OK, so these next three shots could be connected to give you the big picture, but I don’t know how to do that fancy photo stuff. You’ll have to photoshop it in your mind.

We start with the nitrogen-fixing Autumn Olive on the left of the garage (above) and the Russian Pomegranate in the alcove on the right of the garage. I have comfrey and yarrow in with the pomegranate to feed the fruit tree. The alcove used to have a stacked stone retaining wall, but I didn’t have any more and I wanted it to match the one I added on the right, so I replaced it with brick (leftover from the palette we bought for the herb spiral). It sort of matches the brick stairs (OK, not really, but what can I do?).

In the bed in front of the stairs, WAIT a minute – remember when we had boring, overgrown bushes here?

Now we have a stacked brick retaining wall (because our driveway used to get covered with mud after every rain), three blueberry bushes, a plum tree, a fig tree, a raspberry cane, and three tomato plants here – with the slippery elm that I heavily pruned to get more light for my blueberries.

And here’s the rest of the front yard (above) with the herb spiral, cherry tree, Adele’s garden, and a front border.

In case you can’t quite picture it, here’s a map I made for my nature notebook:

So, about that border (below). Remember when I was building the herb spiral and my neighbor told me that they were widening the road? So I didn’t want to plant the peach tree along the road if they were going to widen it in a few months. So, based on the plans that he showed me, I planted the tree just inside my best guess of where the new edge of our yard will be. Then I mulched and made a border which ended with the existing crepe myrtle.

I edged the border bed with the stones I removed from the pomegranate alcove wall. Starting on the right, we have a lilac tree, peony, a perennial flower I can’t remember the name of, Flat Wonderful peach tree, another peony, and a few pots (tomatoes, peas, tomatoes), mini pansies (violas?), and then the crepe myrtle.

This (above) is the whole front yard from the street. I have another grouping of potted veggies right up at the edge next to the street, because it gets the most sun.

Above you can see the bean teepee near the mailbox. We have watermelon, summer squash, and butternut squash there too.

And here’s Adele’s garden with a bunch of stuff around in pots (clockwise: tomatoes at 2:00, strawberries, peas, more strawberries, more peas, lettuces, cucumbers, peppers). You can’t really tell in any of these pictures, but I planted nasturtiums in almost all of my veggie containers. They aren’t quite there yet, but the idea is for them to be spilling out with flowers (like the “spiller” in flower containers).

And here are five jasmine vines I planted at the front of our side fence (where there is the most sun).

Now for the backyard:

First an overview from my nature notebook:

Before we get started let’s remember what this backyard looked like for the first year we lived here (and don’t forget that all those vines are poison ivy, OK?).

Ahhhh!

Lots of activity outside the beehive!

And lots inside too! I’m thinking the light-colored comb is all new!

Below is some ruby bells coral bells I planted behind the beehive.

I planted some perennial shade-tolerant flowers back here along the fence (R to left: bee balm, helebores, bee balm, helebores, and another bee balm).

These little tiny green things probably don’t look like much to anyone but me,  but I dumped a ton of seed back there and it is just so amazing that it is actually growing!!!

  

Above is a pic of the back corner of our property. The existing tree is (I think) a boxelder. I painted it in my nature notebook a few days ago.