Quick Backyard Tour

This year we've been living in our backyard thanks to the quarantine and social distancing and only doing small outdoor gatherings to minimize risks. It's really made me appreciate what we have, what we've built up over the past few years, and how much we enjoy this this space. I haven't shared more than snippets of our backyard in the past couple of years because all I see are the things I still need to do. It never feels ready enough to share in its entirety... but this summer I decided that instead of worrying about all the things I need to do, we are enjoying what we have. And so I'm going to also share photos of it here too, incomplete to-do list and all. (Like the one unfinished replacement fence picket that needs to be stained in our first few photos!)

When we come up the driveway, we now have a bike rack next to the trash can shed. It holds bikes, helmets, even skateboards neatly. It will be easily moved to the garage for winter storage, but this spring/summer we use our bikes SO MUCH, easy access is key. 

The driveway gate is still a 3 section gate with wheels on the bottom. We open up the center panel (sized for humans, bikes and wheel barrows), 99% of the time. However, when we have big deliveries like the 3 extra yards of pea gravel we had in the spring, we opened up all 3 panels and the delivery truck fit back here to drop it off. The bricks and flower pots keep the other panels from moving on windy days, preventing Morgan from escaping. 

Flowers line the driveway down both sides, and we have multiple blackberry bushes on the left side. Currently they are bowing down with the weight of the berries, making them the perfect height for the kids. We pick bowlfuls a day right now, and they snack on them right off the vine. 

On the right side of the driveway against the house is the patio. We haven't changed much here since I last photographed it - this space is working well for us. The furniture is comfortable, there's enough seating to entertain, the pergola and curtains provide shade from the sun. Our yard isn't huge but we've managed to carve out multiple little "rooms" or spaces for ourselves to enjoy the outdoors back here. The patio area would be one of the main "rooms" we use the most. 

There are flower pots ALL over the patio and deck. I love the look of flower pots grouped together. And I'm slowing gathering more aqua pots as time goes on. 

Up on the deck, one side is flower pots and citrus trees, the other side is the hanging hammock chair and the big umbrella. I LOVE this chair. It's the most comfortable spot to sit in our entire house, inside and out. We fight over this spot. I don't think we've ever spent so much time out on the deck as we have since we put the chair here. We all love it. 

That little red table/seat is from IKEA. I bought it for the garden but it was so perfect for the deck it ended up staying. If IKEA wasn't such a painful experience right now with crowd control and social distancing, I'd totally go back for another one. 

This is the dahlia bed I mentioned in my July garden post. This whole area was a bramble last year with a few plants added in here and there that I've built up slowly. This cleaned up version with room for dahlias is much better. 

On the left of the deck is the new greenhouse area I mentioned earlier this week, behind this garden space. I love how much larger and more open this spot feels now without the fence panel cutting it off. 

(The new green house is in those boxes!)

The flowers on this side of the yard are doing well. It's a process to build things up, keep things alive, fill in the gaps, find new things when something fails. I love the variety of colors and textures. Summer is the peak for the garden over here. While I do have spring blooming flowers as well, summer is this area's time to shine. 

And then there's the pool, which we somehow managed to cram in on the driveway apron right next to the flower bed. It's a really great backyard pool and it's brought us a lot of enjoyment this summer. At 18 ft across and almost 4 ft high, it's the biggest inflatable pool I've ever seen. It has a filter, pump, chlorine, ladder... we keep a lot of supplies in the box right there. This pool has been a LIFESAVER this summer. 

Next to the pool we have a sort of patio/lifeguarding area. The pavers are the ones given to us to our neighbors for free (also used in the back garden pathway and the greenhouse base), we are using them to keep little feet from burning when walking to the pool ladder. We wanted to keep the pool ladder on the driveway to lessen the amount of grass in the pool, which has worked well, but the driveway gets HOT on sunny days. The pavers really help keep bare feet more comfortable. 

The table and chairs are the ones from the deck, and it worked out really well to have them down here by the pool instead. The giant 10 ft umbrella is new this year, I managed to get the umbrella and the stand separately on two different clearance sales. It was pure luck that the umbrella happened to be on clearance in turquoise to perfectly match the one on the deck. 

Matt's basketball hoop was relocated to the only driveway space available, just like the little (peeling) playhouse shoved over. I wasn't sure these things would work on this part of the driveway, but everything is being played with more than ever. I don't know if it's the situation (being home so much more) or the pool being here or the location, but this arrangement has been working. 

The swing set is still going strong. It has been played with every day multiple times a day whenever the weather is good. There's something about swings and kids. I have no regrets about this set - the paint finish is still in great shape with no maintenance (since it's heavy duty metal) and it takes a beating. 

The little picnic table got a new umbrella this year from IKEA. It actually was leftover from a set I bought specifically for the umbrella clamp (before we had the big umbrella, we were using a beach umbrella clamped to the bistro table), and by happy accident the umbrella that came with the clamp fits perfectly in the little picnic table base. And it's aqua. 

Remember Matt's garden? It's still going strong. We put bulbs in last fall and he was delighted by the spring tulips and daffodils. We planted annuals and dahlia bulbs in it this spring. 

The real garden path (not the cropped one for blog pictures) has toy construction trucks. Once Oliver's, now Matt's, these are still actively used for scooping pea gravel on the path. 

The garden redo is one of my favorite things ever. It's a dream come true and I'm out there every day enjoying it. I've been watering the flowers and plants daily back here by hand because I want to be back here enjoying it. 

In the way back, after the drainage project finished, we never had a chance to successfully reseed the lawn. It was too hot, too dry. The lawn looks awful right now, but this fall Mike will be able to repair the damage. We've been in a terrible drought all of July which made the problem worse - the grass is yellow all over the place. It's still a good place though to play catch or kick a soccer ball around - I'm so happy that this back area is no longer a puddle of swampy muck. 

And the way back garden is still going strong. Next year the plants should be a lot bigger and start to fill in the space better. 

And that's about it. My to-do list will never end (stain the fence piece, repaint the peeling play house, reseed the lawn, finish cleaning up the wood pile in the way back, finish the landscaping along the back parts of the fence, build the greenhouse, seal the driveway, better organize the garage, etc.) but it doesn't effect our enjoyment. So I figured it's worth sharing here too. Our yard, the house, will never be finished so I shouldn't be afraid to share the less-than-perfect parts - including the plastic jungle!