We've Come a Long Way.

A new year!

For me the excitement of the holidays is over and the depressingly short Portland winter days and lack of sunshine are starting to get me.

I wasn't out in the garden during the holidays, having just finished my fall leaf clean up before the crazy started. It's now the time of year that I can really only be in the garden on a weekend when it isn't pouring.

So, I'm thinking about what to do next in the garden and what do I really want for 2013?!?  Here is a look back of some of what has been done so far.

1996 before I bought the house.

Summer 2012

This is the first garden that's totally mine. It is a reflection of me completely.  My life was always "a garden left behind" before that.  So the current state of things has been all sweat and tears on my part and that's exactly what I wanted.

The dreaded English Walnut in the back corner - The fence was new and the bark mulch fresh off the truck.

Spring 2012

The design of my garden has been more a function of making it easy to mow and edge and the constant expansion of flowerbeds because I bought too many plants. It was also easier to rip out patches of summer fried grass and replace them with flowerbeds. Digging sod and shaking off the dirt really sucks. 

Front Flower bed - Too bad the Phormium didn't make it.

Summer 2012

I have gone through my plant "phases" and have quite the collection of plants (over 700).  I have kept track of every name in a book along with a spreadsheet of plant names I can reference for when I have "Senior Moments" and can't remember what something is. 

The "back yard" before 2003.

Felony Flats Farm 2012

Thankfully in 2012 I discovered lots of wonderful garden blogs and I bought many new plants that I didn't know I needed.One trip alone to a Peony farm left me with 8 new herbaceous peonies to find a new home for. This meant digging up a new section of grass for them and another trip to Portland nursery for other plants to go with.

This was one of the first spots I removed the "lumpy" grass and put in flowers

I wasn't sure the Dogwood would make it, but it's doing great.

The plants seem so tiny!

2009-ish

I'm not really sure what 2013 will bring. Here are some ideas that have been floating around in my skull:

1. Remove the walnut trees?
2. Remove all the grass on the one side all the way back to the garden and putting in a new flower bed with gravel paths?
3. A big pond for more water lilies?
4. Repair the fence?
5. Buy more bark mulch?
6. Remove the three Butterfly Bushes that are noxious weeds?

But that all sounds like so much work...