Ziggurat herb bed - Weekend home.

For a few years we had two raised beds at the weekend house.  One year we had tomatoes galore!  I was making fresh pasta sauce pretty regularly. Then the next year nothing grew well and we assumed it was because it was so dry.  Funny story, the neighbor told us that she was watering our gardens in years past because they had a garden nearby but because they themselves removed their garden, the stopped watering ours.  They are so kind to have watered our plants in the first place!  This year we expanded to four 3' by 5' raised beds to plant veges, a cutting garden and herbs.  We placed a central square for many of the herbs and dubbed it the Ziggurat.  I'll post the dimensions and instructions for cutting the wood at a later date.

Moving the two beds next to the fence about a food away
and two new boxes in front.  Boxes were made of
2 by 8 wood boards.

The beds finished.  Technically you should turn the ground
before adding the dirt but I'd been digging all day and
got sloppy.  We purchased bagged soil  by Coastal at the local
Ace Hardware store.  The first batch was stellar dirt, the
second batch was little less lomy than we'd like.  In the older
boxes, we had purchased the soil by the payload and it
was fabulous.  Unfortunately, due to government bureacracy,
that soil is no longer available.



The Ziggurat - filled with herbs.



From slope to patio - Second House

For a while we couldn't figure out what to do with the side yard at this house.  We wanted a place to sit outside and the best option at the time was the side yard.  The pic below does not give you a great idea of what it looked like before but it was essentially just a slope of dirt and tufts of grass.  Very difficult to get anything to grow along here because of the very hard clay. (Take note of the bush on the right side of the door next to the house.  It'll look different in upcoming posts.)

We built a retaining wall in 2009 which came out fantastic!  Basic concrete block that evidently you have to special order now from Home Depot.  (Drives me nuts when they stop making stuff!)  Lots of leveling of the sloping clay which is extremely difficult to dig when it's dry.



Mike working the dirt and finishing the walls.



Then this year we added the patio, which gives the entire yard a completely different look!  It's so cottagey and I love how it came out.  This spring has been tough - that is, lots of rain and cool weather - so we haven't been able to enjoy it as much as I'd like to after work.  But it will certainly give us tremendous enjoyment while we work on the rest of the yard. Note the potting table in the background to the right of the tree.  Mike made that using cedar and an old piece of marble that probably came from an old dresser.

Purchased the green iron chairs from Backfin Antiques
in Cambridge, MD.  http://www.backfinantiques.com/.
The iron table with marble top was a curbside find.

  

Two years of difference at House II

After working in the garden at the second house, I recalled a picture of the backyard that I took a few weeks after we moved into the house.  The jungle past the fence is part of the property but is filled with some sort of American bamboo that is impossible to get rid of.  See pic below. 

The after pics below. 

This pic was taken the year we cleared out the area.





We added a gate (lower right of top pic) that we had taken from another area of the fence.   The gate has made life so much easier to get back there and maintain the area.  What you can't see in the above picture are the dyke, the woods across the dyke from us and the park that is outside our property line (very top of the image). 

Below is an elevated view of the area past the fence.  The sandy spot at the top of the image will eventually be stone steps and a small stone wall with a gate from which we can get to and fro the backyard. Still some work to do back there but it's not a priority for us right now.