Northwest Corner

 

As I mentioned in the initial post, this yard is quite large, 3.1 acres.  There are corners and little nooks and crannies hidden all over the yard. Instead of attempting to convey the grandness of this yard in just one post, I will write several shorter posts.

The picture to the right is literally facing northwest, as the title hinted at.  The dryish grey area you see in the foreground is the 2010 garden.  When I was a child, the garden was twice as wide and twice as long.  Plus, it was one of two gardens on the yard. 

Each year it seems to get smaller and smaller and each year Mom seems to be less and less interested  in its production.  This year there was some corn that did not produce cobs longer than four inches and has only begun producing those now.  They are delicious, but tiny.  There were some tomato plants, some peppers, and some dill.  You can see the dill in the background of the garden on the right.

This photo is facing slightly more directly towards the northwest and is an "after" photo.  The bottoms of these shrubs were previously covered in offshoots, and low branches that inevitably hit me in the head as I mowed around the trunks.  I used the pruning snippers and pruning saw and cut off anything that would injure me, including several blunt ended previous trims by Mom. 

So far she hasn't complained about the pruning of these maple trees, but she sure has complained about the pruning of the elm tree in the next picture.

She seems to prefer the au natural look of unpruned trees to that of pruned trees.  We disagree on this issue.  Since this is her yard, I will not be pruning any trees so dramatically anymore.  Perhaps ones that are further from the house, but this was right outside her kitchen sink window.  Silly me.  Should have known she'd catch me!

I've removed about 5-6 trees which had grown wild right up against the house.  She wasn't too keen on this idea, but I explained to her about the risk of roots eventually damaging the foundation of the basement and then she was okay with it.  One was an elm tree already grown to half the size of the one on the left.

The last picture was taken from the steps on the west side of the house, looking west and a smidge south.  It is the cement pad of an old outbuilding; the building itself was torn down several years ago but the foundation left in place.  It is becoming fragile and is not in use for anything except the trees that are growing through the cracks in the cement.  I trimmed the lower branches so I could mow right up against the foundation on the outside.  My plan is to eventually get rid of those trees altogether and rent a jackhammer to break the foundation into pieces.

In place of this foundation I'd like to build some raised garden beds to grow vegetables for my little family.  Since I've never built anything before in my life, something tells me I may have my work cut out for me!