before & after :: greening our space

when we bought our house we made the huge personal sacrifice of yard space for sanity.  a lovely, sprawling yard was high on our list when searching out our first home.  but reality hit home quickly when we realized what was out there in our (very low) price range and our very short purchase period (we needed to be out of our apartment in about two months).  we were crammed into a tiny apartment with a new babe who was just about to start crawling.  the mere thought of having a babe crawling in our cramped quarters was tearing at my sanity each day.  we decided to "settle" with our current home.  i had fallen in love with the house- a fixer-upper 1919 craftsman bungalow- but the postage stamp of a yard left much to be desired.  but we weighed our limited options and decided to purchase this home as a starter.

when we moved in this is what the sunny area of the property looked like- asphalt.  whoever lived here at some point prior to us loved asphalt.   the first summer of living here we started busting up that black top. 

^^ pat and a friend's son busting up black top that extended to the end of the garage... and a cute little fellow watching the big boys work :)

^^ pulling up to this everyday was dampening my soul. 

i knew there must be something we could do to pretty up this area and make it more welcoming, as well as take advantage of the only sunny area of our property.  with a little vision on my part and the skills of pat we ripped up the rest of the asphalt in that area the second summer here, creating an area of grass up to the front of the garage.  we needed to keep the fenced in yard for our dog so we added the fencing and created a gate off of the patio to go into the yard (before there was no gate, you could only access the yard by going through the house and out the side door or going through the garage- yeah, giant pain in the butt).

^^ dirt!  yay!

pat finished building me this area right in time for the summer $1 sale at a local nursery.  i packed my trunk with perennials and stayed up till midnight with pat one beautiful night last summer, planting into the night as the kids slept.  looking back it doesn't seem like a huge task to accomplish (the planting), but i remember feeling like it was such a huge accomplishment.  noah was only 9 months old so getting any sort of project done was limited.  this was my "getting back in the groove" project :)
 

^^ my perennial garden (herbs and flowers) right now, in its second year.  along side lots of seedlings and potted plants growing on the patio to the right.  next project in this area is getting the fence stained.... good thing we are going with grey, haha!  and filling in the area in the right middle of the bed where the black eyed susans that didn't make it through the summer last year.  i'm thinking either bee balm or calendula for that spot.

^^ and on the other side of the fence, new grass and my tiny corner garden of lemon balm, st. john's wort, and stonecrop, in their second year.

this spring i also have some new additions that i planted in the fall...

^^ garlic growing like mad in the front yard

^^and seedless table grapes planted just beyond the new fence.... i'm still figuring out the ideal way of trellising them without cutting out too much of the sun into the grass area.

and some old favorites...

^^ my tiny strawberry patch in its third year- my best planting investment yet!

^^ chives that i'm surprised haven't been choked out by the mint it's planted along with.... oh that mint!

^^ beautiful new growth on my sage plant (in the back left corner of my perennial bed)... my sage plant is rocking it, it's getting huge!

^^ zucchini sprouts where they await transplanting into a patio box bed.

^^ heirloom carrots and beets in a box bed i made for the patio. 

i have two more of these boxes, one has spinach, swiss chard, and kale in it and the other one is empty awaiting summer crops.  sugar snap peas are in a giant tub on the patio as well.  in about a month i'll move the current two boxes to a cooler area of the yard and transplant the summer crops to empty patio box.  right now the summer vegetable crop will be paste tomatoes, a few heirloom tomato varieties, zucchini, pickle cucumbers, green beans, bell peppers, and eggplant. 

while i would much rather have the land we really want, i admit that i've grown to enjoy the challenge of "postage stamp" gardening.  it's a constant juggling act, trying to figure out what to put where to make the most of our tiny space.  when we moved here, we moved into black top with no landscaping except for a bit of grass and some overgrown shrubs in the front yard.  now i can walk out my back door and gather herbs, pick flowers, and harvest berries and our favorite vegetables.  i've made it a more livable and lovable space for our family for the next few years until we are in a position to purchase something more in line with our dream outdoor space.  and that makes me my soul happy. 

next up is the front yard makeover, which will entail turning the majority of the yard into a perennial garden including lots of herbs, some flowers, and either a blueberry or raspberry bush. 

{linking up with mental-chew for how does your garden grow?}