyard.

Since we rented this house 2.5 years ago we’ve had a slew of crazy storms that regularly bring down massive branches from the towering trees in our backyard.  It always makes me sad, because I love the yard, with its thick, multi-layered canopy of leaves. Even though the yard is small, encircled by a ratty chain link fence, I can sit out back, and truly feel like I am escaping from the hustle and bustle of the mega suburbs around me.

Whenever I had a really bad day (few and far between, thankfully) I would come home and go straight out to the backyard with my journal.  I’d set up Ryan’s portable hammock or my lounge chair, lay back, and start to write, but without fail I’d end up setting the pages aside and just staring up at the trees.  I recently stared at the trees a lot as I was pondering what to do about my shop.

So when Ryan and I found ourselves with several Crate and Barrel gift cards after our wedding, we knew just what to do with them:  buy a large, 2-person hammock to hang in the backyard.

The only problem?  Our massive pile of downed branches stood exactly between the only two trees that could hold the hammock.

Frankly, the brush pile was out of control.  It looked more like a beaver dam:

Massive Brush Pile

This was the state of the brush in 2011. This year it was even bigger, but I forgot to photograph it. The swing set and other junk is long gone.

What choice did we have other than to clean up the back of the yard?  I never thought I’d say this, but I set about organizing our downed tree branches.

After breaking down all the good, strong branches into piles by thickness (kindling and then small, medium, and large firewood) I realized that we had more “firewood” than we’d ever use.  I hauled 3 10×10 tarp-loads to the curb for the city to pick up.

Remaining Brush Backyard Hammock

That left us with a smaller pile of debris that I burned in the fire pit every night after work for about 2 weeks.  It went slower than expected, but at least the ground under the hammock is clean.

And I’ve had an excuse to play with fire. A lot.  :)

Burning Brush Firepit Backyard

As you can see above and below, the whole endeavor has been supervised by my four-footed family.

Doctor the Cat Helping Backyard Cleanup

The brush is finally cleared out, and now we’re laying a bed of mulch and turning the whole space into a little backyard oasis.

There’s still a lot of work to do, but that’s not stopping me from enjoying the hammock.

PS:  IF you’re new, check out how we cleaned up the “front” of our back yard, aka our porch, last summer.

The Accidental Strawberry Crop

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Did you know that you can literally taste the difference between store-bought strawberries that are shipped across the country to your grocery store, and strawberries that are allowed to ripen on the vine, then plucked fresh to eat moments later?

I would know.  I’ve done tests – in my own back yard! 

We’re overrun with accidental strawberries right now.  In the last  10 days I’ve picked 3 quarts of the berries  . . . and all because of the two tiny bushes I planted in our square foot garden when we moved in two years ago.

This was our brand new garden back in 2010:

Starting a Square Foot Garden

That lone little strawberry plant has since spread out through the planting bed, creating four large plants and pretty much turning the box into nothing but an accidental strawberry garden.

Have I done anything to care for it in the last two years?  Nope, not at all . . .  because the first year the strawberry plan refused to grow and I pretty much gave up on it.  I’m serious. . . it did not expand in size at all.

Clearly size is no longer an issue.

Ryan and I are enjoying the effects of this accidental crop, but I have a sneaking suspicion that we’ve got company.  Every time I check on the garden (what – I’m not going to neglect it now that it’s doing something for us! :)  I find half-eaten berries either on the plant or scattered on the ground around the box.

Clearly the neighborhood squirrels – or foxes – have a sweet tooth.  I know for a fact that the foxes go straight past the garden on their nightly route.

How do I know this?  Because it’s right under our bedroom window. . . and the shriek of the foxes has torn me frightfully from my slumber many a time.

But I digress.

All of our berries have been surprisingly tasty, though they range in shape and size from “little and wonky” (Bent in a C shape with the stem growing out of the wrong end) to “large and uniform” (aka standard strawberry shape, as seen below).  Surprisingly, though, many of the more “normal” looking berries are growing from the offshoot plants and not the initial bush that I planted.

That has me wondering if my initial plant was a little “off” to start with.

But enough rambling . . . I’ve got another quart of berries to pick!

Garden Update: We’re Beet

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Last week I pulled this out of my garden:

Beets! Lots of beets!

In the spring I had planted ‘microgreens.’  Well when I forgot to pick them, and they grew bigger, I realized they looked like beet plants.  So I left them.

Sure enough, they turned into real beet plants.  I guess ‘microgreens’ are really just veggies that you harvest the leaves off of before they get bigger than 2 inches long or something.  Seems silly, if you ask me.

Anyway, I was pleasantly surprised to see that I accidentally successfully grew beets!

We cooked them up and had a fantastic salad for dinner.  Some were dark red, others were golden. It was really freakin’ exciting to know that I grew the beets.

As for the tomatoes that I finally planted in July (or whenever) – well they’re still not ripe.  In fact they’re the size of green golf balls.  So I may not get any of them this year.  But at least with all this rain I haven’t ever had to water my garden this summer!

Speaking of rain, is anyone else knee-deep in water?  (Literally OR figuratively?)  I love rainy weather so I’m happy, but it’s starting to be a bit absurd.  And my poor dog is going to die of a heart attack if there’s one more thunderstorm.