Fall

At the request of my brother, I tried to take some shots to track the progress of fall taking over Kingston Road. It seemed to get off to a late start here in the Boston area. We had unseasonably warm weather over Columbus Day weekend, which I am enjoying in the above photo. You can see just a hint of color on one of the trees in our back yard in the background. 

A week later, here's how things were looking...

This is the same tree you can see behind the hammock. There's a bit more red, and definitely some leaves on the ground.

But, the maples in the front showed absolutely no signs of color. 

Not much color on the side by the patio either, but apparently leaves were falling from somewhere.

On the other side of the patio, this rose bush has grown in an unsightly and uncontrolled manner. I actually got cut on one of the thorns. Those things mean business! Next year, I will have to learn how to deal better with this. I'll admit, I didn't pay any attention to it at all this year, so it sort of snuck up on me with it's size. It may go away altogether next year however, as this location is a prime option for the stairs of the deck we want build.

There was some great color in the form of the crazy vine that winds itself all over our side yard. It gives a lot of privacy when it grows on the fence. I'm not so sure it's great for the azalea here, but it was hard to tell it was even there until it turned red!

The lilacs (oh my poor lilacs...we lost so many branches in the storm...) started to turn a bit yellow.

This is a closer shot of our one colorful tree in the back.

Another week later, on 10/23, here's what was left.

It's too bad more trees hadn't dropped this much by then. The big storm that knocked down so many branches was the following weekend. 

By November 10th, the trees in the front were full blown yellow...

Three days later, most of the leaves had dropped. Seriously, it was like I blinked, and the leaves had turned, blinked again and they were gone. 

There were now all sitting in our front yard. 

By this past weekend, the azalea, seen above still green, with the red vine, had now turned completely gold. Funny. I don't remember this at all from last year. (this picture kind of sucks, due to the bright, low november sun!)

We spent a lot of time raking and cleaning up the storm damage this past weekend. I'll tell you more about that in my next post. No, it's not the most glamorous home improvement project I could share, but it is a fact of life of home ownership, and it's progress made that interferes with the fun stuff. And plus, I want you to be amazed at the size of our leaf pile!

Watching Things Grow

Rainy, windy days stuck inside do prove useful for getting caught up on life. One thing we've done a lot of around here this spring and summer is just watch things grow. It's hard to imagine what to do with your yard before you've spent a year watching what's in it. As the summer gets ready to come to a close, this seems like a good time for a photo dump of the wide variety of plant like we have in this yard. Hopefully next spring and summer, we will manage to get a better handle on it!

The biggest landscaping story has to be the abundance of forsythia. It seems to go on forever, and grows about a foot a month. I'm not sure we'll ever be able to tame it!

April: In full bloom, along the red fence Badly in need of a prune!

April: The yellow wall along the side fence in the back yard. 

April: But wait, there's even more around the north side of the house.
We may soon do away with these shrubs in favor of a driveway expansion. We certainly have plenty elsewhere. 

May: trying to tame the yellow beast and give the little lilac a place to grow. 

May: I believe we filled up close to 40 yard waste bags this spring.
This does not include the piles of branches we have been burning in our fire pit all summer!

May: It seems we could have created another whole hedge from what we got rid of. 

May: We could actually see the ground underneath for about a month.
It's since grown back with a vengeance. 

April: Mystery plant sprouting up along the north fence in the back yard.

May: It's filling in quite nicely, and helping to disguise the less than
attractive cinder blocks on our neighbor's side. 

May/June: I'm pretty sure the stuff on the right is some kind of weed.
Goldenrod maybe? I will be hacking that down next year for sure. 

July: Just in time for the 4th, the day lilies reveal themselves. 

July: This mystery plant has cool purple bell shaped flowers,
right next to the day lilies. 

 May: This large lilac was in full bloom, just behind the red fence in the corner.
We can see it from our bedroom window. 

May: Azalea in full bloom. 

May: Another Azalea on the patio.  

May: I planted the new bleeding heart from my friend Leah. It got a little dried out looking recently.
I hope it comes back ok next year. 

June: These shrubs are giving the forsythia at the garage side of the house a run for their money. 

June: A giant hosta emerged in front of the red metal fence.
Above, is our second large lilac bush. 

June: 10 days later, the rose bush that is squashed in the
corner of the fence by the lilac was in full bloom.

June: There are offshoots of the bush in the corner,
but they got pretty overtaken by the day lilies a few weeks later. 

July: Hostas and Sedum on the front corner.
Next year, hopefully we will add some evergreen ground cover to this area. 

July: Hosta just starting to bloom.

June: Shriveled poison ivy along the sidewalk outside our fence, after two applications of poison. 

June: Sidewalk after Greg finished clearing away all the dead stuff.
He managed to do it all without getting a rash, and he is allergic! 

The Patio

Someday, we hope to build a deck. We may even start on part of it later this fall. In the meantime, we’re trying to embrace the patio that was here in when arrived. It needs a fair bit of weeding, that’s for sure. But we did get a great table and some chairs a few weeks ago, so we’re just about ready for some cook outs. 

We did get a total of 6 chairs. The other 4 haven’t made it back out from the garage after the crazy tornado watch weather we had on Wednesday. As part of our long term plan, we are thinking about painting the benches dark brown to coordinate better with the table. For now, they will sit in the corner under the lilac tree, surrounding the new fire pit we also added. 

We have another beautiful azalea on the corner of the patio. And we’re working on creating a little hillside wooded rock garden on the slope up to the road. 

This is the way it looked early this spring, when we first tackled clearing out the hill. I think there were about 5 years worth of leaves and twigs crammed up between the fence and the trees. We filled about a dozen bags of yard waste that day. 

About a month or so later, it’s filling quite nicely. There is an interesting ground cover that cam up, along with some lily of the valley. I also added a bleeding heart, that was a gift from my friend Leah. We’ve starting collecting all the rocks from around the yard, and plan to arrange them here eventually. And of course, because Greg can never stop, he has added rebuilding the retaining wall to his list. We would like it function as a bench for additional seating in the patio. 

We still have some more decisions to make about a few sprouty shrubs that have come up in less than ideal places, but we thought we should give them some time to develop. The road outside the chain link fence is a pretty busy road (the joy of a corner lot), so we are balancing between privacy and overgrowth. 

Comments transferred from old Blog:

VP

Love the idea of the retaining wall becoming seating. this is turning into a lovely outdoor space. the rock garden will be a highlight.

Sunday, June 5, 2011 - 07:00 PM