What’s On My Mind

Landscape Design

// December 23rd, 2009 // 2 Comments » // gardening

Some of you might know that I’ve been taking a few landscape design classes over at ACC. It’s been a lot of fun and it’s a bit harder than I thought it would be, which is a good thing. It’s always good to keep the mind sharp.

Interesting tidbits:

• This is officially my first official education in anything design-related. Ironic, no?
• It’s being taught as I’d imagine old-school graphic design classes were - everything is done by hand. I think it’s ridiculous, personally, but it is fun to get pen to paper. If I do this for real, Illustrator will be my tool of choice.

If you’re interested, I thought I’d post my final project for the class. This is all hand-drawn and to scale for someone’s yard. We presented to the client at the beginning of the month and I think I did pretty well. She loved the firepit (as do I!) Download the PDF (1.4 mb) and check out my handiwork.

Notes:

• The big image on the left is showing the entire yard in plan view
• If you notice the little arrows in the front yard, you’ll see a section/elevation from that perspective on the bottom right.
• The top right is a plant legend (some specific, some not)
• The middle right is a drawing of a garden in the back corner.

Leaves, Leaves Everywhere

// January 20th, 2009 // 3 Comments » // gardening, pictures

I’ve always told people about the incredible amount of leaves our yard accumulates over the fall/winter season. We have a total of five red oak trees (3 front, 2 back), four of which are probably about 30 years old, that have been shedding leaves and acorns since August or so. I haven’t documented much of it until now. And I was only able to capture the backyard. 

We bought a new tool this year on my insistence. Last year we got rid of our leaves the old fashioned way, with a rake and lots and lots of leaf bags. After tackling the front yard earlier this season, I decided that with as many leaves as we have, it’s well worth it to pick up a power tool. So we got a blower/vaccuum tool. I haven’t used the blower yet as raking is sort of fun (it’s the bagging that is such a pain), but the vaccuum rocks! It took a while to get used to it as it doesn’t like twigs or acorns, two things of which we have plenty in our leaf piles… not to mention the occasional wayward limestone rock. But I got it going.

It grinds the leaves as it puts them in the bag. This is wonderful since I finally convinced Dave to help me build a compost pile. (Really, I can’t believe it took us this long!) We made it last weekend and I was looking forward to filling it. The grinding is a great help and will really speed things along. 

So, pictures!

Here are a bunch of before-raking pictures I took in our backyard:

I also took a picture of the biggest pile I was able to make all day. Then I grabbed cedar-fevery Dave and begged him to take pictures of me in the pile to show its massiveness. (He called me vain… how rude!)

And here is the end result:

Our once-empty compost pile is filled to the top and the rest of the leaves took up five whole leaf bags — ground into itty bitty pieces!

Thank goodness I have a friend with horses and a passion for composting to help get the pile going. She promises to drop off a load this weekend. Yes. I did.

// August 17th, 2007 // No Comments » // gardening, post

My yard is looking so pretty! I just posted a lot of before and after shots to Flickr and I’ll call out a few here. I’m still in progress in all places, but it already looks so good!

Back fence:

Along the back fence we have planted new plants as well as cleaned up old overgrown ones. We’ve been focusing more on orange, yellow, and red plants instead of the pink and purple that came with the house. I just love orange… Check out the difference!

Before:

After:

Front yard:

We took out our awful, scraggly, random, mismatched hedges in front of the house. In doing so, we opened up the side of our “porch” so we could turn the porch swing around. It’s so nice to look at something besides the wall directly in front of me while swinging! I’ve recently bought a bunch of new plants and placed them up here. I’ve also started laying down some of the leftover rocks from the old path for a patio up here. But I don’t have pictures of that yet.

Before:

Before:

After:

After:

Who would have thought that I would become so obsessed with gardening… a topic I dreaded when we moved in. Now I just love the smell of dirt and mulch. (Still getting used to the compost however.