mulberry tree ~ and a tour of our late june yard

In my last post, I shared about my neighbor's mulberry tree that overhangs our property. That the tree drops mulberries all over our patio, the patio furniture, the plants, walkway...literally everything that's on the south side of our house. And that it was about to start.

It did indeed. Here you can see how the berries are littering the mulch on the walkway to the patio. Impossible to clean up when they're in the mulch.

In this photo you can see how I had to take the cushions off the furniture and put the chairs up against the house. The berries still find their way onto the chairs and get stuck in the crevices. This photo of the berries on the patio isn't even that bad; this was a few hours after I swept. You can see how they're already staining the concrete. Flies are also attracted to the mulberries, so we're dealing with those nasty insects, too.

My poor plants are getting socked by the berries. The Bishops Cap is a more delicate plant, and it's falling over from the weight of the berries constantly falling on it.

Some of you commented on my last post and also emailed me about having our neighbor's tree trimmed. For reference, those tall overhanging branches you see in the next photo are part of the mulberry tree. They're about 40 feet high. The wooden fence is hers. It sits right on our property line. We don't mind those low hanging branches in back of the patio. They don't cause any problems and provide shade for our patio.

We've had the mulberry tree trimmed twice in the past six years: once every three years. We are legally allowed to have her trees trimmed back to her property line. Here's the problems: 1) The tree trimmers can't reach those highest branches. There's no room for a cherry picker truck in our front yard. And she will not allow the tree trimmer workers onto her property to climb the tree to trim it. 2) Without getting into too much detail, the neighbor is a mean, nasty person. She has caused us a lot of problems over the years. Each time we've hired a tree service to trim her overhanging trees (which costs a lot of money), we've written a letter ahead of time and mailed it to her Certified Mail Return Receipt (which she did indeed sign) to let her know the date her trees would be trimmed. 

Three years ago when we last did this, she made sure she took the day off work and flew out of her house, yelling and screaming at the workers because they had to step onto her property to cut some of the branches. She even threatened to call the police. I had warned the workers ahead of time about her, but they told me afterwards that they had never encountered anyone quite like her. 

(The "offending" tree)...

After the tree trimming guys left, I went to the police station to let them know the whole scenario in case she decided to contact them. The policeman took a report and said to me, "I don't understand. You're doing her a favor!" 

On to more positive things. The shady portion of the south side of our house is starting to fill in nicely. The ferns have taken off and the coleus plants between all the hostas are starting to grow, even though you can't really see them in this photo.

Now you can see some of the coleus in a close-up photo.

The plants in the butterfly garden will soon burst into bloom and that's when it will look especially beautiful. From the back coming towards the front of the photo, there's black-eyed susan (the shorter plant), tall garden phlox, bee balm, lamb's ear, sedum, purple coneflower, and columbine. The columbine is now slowly fading away, as it's a spring perennial.

My herb garden in back of the house has mint, lemon balm, red leaf sorrel, two varieties of thyme, oregano, rosemary and chives. I have basil, dill and parsley in pots around other areas of my yard. I don't mind that mint and lemon balm are invasive. They've been in my herb garden for many years and I just pull stalks out when they start spreading too much.

The tomato plants are huge now and have yellow blossoms. Can't wait until we have tomatoes! We were lucky enough to find heirloom tomatoes at a farmer's market this past weekend and there just is no comparison to supermarket tomatoes. Doesn't even taste like the same fruit. (Who else wants to call tomatoes a vegetable? 😏)

An addition to Zippo's memorial garden is this angel kitty statue I found at HomeGoods.

Brian and I were working in the yard the other evening and he spotted this mourning dove couple up in the tree. Aren't they the sweetest?

Have a beautiful week!

patio time

One thing I love about this time of year is spending time on the patio. It's a peaceful spot to have morning coffee or tea, a relaxing spot in the late afternoon with a magazine or book, and of course, we have dinner out here often, too. Though these past few days have been too hot to do much hanging out here past morning.

This path on this side of the house is lined with perennials and is fun to dress up with potted annuals for color. I wanted to paint the ladder this year, but Brian likes it as is, so I left it alone.

It's hard to see some of the details from the overall photo above, so here's some close-ups. This is on the right side of the path as you're walking towards the patio, though I took this photo coming back down the path.

I love this red bench I got at a vintage shop for $5 a few months ago. It's not sturdy enough to sit on, but it looks nice in the gardens.

Looking back at the bench area from the patio.

With living in an area where we're surrounded by neighbors, I love that we have this space carved out for privacy. The only thing I detest - and that I've mentioned on this blog probably every summer - is the neighbor's mulberry tree. It's already started dropping green berries on the patio. That means within the next week, ripened berries are going to start dropping by the thousands. They not only fall all over the patio, but the furniture, in my plant pots, into the hostas, and all along the path leading up to the patio. They are mushy and rot quickly, attracting flies. They also stain everything, so I have to move my patio furniture up against the house. And they ruin my hostas. 

Friday edit: Some of you had commented or emailed me to let me know we can trim the neighbor's trees that hang onto our property. We are aware of this and have done so several times in the past years. But it's complicated with both the neighbor and the mulberry tree itself. I will give details in my next post. 

I have this bicycle at the end of the patio, behind the settee. This is my first "real" bicycle from childhood. I got it for my 8th birthday in 1970. An original made-in-Chicago Schwinn. I love using it now as garden decor. When these tiger lilies bloom, it looks so pretty around the bike.

There's the bike in the background. 🌞

The warm evenings are magical...

Do you have an outdoor space to enjoy some quiet time?

outdoor before and after

Hello, friends!

 We recently had a lot of hardscaping done in the front of our house and I thought I'd show you the before and after photos. 

Our driveway was in terrible shape, as you can see by this photo. It was beyond repair and sealcoating. It needed to be dug out and replaced with new asphalt.

Once the old asphalt was taken out, a layer of gravel was put down.

Our old sidewalk leading from the driveway to the front of the house was dug out, too. You can see in this photo from last summer, how the sidewalk wasn't level anymore and was leaning into the ground.

After the sidewalk was dug out, we also had the contractor extend the gutter downspouts on the front of the garage with PVC piping. He then ran the pipes underground (the lawn had to be dug up) and into the swale in front of our house. Same thing was done on the other side of the garage. Previously, when it rained, the water from the downspouts would pool by the garage and the water would sometimes go under the garage door and get in our garage.

Framing for the sidewalk going in. Instead of the sidewalk having sharp angles like it did before, I wanted it to have a curve.

The finished sidewalk! We also chose to have the sidewalk flared where it meets the first riser of our porch. 

We bought fountain grasses and solar lights at Home Depot and put those along the sidewalk. But silly us...we put grass seed in the dirt in-between the fountain grasses, forgetting that we would need to mow the grass or use a weed whacker ~ without whacking the plants! So, I don't know what we're going to do now. I also think we need to add some kind of edging along the sidewalk on both sides so that dirt doesn't get all over the sidewalk. Live and learn!

Another thing we chose to do differently was the brush strokes on the concrete. The contractor did make traditional horizontal brush strokes in the middle of the sidewalk, but then he asked me what I thought of brush strokes going down the sides of the sidewalk, following the curve. He started to show me what it'd look like in the wet cement and I told him to go for it. I'm glad I did. I think it gives boring concrete a more interesting look.

Brian's been working very hard getting our yard on both sides of the driveway back to normal after the ground being all torn up from installation of the underground gutter pipes. He had to level the ground, pull out all the weeds, put on some fresh top soil, sprinkle grass seed, and then he laid some fresh straw and netting over the entire area, as suggested by the local landscaping company.

Have a beautiful weekend!