I moved into this house almost 13 years ago with my (then) husband and two children. We moved in with the intention of starting an urban homestead to grow and preserve food for our little family. It’s had a lot of different looks over the years with varying amounts of help from my ex and children.
In 2019, I got divorced. During the year leading up to the divorce and for some time after, I thought I would be moving out, so the yard got a little overgrown and wild because no one was taking care of it. Then, with a lot of help, I was able to buy the house from my ex, and I’ve been working on turning it into something beautiful and useful ever since.
I had a hard time finding photos from when we first moved in and before I started removing the grass. Here are a couple though. It was such a blank slate! There were no trees, no flowers, pretty much no plants of any kind. There were a lot of briars coming under the fence though.
Over time, I created all of the beds that exist in the yard now. I had absolutely no idea what I was doing. I just put layers of leaves over any of the grass that I wanted to turn into a planting bed. Now I know that’s a good start, but you really need a barrier to actually kill the grass! It was pretty frustrating and a little demoralizing when the grass just grew right back up through the leaves. It was a start though. It looks like the photo below is from after my brother found an amazing deal on some dwarf fruit trees, which I planted there at the back.
Below is a view in the spring. It got overgrown with grass and other weeds really easily (we were doing the mentos and soda science experiment here). You can hardly tell the difference between the lawn and the growing beds!
But! It’s all a learning process. And I started getting a little better at it. Below is a photo of one side of the yard. I built these raised beds last year. It’s obviously a mess around them, and they didn’t get as full of soil as I had wanted, but I got a ton of pesto and enough tomatoes and zucchini!
This year I was incredibly lucky to get access to a lot of wood chips, and I was able to fill the beds, so it looks really great now! The briars in the back have come back with a vengeance, so I’ll be working on those this fall.
It’s always a work in progress and I just get as much done as my life, my energy, my health, and my finances will allow me to. Below is a series of photos showing the whole backyard. Next year I’ll be focusing on the front yard, which I’m planning on turning into a medicinal herb garden.
Do you remember back in the day before we had cameras on our phones and we had to make a panoramic photo by taking a bunch of photos from one spot? Yeah, the below photos are like that!
