Take Me Back to the Start

Growing up my mother always had a summer garden. I remember her getting ready to cook dinner and she would just go out the back and come in with an armful of fresh produce. She likes to tell how when I was younger, I would refuse to eat a tomato if it wasn't homegrown. Our front yard was full of fruit trees and each summer we would help pick apples and plums and apricots to get ready for pies and jamming. All this bounty came from my parents' modestly sized lot. I learned early on that if you plan for it, you can have a beautiful garden without a lot of space.

When my husband and I first purchased our house a couple years ago, we did it knowing that it had a lot of potential.  Being first-time homebuyers we weren't looking to get anything grand or spectacular; we just wanted something we could call OURS.  Our modest l962 home fit the bill, but the part that got me really excited was the yard.  Just look at this beauty:

Dead grass and dirt as far as the eye can see!  Like I said, we bought for potential.  And from the beginning, I had dreams of transforming that dirt into something like this:

  (photo courtesy of bhg.com)

   

We had have a long way to go.