Looking Back, Moving Forward - Part Three (Backyard, chickens...more rocks)

Alright, here's Part Three...the back yard...

When we moved in four years ago, it was literally just rocks and one single tree...

Mr. was happy to have a yard, but looked pretty confused about the emptiness of it all...

Rocks, rocks & more rocks

Oh look!  You can see the tiniest part of a branch!!!

Although we don't have many pictures of the beginnings of the back yard I can tell you that we quickly learned that anything we tried to plant (after moving rocks, pulling back weed cloth, digging out more rocks and adding in some purchased top soil and compost) was quickly eaten by the dogs.  Given this, we decided to create a dog run...a sectioned off part of the yard (with it's own exit from the house-ie. a back door) that is fenced off so the dogs don't have access to the part of the yard we wanted to plant in.

Once that was done, we moved more rocks, pulled back more weed cloth, dug out more rocks and added in some more purchased top soil and compost to create beds that ran parallel to the dog run and the back wall as well as to create a small bed that came up to the back of the house.

We planted sunflowers, morning glories, ivy and honey suckle to start as well as a tiny tree that is, 3 years later, still super tiny and pretty sad.

We put in a "rain barrel" and tried to catch some rain.

Then, last winter, we decided to get some chickens.  We thought we'd get 5 and wind up with 3 (given statistics, we thought 1 would wind up being a rooster and 1 might die...all 5 are girls and happily alive).  Getting chickens meant building a coop...

...and putting up a make-shift fence around their new chicken run!

The chicken run was pretty quickly upgraded by using all the leftover wood we had stashed away from the fence and other various projects.

This spring we expanded the compost area...

Built a Chicken Mansion (to accommodate the 4 Newbies as well as the 4 originals)...

Expanded the bed next to the house as well as the bed that runs parallel to the dog run...

Tool Lady working in one of the beds...with the puppies on their side of the yard...

Built 2 small raised beds against the back wall...

Planted potatoes in old kiddie pools (reduce, reuse, recycle...)

You can see another part of the dog run back behind the potato pools :-)

And expanded the ground level beds along the back wall...

We are not completely done with the yards yet, but we are getting pretty close.  I am hopeful that next year we will be able to just plant our seeds, enjoy our space and play in the rain in our copious free time ;-)