For starters, the photo on the left is a view of our back yard taken in mid-May of this year, looking from the south toward the north. This has to be our favorite part of the yard nowadays. It's here that we get the early morning sun from the east, and the cool shade on hot summer afternoons. Our wooden deck on the far north end of the back yard -- just off our family room -- now offers us privacy from our neighbors north and east of us. We planted hardy ivy on the north side of the deck that now meets the lilac-blue-flowered Japanese wisteria we planted on the east side. Both are supported by sturdy latticed panels attached to the deck. Over the years, the wisteria has formed a lush green shade canopy of leaves on its sturdy branches. Each spring, the fragrant wisteria blossoms are among the first to greet us after a long, gray winter.
When I took the photos for this article, I had some serious flashbacks about what our yard looked like when we first moved here ten years ago. The entire yard was bare on all four sides of the house -- except for what could be very loosely called a "lawn" as it was in such poor condition. Not only had the grass been sorely neglected for nearly a year, but the former owners had planted the "turf" (you know -- that instant grass!) right on top of a bed of rocks with very little, if any, decent topsoil below to support good growth. There were no flower beds, no trees or shrubs, not a single flower, nor even a healthy dandelion!
In a way this was great, as for the first time ever we could actually plant and design our yard to please ourselves. We also wanted a yard that would attract both hummingbirds and butterflies, perhaps a beautiful "Buckeye Butterfly" like the one shown here. On the other hand, it seemed a daunting task to undertake. But undertake it we did! I won't bore you with all of the details such as hauling in truckloads of rich topsoil for flower beds, building fences between neighbors on either side of us, and building yet another very lengthy fence across the back. Then there were the seemingly hundreds of rocks we encountered every time we attempted to dig a hole for a shrub, plant, or tree. I think we could have built stone fences with all of those rocks we harvested! Through it all, however, we just kept remembering the old saying that still holds true, "Rome wasn't built in a day!"
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