Landscaping

(Edit: this is being posted Thursday, May 13 at approximately 1 o'clock in the morning. The only reason that I can think of for this post to have an April date is because that's when I started it.

So, back to the story at hand!)

My mother has been after me for eight or nine months to get pictures of my home. I've stalled quite a bit, because I wanted to have a surprise for my Life Day party, near the end of April.

It's now May, my party was very nice, so here are some pictures.

What I'm going to do is show how the landscape looked when I bought the place, and follow that with how it looks now.

We'll start with the front yard.
They took out the bushes near the windows, and a couple of other bushes. The walkway from the driveway to the front door was barely 3 feet wide, and it had a sharp 90° turn. The bushes themselves crowded into the walkway... All in all, a tight squeeze for my chair.

The new configuration has a 4 foot wide walkway that is more fluid, more flowing, with curves instead of sharp angles. I also had the idea to put a border of river rock on both sides. It looks good now, and I have a feeling that in a couple of years, when everything grows in and fills in more, it's going to look fantastic.

What can I say? A dead patch of grass (well, it hadn't been watered in quite a while), more shrubs around the edges. And a 2 inch height difference between the cement and the grass.

This is looking better! You can't really see it in this picture, but the ramp that you see attaches to a deck in front of two sliding glass doors. The grass is green, some shrubs have been disappeared, and the grass and the cement are at the same level.

Shrubbery! Which didn't look good. Most of the shrub disappeared, and some hummingbird and butterfly flowers appeared. Actually, the flowering plants got planted all around the border to the grass.

You can kind of see the deck in this picture. And the ramp. I'm planning on having the white pergola (that's the overhead shade type thing) replaced with natural redwood.

Now, this! This is my joy. This is what it looked like, originally. A big empty space, covered by wood chips. Ever tried rolling through wood chips with a wheelchair? Not really something you want to try. The wall that you see there? Nothing to stop the sunlight from beating down on it in the summer. This was all kind of... What does Ron Popeil say? "Set it and forget it!"

Like I said, this is my joy. A nice wide cement pathway with a curved flow to it. A pergola, that I tried giving a little bit of an Asian feel to, along with the bench. A kimchi pot or two for ornamentation. In a couple of years, grapes.
And yes, in the background is a waterfall.

It's very peaceful back here. I've managed to fall asleep back here a couple of times already, and I'm looking forward to doing that again.