Our dreams of having a backyard orchard are slowly becoming a reality! Last weekend was a busy gardening weekend for us. Pat did a lot of digging, Gianna played around in the dirt with her garden tools, and Caleb hung out (mostly) happily in his jumper. Since it’s been warmer and the sun has been setting later, we’ve been spending lots of afternoons in the yard. It’s been awesome.

We’re lucky to have a corner lot with many options of spaces to plant. To make room for fruit trees, over the last year we cleared out a Eucalyptus tree, large plant, and most recently a few large bushes in the back corner section of our yard. In went our first trees, multi-grafted cherry and multi-grafted Asian pear, and also pomegranate and olallieberry. We have plans to put in more, but are waiting to see what kinds of more mature trees show up at garden stores in the upcoming months.

This last weekend, Pat also pulled out our first batch of compost. Success! We were skeptical for the first months of composting that all our kitchen scraps and leaves would turn into anything, but over time, it slowly turned into the rich soil we were hoping for. Yes, it just looks like a big pile of dirt, but for us, it was months and months in the making.

We’ve been in our home for almost 3 years now, but I feel like it’s really been in the last year that we’ve been making it our own. In the last month we FINALLY put frames up on our walls and outside, we’ve been slowly taking out plants we don’t care for, shifting others around and putting in things that we love.

My new favorite spot of the yard is this little space of dirt that once held two very unappealing, large plants that sandwiched the gardenia. Now it has my Valentines Day ranunculus, a Kyoho grapevine, mint, and thyme, easily accessible from the back kitchen door. Pat made the trellis for the grape out of Eucalyptus branches we saved from the tree. How cool is that? I love it, it’s so rustic and feels like something right of the Shire from the Lord of the Rings. My man definitely has some skills in the yard.