changes in the wild backyard

Our lawn mower man hasn't been well, and the yard has been looking like you could lose a small child in it lately. However, he turned up on the doorstep yesterday, and the children are safe again (well, as safe as they can be with the 'parts cars' around, but that's an ongoing story ...). So I am grateful for his timely arrival, and the efficient way he can tame the wild in couple of hours.

I'm also grateful for the husband's work outside lately. He has a longstanding injury that prevents anything happening quickly, but he's been slowly putting up some beams between the house and the garage, and it's made a big difference already. The plan is to eventually roof it over and pave or concrete the ground, to eliminate the patchy bits of grass in this area, and make it a useful, pleasant space. We plan on having lots of edible plants in pots, but still allowing room for the trailer to be moved into the back area.

I'm loving the shadow patterns from the beams :)

One of the husband's hobbies is hydroponics, and his tomatoes have really taken off this year. There are just two tomatoes in that mass of greenery behind the potted lemonade trees in this photo - he had to tie them to the gutter to get them up off the ground, and they are laden with fruit. There are more photos of the wild backyard over on my other blog if you're interested.

backyard changes

I was going to post a bunch of before and after photos from the backyard, but the computer and/or Blogger doesn't want to cooperate, and it's far too late (how unusual!), so these are photos I took today (well, yesterday now).

The beans in the wicking boxes have gone crazy. They've completely covered the frame I put up, are winding around the tomato supports, reaching for the fence, and even growing up into the pear tree.

We harvested our first beans from these plants today, and even managed to get a few inside for dinner before the kids ate them all!

The husband's hydroponic tomatoes are covered in flowers and small green fruit - we've had some tomatoes off them already, but there are plenty more to come:

And the Pinkabelle apple is loaded too. It was so heavy the top threatened to snap off, so it's been staked to help support the weight:

I have visions of the whole yard being transformed into an Eden of productive greenery, but we have a way to go yet, especially in terms of pest control.

It was a good cabbage anyway, once we stripped the outer leaves and washed off the grubs.