Garden

A project that Ed and I have been wanting to do for bout eight years. Was to remove the fence in our back yard. And have it all open. Children playing baseball on the corner kept hopping the fence and never asking if they could enter the yard to get there ball. So at the time it made the most sense.

At the time my Brother-in-Law and now wife had moved in and they had dogs. So we decided not to go through with our plans. We became okay with it, with them here we rarely used the back yard. We left it alone, they moved out for about a year and then moved back. Again not really feasible to do, so we left it alone.

Over those years the wall holding the dirt off the pavement had crumbled. Which meant the wall of course needed to be replaced. To make our lives easier and since we wanted to do this for ever. We removed the fence, made life a dream. The wall that we built was a stone wall.

You see the farm is actually on a mountain. So there are a lot of stones everywhere. I mean to the point we should have enough stone on the property to build the farmhouse out of stone. So we decide to collect some of those stones and bring them down to the house for the wall.

The wall itself is a stacked wall, which means there is no mortar in between the stones. If you are ever out in the country and see divider walls of stone. They are most likely just stacked with out mortar. That is exactly what we did, when you do that you need a good mix of stone. Large and small and everything in between.

We also decided to turn the back yard into a garden for our selves. So after the wall was built I started removing the grass and weeds. I actually finished that today. So all that is left is to `layout the garden and path. Once that is done I can start to plant. We decided to use the left over stone for that part. It will just tie it all together.

A little extra piece is a grape arbor. I have two grape vines. One is out front and I use the porch as the trellis/arbor. The second is a wild grape that came up from us spitting grape seeds in that area. That one needs a arbr to grow on. We tried just lashing it together but it wouldn't stay up. So I bolted it together and it has thus far stayed in place. If it does fall, just to fall then it goes and unfortunately so does the vine. The grape needs something to grow on or it will kill everything around it.

There is still plenty of work to be done. So this is only the beginning stages. Still it looks good for the beginning.