Our front yard and gardens

The front yard will take two pictures to get it all in. Here is the first, looking north east at our view, our cherry trees and the new front vegie garden.



The new vegie garden was inspired by me reading Animal Vegetable Miracle earlier this winter. I loved this book by Barbara Kingsolver. I read the book in early December and it dawned on me that there is no reason I can't buy local, or better yet, grow my own food. We have the space, and I love to garden. So I'm giving it a shot! Afer reading the book, we signed up with a CSA to deliver locally grown produce to us instead of buying produce that has been shipped thousands of miles to get to us. Think about all that oil wasted! If this is something you are interested in, check out Local Harvest to find a CSA program in your area and not only does it cut down on fuel consumption, but it supports your local community and local farmers. And the food is better too!



OK, here is the rest of our front yard. Please ignore the big eye sore that is a drainage swale right down the middle. Or better yet, if you have cheap but wonderful ideas on what to do with it, please share. Ideally one day, when we can afford it, we'd love to bring in a lot of rockery and make it a focal point, but for right now, it's just not a top priority and I am lost with what to do with it. Miles is going to build a new bridge to replace the old one this year as it is rotting away. North of the swale is my old "holding grounds". When we built this house, I slowly moved a lot of my perennials over and stuck them in the ground there. It was meant to be temporary, but as you can see, there are still plenty there, as well as a new baby cedar tree. My peony's are starting to come up as well as the irises, and I need to clean it out. Starting behind the garden area, is what I call the "soldier hedge" that moves to the left to the top of our driveway. Every year I add a few more shrubs and or bushes to the line, to fill it in. On one hand, I would love to make it a barricade to block the view of the property across the street and the big green barn/garage, but our CCR's prohibit me putting anything too tall in their as it may block the neighbors views. Where this ends, the driveway starts, and we have our "driveway bed" with 5 decoratve plum trees. The middle tree we lost in an ice storm a few years ago, so it has a lot of catch up to do. There is also a shade garden that lines the front walk up to the front door, I'll have to photograph that another day.