Week 5--icicles

We were hit by a lot more snow on Friday night, but by Sunday afternoon, the temps began to rise, the sun was out and the melting had begun.

I tried to capture the icicles on my snowball bush, right outside the dining room window.  I finally had to open it to get a better picture.

I hope spring comes fast!

Week 4 (week 3 was a bi-week)

Week 3 was a bi, because it looked exactly the same as week 2.

(and I forgot to take a picture on week 3)

This is it today....or yesterday, Saturday, Feb.19th.

Snow.

My friend, Debbie and her husband Charlie, are friends with the people who used to live in my house. (We've lived here for almost 15 years) but their friends Sarah and Roger lived here first and put the yard in. They planted all the trees in the back...the ones which are huge now.

Debbie and Charlie had dinner with Roger and Sarah (who have moved to another state) a couple of weeks ago, and they asked about the house. They asked specifically about the yard and if the trees survived. We do live in the desert, so trees are like gold to us all.

While Roger and Sarah did plant all the trees around the perimeter, we planted the trees in the grass area and lot of bushes and plants and flowers. It used to look a lot more like the desert, but we've worked really hard these past 15 years to make it seem as if our backyard isn't in the middle of the desert.

I was thinking of getting Sarah's e-mail address and sending them some pictures of the yard, or this link.

But then I thought....well, CRAP this is ugly in the winter.

So I am going to do some blatant self-promotion here and insert a few pictures of my yard which I took this past summer.

These pics are for Sarah and Roger--to show them that the yard they worked so hard to get started was not in vain.

So you all have to turn away now---these are just for Roger and Sarah Johnson.

Roger and Sarah,  If the big trees ever die, so will I!!!  I love them, and I love the shade they give.  I love having a green yard in the middle of the sage brush.

The lilac bushes are huge now.  We've done a few different things on the side yard....dog pen, vegetable garden?  It's  changed over the years.

(you can just scroll down and down to see pictures of the side yard, etc)

Oh...and we put a cover on the patio.

Which has Virginia Creeper growing all over it.  Some people like Virginia Creeper, some people don't.   I like it--its green and it has brought a flock of  Flickers to it this past fall--I'm for anything that  brings unique birds to my backyard.

September 11th, 2010

I had a garden party brunch and I took these before the ladies got here.

10:00 a.m.

Week 2

As the Handymand has informed me.....the backyard can get pretty boring, when you look at picture after picture after picture.

Oh well....I don't know what to tell you.

Saturday, Feb. 5th.

Gray skies.

The lawn/yard still looks like crap!!

We're not very pretty in our wintery coat.

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.