Happy Earth Day!

I hope you all had a great one! This picture is my backyard while I was laying out in the shade reading my Kindle in the breeze.  It was quite nice…  I’ve got some more setup posts lined up for this week and then after that I intend to start getting into the nitty gritty of the gardening and other anti-plastic projects I have planned!

Y Girl

About My Habitat – Part One: Back Yard

I am between 20 and 30 and live with one other person in a house I am renting from my grandparents.  I live near quite a few members of my family, but I am not sure they want any publicity so will keep a bit of a veil over my personal life. 🙂  This is hopefully a pretty temporary living situation – I want to move elsewhere before too long, so I do not intend to really settle down and plant tons of trees or get bees.  I would like bees though – my grandfather even has all sorts of equipment, since he kept them for years!

The property is about 3 acres of very hilly and lightly wooded foothill land.  There are some significant patches of poison oak, but the rest is a mix of chaparral, oak, buckeye, and local grasses.

The back yard has been in place for about 30 years or so and the lawn has quite decent dirt – very diggable, which is unusual around here with our decomposed granite soil!  Below are some pictures of the back yard.

Directly out the back door.  Yes, the fence is ancient and falling down.  The slope was terraced quite carefully using local stones and the structure is still present through most of this stretch of fence all down the lawn.

Going toward the cottonwoods/willows.  On the left side of the picture is the terraced area, with tons of trees and healthy rosemary bushes.  I plan to fill up the gaps in the terraces, but I don’t want to disturb the tree roots – I intend to focus on planting the area next to the house, on the right.  This lawn has not been tended much in years – it’s amazing it is still present at all.  I’m not a lawn person myself so we’ll see how much is left when I’m done planting, but right now, in springtime, it does look nice.

Part Two

Y Girl