My Yard

As you can see, I've been adding some pics to my page to spruce things up.  Ginger photos are back!  (why did I ever get rid of them!?) Ginger Rogers that is, not my late doggie.  And before you ask, no, we did not name her specifically after Ms. Rogers....the name "Ginger" just seemed to fit her personality so well!

Anyhoo, I thought I would share some photos of our yard.  Why?  I already have spring planting on the brain!

The front of our house

See, this past year, I had held such high hopes for growing my own food.  I had visions of my own little urban homestead dancing in my brain, and of learning how to can.

The problem is, while we do have a rather large yard for a city dwelling, it's too shady.  We simply have too many big trees in our yard to be able to do much veggie growing.  We do have a couple of small places in the yard that do get at least 5-6 hours of sunlight a day (the bare minimum for most veggies), but I just didn't have my "poop in a group" (so my former boss liked to say) enough to take advantage of it.  I did attempt a couple of tomato plants in one of them, but thanks to blight and weird weather I didn't get squat out of them.

Our front steps and "flower patch", one of the few spots that gets lots of sunlight.  Perfect for container gardening!

Not to be defeated, I am determined that I will produce something next year!  I have been researching raised bed and container gardening, as well as how to amend the soil with compost.  Because I have to take as much advantage of what sunlight I can in the yard, raised beds make the most sense.

Oh yes, and did I mention that our backyard - the area with the most space - is on the north side of the house!  Another blow to maximum sunlight.

Our back yard.  Because most of the big trees are on the south side, it's shady most of the day.  Darn tree shadows.

Looking towards the back northeast corner of the yard, which is one part that does get lots of sunlight in the summer.  Note Sasha at the fence, looking longingly at squirrels on the other side.  Ignore the pathetic remains of my failed tomato plants.

And here is the northwest corner of the backyard.  This space does get kinda ok sunlight, until early afternoon hits.

Oh yes, did I mention that the tree in that northwest corner is a black walnut tree?  Another blow!  Because of a toxin they emit, not many plants will thrive around these trees.  The squirrels love'em, though.

This is our neighbor's cat, Foo.  He likes to hang out on our porch columns and look in our windows (I took the pic looking through the window, which is why it's kinda fuzzy).  This has nothing to do with the post, but he's so cute I couldn't resist.  Wouldn't you agree?

Anyway, I wanted to show what the yard looks like now, to be able to compare it to what it will look like next spring.  I am determined to find ways to work around my gardening obstacles.  I will, I will, I will! 

Did you garden this year?  How did it turn out?