Arbors and Fences and Flowers... Oh My!

I'm attaching some more recent pictures of work in the backyard. We have now planted flowers in the circular garden, built an arbor and fence, and made a gravel sidewalk that leads to the shed. I'm also attaching a picture of a brick wall in the backyard that I have planted ferns and monkey grass in. Eventually, we will build a pergola over it.

In the Garden

Since we now have moved the shed, we have begun working on creating my dream backyard. Upon my many visits to the Antique Rose Emporium in Independence, Texas, I have gathered many ideas for what I'd like to do with our backyard. One idea I got was to create a circlular garden with a focal point in the center and six separate pieces (like a pizza) with different types of plants in each section. This is how we decided to do our circular garden: Gary had dug up this old SWB man hole lid on one of his job sites that is really quite decorative, not your typical man hole lid. I like to call it a "medallion." We placed the medallion in the center of our garden and used four landscape timbers to divide the circle into only four sections as our garden is on a smaller scale based on the size of the backyard. For the outside circle we used old brick that has been stored here, there, and everywhere on our property. We finally put some of that brick to good use!

We also used the old 1897 claw foot tub for a garden container. It came out of our old upstairs bathroom that we turned into a closet. We were hoping that it would fit in the downstairs bathroom, but it's a little bit too long. Anyway, we also used the old downstairs toilet for a plant container.

Today, Gary is building a picket fence to close up the backyard a little more and to better define the space. He is also building an arbor. More pictures to come soon...

The Big Slide

Two weekends ago, we decided to clean out the old storage shed... the one that was loaded with boxes from our previous garage that hadn't been unpacked since we moved in over a year ago. Anyway, in the process of deciding what would stay (basically tools, tools, and more tools), what would be given away (or sold), and what would go in the trash, we wondered if we could finally move the shed. You see, the antique shop owner who rented our home in the 90's re-located the shed to the center of the yard at an angle so that antiques could be displayed inside the shed. Well, with my visions of a cottage garden in the backyard, the shed being in the center of the space didn't work.

So, we decided to take a try at moving the shed. Gary bought a rope, braced the corners of the shed, attached the rope to his truck with a knot using his handy boy scout skills (although I don't think he was ever a boy scout), and pulled. And pulled. And pulled. You should've seen Camryn and I jumping up and down and screaming whenever the building first started to move. Throughout the three-hour process of pulling, we must've stopped twenty or more times. You see, we would hear a loud "crunchhhhhh," and I would yell at Gary to stop. We then had to re-brace the corners. But as you can see from the pictures, we successfully moved the shed about 20 feet. We spent the next weekend working on my dream garden. More pictures to come soon.