Adding More Green to Our Lives

This is our second spring in our house, and like last year, I've been looking forward to our garden for some time. This year, however, things are different. Last year, we built raised beds, put them where we thought they would do well, and then the leaves came out on the trees, putting our beds mostly in shade. Oof. That, combined with the massive amount of rain we got made for a less-than-successful garden.

{seriously, it did this all summer.}

But, we live and learn, so this year we decided to tackle not just moving the garden, but also re-doing our yard. I failed hard in getting a good "before" picture, so I looked back through some of my old photos to try and find some. I realized I didn't have many - apparently I always tried to keep our driveway out of photos. I had no idea my subconscious thought it was that ugly.

Basically, our driveway was a big gravel loop, with a grass center circle. It was ugly. It didn't work correctly. You couldn't drive the whole loop without having to do a three point turn because of the angle it was cut. Here are the best photos I could find:

Hopefully you get the idea. The center part of the driveway gets amazing sun during the day, so I knew that would be the best place for the raised beds to go, but I also knew I didn't want cars driving around them, getting exhaust all over our veggies. So we decided to get rid of the loop, and plant grass. The driveway now comes in and stops right by the studio (which is the above photo is out of the shot to the left), and we have two parking spots for our cars along the side of the studio.

This was taken a few weeks after the grass was planted and the new beds were added. If you can, imagine the driveway continuing on, looping around those beds, and meeting back up near the entrance. Ugly. Now we have so much more grass and outdoor living space - it's amazing! Jake added a great stone walkway, and lined all the terrace garden beds with stone, which looks so great.

{this was back before the grass really started to come in}

Later this week I'll write up a post about our garden & what we're growing this year. It's already been a learning experience - and it all has to do with those trees to the left lining our fence... but until then, I'll be spending most of my free time enjoying the perks of our awesome new front yard.