August 13, 2008

Taking a Look Back, Pre-Construction Fence.

We purchased our circa 1890s frame house in Greenwood Heights back in 2004. While the gut renovation of the interior of our new "tiki house" went on during the week, weekends were spent working on our rather large Brooklyn back yard.

Typical of yards in the area, there was concrete as far as the eye could see. While we wanted to keep the 35X20 ft patio (still way more than we needed for us and our container plants from our previous roof top garden and our tropicals), but the remaining concrete had to go . . . along with the waist-high weeds!

Photo: Our home and yard, summer 2004 (lovely, eh?)

Jump ahead to 2007. Many concrete slabs broken and hauled off, soil completely reworked and tons of seasonal veggies (and great-looking perennial plantings) planted/harvested. We thought the yard was evolving quite nicely. We left some of the concrete in place for work paths (since we redid our work shed and rear of our home ourselves) and with the sun's path over our yard in mind, divided the garden in half--one side a shade garden under the limbs of our neighbor's mature magnolia and the other half a large veggie garden, boarded by Asiatic and day lilies, purple coneflowers and other perenials.

Photo: Our home and yard, spring 2007 (big improvement)

The patio became a great outdoor space (cook outs, cocktails, hanging out) plus work area (for continued home reno projects) and a great spot for our container plants. From blue stone donated by the neighbor (dating from the replacement of the front sidewalks in the 1970s), we created a small blue stone patio by the shed for sunset relaxing.

There was the "long term" plan of eventually reworking the garden further, replacing the concrete paths, reducing the patio, more plantings, etc. But, that was at the back of our minds.

Then in July 2007 the news came that the neighbor had sold his home to the neighborhood developer and we knew things were going to change.

Photo: view of back yard from our patio, summer 2007

Photo: Asiatic lilies along the boarder of the veggie garden, summer 2007

Photo: Patio and home-made cedar table/benches, summer 2007

Photo: flowers-spider and mums, late summer 2007

Photo: view from blue stone patio of shade garden, late summer 2007

Photo: red canna near blue stone patio, late summer 2007

Posted by tikihouse at 12:00 PM | Comments (2)
Categories: Backyard History

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