a transformation 2011--the beginning

When I was a kid, I was always fascinated by those time-lapsed film segments, when it showed something changing over a period of time.
So, I think I'll try,  TRY to do that with photos of my yard this year.  I'll take pictures of my  yard each week, standing in the exact same place and then we'll see how it transforms.

Am I embarrassed by how my  yard looks right now? Well, kind of--yes.  We had all the leaves raked up before the first snowfall,  (and we do get lots of snow and below freezing temps, so our  yards here in Northern Nevada look all brown and dead) but our weather has been unseasonably warm, so the Handyman got out and blew all the dead leaves  --the ones that had fallen after our big pick up of 20 garden bags of leaves.  Did you not notice our big trees?  they drop lots of leaves, so there is always some leftover).   But he blows them out of the rocks and LEAVES them  (no pun intended) on the lawn.

He says he intends to rake them up this afternoon.  I am betting on a big wind storm to blow them right back up against the fence. 
On the other  hand, at least he is getting of his rear-end and doing something, unlike myself who sits on her rear-end during the winter.  ~sigh~

Anyway.....  my big backyard, the end of January 2011.

and my cat, Izzy, who is getting ready to come weave herself between my legs.  She will be the death of me one morning---the big trip and fall and knock myself in my head, from her weaving.

I sometimes fell my pictures in the Big Backyard Blog are redundant.

But...it's my backyard, so, things are pretty much the same as last year.

Who am I trying to impress?

On a sad note, we will probably have to take out another tree this year.

Bees

I have ignored my garden blog all summer.  And I have ignored my garden. It makes me sad to go look at my veggies all gone to seed.  At leas the lettuce and radishes have gone to seed, I think I can salvage the rest...but no peeking until I do!  ~grins~

The Handyman took out our dead Mountain Ash this afternoon. It looks funny to me with out a "tall" tree there, even tho ours was dead.
Later this fall, we'll probably transplant our Hawthorne tree to that space.  Or next spring.  The Hawthorne is in a bad place and will soon be taken over by our Mulberry tree.  It needs a new home.

So....a few random pictures of getting the Mountain Ash out of there, and then, some bees on the Hollyhocks.

Trees

We've had bad luck with our trees this year. Earlier this spring the Handyman cut down our cherry tree. We knew it was coming.  Every year for the past couple of years, we've had some branches die off. So that was to be expected.

What was not was our Mountain Ash. And our Blue Spruce (okay, we live in the desert, so maybe), and I tried to ignore our Purple Globe Locust tree....tried to ignore it as we lost limb by limb by limb in wind storms.

Can you see our little Mountain  Ash skeleton?

I love a Mountain Ash tree, but probably should have been concerned since it wasn't a "Desert" Ash.  I have high hopes tho.  I don't want my backyard to look like the desert--even tho I love the desert.  I want it to look as green as it can.

Our dead---even tho the Handymany won't admit it--Blue Spruce tree.

He even wastes water on it...thinking it will come back.

The Locust tree....it was diseased. But at one time it had been a beautiful full tree that shaded AND was a barrier between our very close neighbors. Now, we have a broken stump and it is so sad.

The Handyman is cutting it down after it fell.

As I said, during a few previous wind storms, we had lost parts of the tree, but yesterday afternoon, I was upstairs (yes, during another wind/thunder storm) and I kept hearing something thumping the side of the house. I looked at my bedroom window and there was a tree...where a tree shouldn't have been. Darn it anyway!

Hard to see....but there is a broken off tree trunk there.

A different view.  We still have the one little limb there, but we will dig this all up next weekend.

Another look.

It was really diseased....  see the holes?

More holes---I wonder what it was?  We should probably have our friends, the tree sprayers come check it out.

And  look and see all the "sawdust" around the trunk?  Something has been boring into it for quite sometime.

When it's all said and done, I really like summer storms. I'm weird like that.

But it's funny, while the wind took down our tree, it really didn't mess much with my patio table and placemats, Or the newspaper.  Now that's odd.

 

What's been going on?

I am so behind.... I haven't kept up very good with my backyard blog this year. Nor my backyard for that matter. Why?

Because of these cute little guys.....whom I'd much rather spend some time with than stupid old weeds in my rock garden. Or working on a vegetable garden.

I need to weed. I don't care.

 

 

I do have pictures tho, of our project. We had to replace part of our fence. And once we removed it, we took out the old dog house. Because we no longer have a dog. It was sad to see it go

We really need to cut down this Blue Spruce tree. The Handyman keeps wasting water on it, thinking it will "come back", but it's dead.

We live in the desert. Pine trees do not do well. We better accept it.

 

These pics were taken a few weeks ago, my garden is much bigger and more green now.  I even have corn sprouting.

Hopefully I will be more up to date with blog posts by this weekend.