Back yard wild life

One of the side effects of creating an outdoor setting that I love is the fact that animals also love this habitat.  Some are wonderful and I would love to encourage more, others are annoying and destructive and should live else where.

The beneficial animals include birds and snakes.  The birds are beautiful and it is so cheerful to hear their singing,  I try and encourage them to make my yard home.  The snakes are more rare and I tend to see only one or 2 per year.  The basic garden snake is completely welcome in my yard.  They keep the mice down they eat large insects and are good sign of a healthy eco-system where they choose to call home.  They are somewhat reclusive and not likely to make for regular sightings.  

The less desirable animals include squirrels and rabbits.  Squirrels are on the top of the list of bad, the tree rats strip the bark in the trees and girdle the branches effectively killing them, they drag trash from around the neighborhood and deposit it in my yard, and they decimate my produce.  Their main produce target is my strawberries and it is a constant battle to keep them out.   The rabbits are cute.  They also eat all of my favorite things and there are LOTS of them.  Cute hoppy cotton tails make quick work of new flower shoots and are quite cunning and manage to squeeze into the smallest spaces.

Trying to find a balance between me and them is an on going challenge so when a neighborhood cat decides to prowl my yard I say HOORAY!

Spring Garden and Home Improvements

This spring has been a busy one for me.  I started off building a raised vegetable bed to complete my small patio, the plants are all off and running.  In the raised bed I planted, 4 varieties of tomato, spinach, lettuce, peas, 3 kinds of peppers, carrots, cilantro, basil, oregano, thyme, radishes, mustard greens, chives and scallions.  

With the addition of a picket fence in the front yard last fall that defined much more space for additional flower beds in the front and I have been working hard to fill the spaces created.  Last summer I also pulled out an extra 192 square feet of lawn to make room for more flowers and have been working hard exceeding my budget to pick just the plants to grow.  Who needs disposable income when there are local nurseries stocked to the gills with great perennials!

The home Andrew and I have been in for the past 4 years has up until this point been owned by my parents.  This spring in preparation for our ultimate purchase of the house (coming in a week or so) we had a new roof put on and a new paint job on the house.  I am very pleased with the results.  Picking a new color for a house is a lot harder than I imagined, but I love the outcome.

My early spring flowers, tulips, daffodils etc have long since come and gone but the late spring and early summer flowers are going great guns.  The effect is quite charming, especially the lupines.  Here are the latest photos, enjoy.