2010 – New Year, New Ideas, New Plans

And so it starts… again! Another year here on the lake (year 5, can you belive it?) and still have whole sections of the yard to do.  Who knew building a garden from scratch on an acre and a half would take so long? I really thought that by year 5 I would be into the tweaking stage.  Nope, still in the creating and building stage of this lakeside garden. 

The front yard is pretty much done, though.  Good thing is that the trees are all in; the flowering shubs have one to three years in already and are looking great so this part of the yard looks pretty much done.  Just the best part, the tweaking, is all there is to do here.

The plan for spring is to continue to add vines along the fence and fill in some of the open spots.  Tall, spiky, towering blooms in the  middle of the bed and shorter border plants in the front.  With this one bed spanning over 100 feet, I still have a fair amount of planting this spring – just in the front yard alone.  But I love this part: the tweaking.  A garden is a fluid thing for me; ever evolving and changing.

But, oh, the back yard*.  Lots and lots of stuff going on there; some major projects.  Yum!  I love the heavy stuff, building creekbeds, laying stone patios, adding raised beds surrounding all the hardscape. Yep – love it.    But I’ll save that for another post. 

  (*Just a note to my fellow lake dwellers: I know that the yard that faces the lake is considered the “front yard”  by many of you, but I just can not get used to saying it that way.  Since this brick, formal looking house has a definit “front” to it that faces road-side, and the “back” is much less formal and faces the lake, I know I will keep on calling it (the lake-side yard) the back yard.  Sorry…)