Deck, Deck, Chicken

Our backyard has an ever-changing landscape. And I don't just mean the seasons. It has gone through many transformations...most of those for utilitarian purposes. I think overall, we've made changes for the better, but holy-moly, has it taken a long time!

Let's see, we moved into the house in December of 2002. Due to the frigid north-Idaho winter temperatures, we didn't focus too much on the backyard (or front yard for that matter) until months later. I'm not sure we even bothered to go back there... it seems like a distant memory.

Here are some of the things I do remember. I do remember a backdoor off the kitchen that went to a "screen-porch" (i.e. un-insulated catch-all room), which had another door to a back stoop. There were concrete steps from that door to a concrete pad. This back-patio area was a slab that sloped toward the house, so with any amount of rain we had puddles of moisture right against the foundation. There was a lean-to roof covering most of the slab. It was made of that green corrugated translucent roofing stuff, and was covered in mildew + 1 dead parakeet.

I also remember that there was no fence worth mentioning... okay it was worth mentioning for the sake of reminiscing. I think there was a scattering of metal fence posts driven in a "row" between our house and the neighbor's with some welded wire fencing strung across. I feel like this acted more like a deterring wad, than any sort of a real barrier. I'm not certain who erected the structure, but thankfully our neighbors were also relatively new to the 'hood, young, and eager to improve... so a nice cedar fence was in our future.

Along the back edge of the yard were 6 or so Spruce Trees. The must have been fairly old, I think that they each were at least 20" in diameter. It wasn't much of a life for those trees, they'd all been topped numerous times for the sake of the electrical lines running 20' overhead. Each tree looked mangled and angry and were weeping pitch and needles and blocking all of the sunlight possible, as though they needed to share their misfortune with whom ever resided inside.

One of our biggest focuses (i.e. obsessions) that winter was to get a dog the next spring. Every person in the neighborhood we spoke with told us horror stories of Parvo and how all of the dogs who lived in that back yard got sick. This was terrifying for us, mostly because we had also learned that the deadly-to-puppies disease lives in the soil and exposure to sunlight is one of the only ways to rid it of your premises, something sorely lacking in our back yard.

So... first order of business as the first leaves began to emerge: dogify the back yard. This included the new fence and the removal of those mean, mean spruce trees, thusly scorching parvo forever from our earth.

Fortunately for this project, the spruce trees were trying to stretch their arms back up into the electrical lines. John called in the artillery by contacting the power company about limb removal. It turns out that the fellows on the limbing crew that day were of a very generous nature. They limbed the spruces all the way to the ground, and that was that.

Additional modifications promptly included a doghouse and a dog. Both of the built-in variety. Simon was an irresistible find from Northwest Seed and Pet, a cool pet and garden establishment nearby. Maggi came that fall, an adoption through a local group that posted her litter on PetFinder.com.

We continued expansion with a raised bed built during a rainstorm, a brick patio in the herringbone pattern, two huge mounds of dirt, a koi pond, a deck, a tool shed, and most recently a chicken coop. Each of these projects deserve a small bit of spotlight of their own... so that might need to be for another day.

Some features were modified to suit our needs as they developed, but I really think that we are on our way to being finished back there, maybe only 1 or 2 more seasons... that is, until I decide to jump on my long growing (since 2006) obsession with honeybees...