Tiny Urban Backyard Updates

Alternate Post Title:
How you can spend hundreds of dollars and hours of life
and still only have a half-a$$ed backyard.

*****

You may not believe this, but this...



is what our backyard looked like after $400 and 7 hours of work.

So, it doesn't look beautiful yet, but we're all so proud. We walk back there two or three times a day and admire our passion vines that are already winding themselves around our fishing line.

My jasmine needs to get re-planted in pretty pots and the trellis needs painting still:


Some baby passion flowers ready to open


You can't see in these pictures, but the large pots are actually a really deep cobalt and turquoise. We still need to buy more pots, but the budget just doesn't call for it this month.



We made the mistake of just going to Lowes, which in San Francisco is on the complete opposite side of town. But they had passion flowers so we bought four of them. I wanted bright red ones, but they only had white and purple, so we went with it.

Then, I went to Sloat Garden Center (where I should have gone to begin with). Where they were having a HUGE buy-one-get-one free sale on pottery AND they had bright red passion flowers. So I bought four more.

We don't want to drive another 45 minutes across town with plants to return the ones we didn't like, so we're intertwining them and we'll have both.

The primary point of the climbing vines is to add height and cover the asbestos siding on our neighbor's house. It is U-G-L-Y and totally poison. It was difficult to figure out HOW to train the vines, but in the end I used eye hooks on the fence post, and eye hooks on our house trim - then strung fishing line (I should have used wire and will probably re-do it with wire) really tight across. Hopefully it will create enough support (and it was super cheap).

This side of the yard still needs a lot of work.
(kitty corner to the turquoise furniture)




Part of our challenge is that my mom has emotions about some of her plants. So, even though they are hideous, we can't ask her to get rid of them. I HATE geraniums. I think they smell funny and look even worse. For some reason, she loves them.

She has some fushias that need love and help, but I have faith they'll be okay some day.

The plants in the tiny dirt patch are lilacs. I love lilacs, but they are looking really bad these days.

The plan is to raise that lilac bed (by putting bricks or wood around it) so the dirt doesn't just spill over on to the "patio."

Our backyard is exactly 12' x 25' so we don't have a lot to work with, but we're making do.

Coming soon is our outdoor rug in bright red/orange. I think it will make the turquoise furniture pop and look fantastic when the red passion flowers are in bloom.

Our rug should be arriving on Tuesday:
Hopefully we'll have another glorious weekend of naked baby water play, daddy digging and working hard, and mama telling everyone what to do.

More to come.