Starting from Scratch

The Windy City lived up to it's name today! I told Isaac if we were to give him a floating balloon, he'd probably fly away like Winnie the Pooh on the Very Blustery Day.

Despite today's frigid gusts, spring has at least shown it's face in Chicago. And it's getting me SOOOOOO excited to have a yard this year! When it was really warm last week, the boys and I made this tee pee, which I thought was awesome and they played with for as long as it took me to take this picture:

"Thanks for the tee pee, Mom. Now we're going back to collecting rocks 'n stuff."

The lady who lived in our house before us did absolutely nothing with the yard--she didn't even mow it. So I'm starting from scratch. The picture was taken last August, before we moved in. The pic actually makes it look a lot better than it was.

Before

This is our house! It's called a bungalow, a style very common in Chicago, which indicates a house that is one and a half stories high--that means that the second floor is really an attic with slanted ceilings. Many bungalows that we looked at still had unfinished basements and attics, but our "attic" has two bedrooms and a full bathroom. I think bungalows are by definition rectangular and the attic and basement run the entire length of the building. They usually have some stained glass windows. We have a little stained glass in our living room. They are also almost always brick. Ours was built in 1919, and though it feels like a castle to us, our neighbors call it "that little bungalow." It is smaller than the others on our block.

You can see that our walls are within a few feet of our neighbors' buildings. I remember when I first moved to the city thinking it was so crazy that some people's windows looked out onto their neighbor's brick wall, but now I consider our yard quite big! Speaking of the yard, that really was the subject of this post....

My Momela is a great gardener and last September she helped me tear out old shrubs and pick out a few new things to get started--a couple little boxglove bushes and some pretty mums for the fall. She also brought me a couple hostas from her yard and my favorite, something we call "snowballs".... I'll have to look up what those are really called. Then, on my own, I planted tulip bulbs. I am totally geeked about my tulips. Lilacs and tulips are my favorite flowers. Unfortunately the bunnies love them too, so I got some cayenne pepper to make them too spicy for those rascally rabbits.

Bunny bait

I also picked out a weeping cherry blossom tree which I just planted a couple weeks ago. You can (kind of) see it here on the left side of the front of our house. Let's count this picture below as my "work in progress" picture.

In progress

So obviously I still have lots of space to work with! And I need a window box! And mulch! And that's just the front yard!

For the backyard so far I've picked out lily of the valley, which always remind me of my Grandma Sharon, for the shady side of the garage, and some pink peonies, which make gorgeous bouquets, for the sunny side. Isaac and I also started an indoor herb garden in some Jiffy pots. We planted dill, cilantro, parsley, and basil. And peas, too, but those are our only veggie so far. We'll transfer all our seedlings outside when it's warm enough.

I have a huge (well, to me) strip of earth in the back begging for a garden this spring and I'm a gal on a budget, so if you have anything that you want to split in your yard, share the love!

I think I am going to loooooove gardening, but I'm sure I'll have a steep learning curve. I'd really like to stay away from a lot of chemicals, but already last summer I caved and used some to get rid of grubs (which attracted a skunk family!) and these nasty ants that made our backyard unbearable. I'll be sure to take pictures of my efforts and let you know what works.