Vasco and Akiva sitting in Patio Chairs on Pation in our backyard
A view of our picnic area, with a few patio chairs, with Vasco (left) and Akiva (right). You can see our old patio blocks in this photo. They are quite worn and have settled in many area leaving area for water to pool and making it a difficult surface to clean off. We have some very nice decorative patio blocks that we will arrange somewhere back in this area. It would eventually be nice to have a raised deck just behind the house that extends over to the grill are, than have an area with the decorative patio blocks around the edge of that. For this year anyway, we will just set the blocks in place.
View of the center of our Backyard from over head (from 2nd floor window)
In this photo you can see the large ring around the Autumn Blaze Maple. The ring is an elevated area. There are dozens of Hostas planted in rings around the Maple tree. It should be a very nice display this spring.
Picnic area under our Norway Maple tree
It is very difficult to grow much anything under a Norway Maple tree due to a substance the tree produces along with the deep shade from the tree. The solution we came up with was to create a picnic area under the tree and cover the ground with mulch. It is a very pleasant area in the summer. We put a swing along with a table and chairs under the tree in the summer.
Rocks for Landscaping in our Back Yard
I the center of the photo, there is about a 8 foot tall Autumn Blaze Maple, that is about 2 years old. The tree to the right is also a Autumn Blaze Maple, but it is about 4 years old. The bushes with bright red branches are Dog wood bushes. The firewood is from our Ash tree that is just to the left of this photo. The thin tree by the fence in the left of the photo is a Willow that was a variegated willow grafted onto some type of weeping willow root stock. However, 2 years ago the variegated willow died, but the root stock survived, and the tree now has revered to the variety of the root stock. When we transplanted it (had to move it for our garden last summer) it looks like it was going to die, but it came back to life about a month later. It was looking very good as it went into the fall.
