Our Backyard, Part 1: What We’re Working With
Fun fact: I didn’t even want to look at the house we eventually bought. It was over our budget, and the pictures didn’t look spectacular. We’d looked at so many houses in person, and I’d flipped through dozens of other listings online. Why bother with another showing of a house that was out of our budget to begin with? But Joey said we should go. So we scheduled it. We walked through the house, and it was cute. It seemed like the perfect size for the two of us.
Then we stepped out onto the deck.
Even on a gray February day, I loved it.
I sighed. “Dammit. This is our house.” Joey was behind me, grinning like he does when he gets to be right. He grabbed my hand, and we walked down into the yard.
That’s one of my favorite things about the backyard - it has levels. Just outside the kitchen and laundry, there’s a deck that connects to the guest house. It’s perfect for al fresco dining and my little garden tower. Jasmine crawls over the awning of the guest house (we need to prune it; I don’t know how).
Steps lead down to the lower deck, which is lined with hydrangeas on the side with the house. A funny little tree sprouts up in this area. It’s a clever little bit of planning. Here, we’ve bought some furniture and created a seating area.
More steps lead into the yard, crossing in front of the guest house. On the left, a retaining wall backs a decent-sized landscaping bed that has a Japanese Maple in it. In front of that bed is a rather poorly constructed pond. There are fish in it; they require nothing of us, and we love them for it. On the right, the guest house, which has two small beds in front of it.
As you walk forward, the sidewalk ends. The lawn is clover and weeds. Along the fence to your left (the north side) is a long landscaping bed, edged with charmingly mismatched stones. In February of 2019, it was overgrown, but I could see daffodils and hyacinth trying to peep through the brush. All along the back fence are raised beds, created with railroad ties and fill dirt (fill dirt is not great for growing things, in case you were wondering). A ginkgo tree stands near the raised beds in the back left corner. The back fence is slowly becoming overgrown with the neighbor’s wisteria, which blooms fantastically for a short time in spring and then proceeds to grow at an alarming pace through summer. A flimsy little arch supports a grape vine on each side. In the raised bed along the right fence, blackberry bushes struggle to grow beneath the shade of a tree. Back here, you’re hiding behind the guest house.
All throughout the yard, the light is beautiful when the sun shines; it’s bright and dappled (except in the summer, when it’s scorching). Some trick of terrain and sight lines make it feel private even though it’s not. A friend said “It looks like Eden!” I replied, “Maybe, but Eden a few years after God evicted Adam and Eve.”
Friends, we immediately loved it, but it was a mess.
After we moved in and got settled, Joey turned the focus of his labor toward the backyard. And here, I want to take a few sentences to acknowledge the incredible amount of labor he’s already put into this yard. He’s dug up hundreds of pounds of overgrowth and more monkey grass than makes any reasonable sense to exist in a single suburban backyard. He worked holes into a pair of work gloves in just 6 months.
It’s my job to strategize and prioritize, and then he starts the labor. I keep us fed, the house cleaned, the clothes laundered, the meals planned, and the groceries stocked (perhaps another day I’ll muse on us falling so tidily into gender roles). While I’m doing all that, Joey puts headphones in and listens to hours of podcasts while he transforms our little kingdom. He swore he wouldn’t resent the yard work, and so far that seems to be true.
I couldn’t tell you how many times we’ve stood back there and said, “Can you believe this is ours?”
As I write this in January, the beds have all been cleared of their overgrowth, and they sit quietly waiting for spring. In the fall, we got a truckload of compost from a local nursery. It cost $80 and was enough for a good layer in the pond bed, the guest house beds, and one of the raised beds. Since then, Joey has finished the rest, and they’ll get an amendment in the spring.
Next time I’ll talk about our plans for our little piece of earth in 2021 and beyond. Spoiler alert: it involves a lot of flowers.
