Home Tour Part 7--Yard and Bones

This is the final part of my home tour. I hope that you've enjoyed it. You can check out the rest by heading here.


Here is our house. It is a 1909 Cottage/Bungalow. Not bad for being 99 years old!

Front Flower bed. This has come a long way from the one GIANT bush that used to fill this space. Small bushes are okay, but I personally need flowers. I have spent hundreds of dollars and many hours of my time of this flower bed. There are some really expensive plants in there that I plan on taking with me. I have it written into the contract so there will be no surprises with the next owners.

Long and very narrow driveway. In fact, I refuse to park at the end of it because I'm afraid of hitting the house when I back out. It would be fine for a small sedan, but for a mini-van it will not do. The entire yard is fenced in a COVERED with Ivy. We trimmed it back our first year here because it had grown over about a fourth of the driveway.

Now to the back yard. Head straight back to the garage and turn right.....

Next to the garage is a covered patio area. You could probably use it as a car port, but I personally find it more attractive to hang a hammock. Notice the GIANT near 100 year old Horse Chestnut Tree. I have a love/hate relationship with this tree. It is enormous and provides constant shade all summer (all day) on this the south side of the house. There is never any direct sunlight into my bedroom, which is okay. What I hate about it is that it constantly sheds. Yes, the typical fall foliage but also in the spring the sticky (super glue sticky) blossoms that get tracked into my house, summer un-ripe chestnuts, leaves and dead branches and in the fall the leaves, rip chestnut with their pokey outter shells. The only time it does not shed is in the dead of winter. Also, because of the amount of shade it provides, I can not grow anything under it. I have tried shade loving plants like Lily-of-the-Valley, Hosta, and Ferns.

I didn't do too much to this area of the back yard. A little paint of the garage and I tore out, what seemed like, acres of Ivy. It was growing up the tree, all over the ground, on the side of the garage and shed...it was every where. You might remember from the beginning of the tour that when we pulled the panelling off the walls we found the ivy growing inside the house.

A better view of the hammock brought back from Mexico, BBQ grill and places to hang out and socialize. Then on to the back of the back yard.

Here I have a nice grassy area for the dog and kids, on the right is the chicken coop aka storage shed and behind that my veggie garden. (You might remember that from previous posts). This is also where the "Bones" took place that I will share in a moment. This area was covered with Ivy, filled with rose bushes (no grass here), HUGE clothes lines (that is what the cement path in the middle of the lawn leads to) and more Ivy!

Another view of the grassy area. I have a small island flower bed here. It may look out of place but it was a great way to hide the well. Under the flower pot is the access to my water rights. I would have loved to have used it, free water and all. But it would have required us to dig up the entire yard and spend a lot of money to replace the rusted pipes. Maybe I'll leave a note for the next owners and they can do something with it.

Another view of grassy area, looking back to the patio.

Veggie garden. Didn't I say that the gourds would take over the side of the shed by the end of summer?! When we purchased the house, this was nothing but an Ivy garden.

And tons of baby gourds! I am so excited about this. I hope they ripen quickly so I can take them with me before we move. I have a project in mind, and the reason for growing a non-edible plant, that requires months of drying them out.

Now for the Bones.

While we were tearing out the rose bushes and Ivy in the back yard, we came across several bones. Here Eduardo is trying to dig up a 30 some-odd year old rose bush.

Not just little chicken bones, but big bones. We could identify some of them. "Hey, look this one is a rib. This one looks like a femur." It actually got kind of freaky. Fortunately we never found a skull. It could still be under the cement pathways.

By the end of the day, we actually called the police who came to collect the bones. A call back later in the week revealed that the bones were not human but animal.