Autumn on My Street

I really love my little tree lined street. It is part of one of Ann Arbor's historic districts and is full of unique old houses built in the 1800s that have been painted with all manner of colors. Being only four blocks long traffic rarely comes down my street generally making it pretty peaceful. On the flip side because it is so close to downtown you see a fair number of people walking which makes it seem homey.

While I adore my street year round, it really is especially magical in the autumn as the tall old trees change their colors. There is a slight hill at the one end of my street and I love turning onto it and looking like I am descending into a sea of vibrant leaves. Sometimes I pinch myself thinking how unbelievable it is that I get to live in such a great neighborhood.

Since I was out of town for some of the peak colors this year I thought I would share a combination of pictures that I took this fall as well as some of my favorites from last year.

Although I took the dying tree in my backyard down I still have two enormous maple trees in my front yard that are truly lovely each fall. They turn a beautiful yellow and crimson making it a beautiful sight to look up as I walk in my front door everyday. I especially love it when the sun is right over head making the leaves so brilliant they seem on fire.

After a bunch of leaves fall they look so pretty I almost don't want to rake them off my steps. It looks a lot nicer than my cracked cement that I need to fix this summer!

The picture below on the right is the view from one of the windows in my master bedroom. Who can't help but smile looking out on that in the morning?

Although they aren't on my street I couldn't help but share these photos of a church and the elementary school that are around the block from me that I took on Sunday. The brick buildings look especially great surrounded by a little fall color.

My only wish is that the leaves would stay on the trees just a little longer, not just because I love the way my street looks but also so that I could put off raking leaves in my yard just a little longer...

Porch Garden Bed for Summer 2013

After sharing the transformation of my front tree bed last week I thought I would also share how things are shaping up with the plants for my porch garden bed.

This garden bed is always a bit of a struggle for me because of the wide range of lighting conditions. The front is heavily shaded by the two huge trees in my front yard, however the side gets full sun all day. Don't even get me started about trying to deal with the corner section.

Trying to figure out a cohesive design with plants that work in the various areas of the bed has been a bit of trial and error for me over the past few summers. I try new things and see what thrives and what doesn't. Of course I do some research about what conditions work best for a plant before I try it in a location, but that isn't always a surefire guarantee. I'm sure I will always be tinkering with this garden bed.

Across the front I have three boxwood shrubs. They seem to do well there and I like that they stay green over the long Michigan winter. Last year I planted some starfire dahlias for color in front of the boxwoods but the bunnies in my yard really enjoyed biting off the flower buds so I chalked that up to a failed experiment. This year I decided to go back planting New Guinea impatiens which have worked well in that spot in the past. The bunnies seem to leave them alone and they are happy in the shade.

For the past two years on the corner I have planted pink mandevilla which has worked really well. I wanted to do again this year, but I couldn't find a decent plant at the nursery. I spotted some calla lilies on sale at Lowe's however, and thought that I would give them a shot. I've planted them with success in between the boxwood before, but this spot is a bit sunnier so we will see how things go.

Along the side I have some small shrubs that I thought I killed back in the summer of 2011 when I was traveling around Southeast Asia for three weeks and they didn't get any water. Last year I pruned back the dead branches and they are really thriving now. I like that they have a different shape from the boxwood but the leaves are similar making it a nice tie-in. I also planted some pink superbells in front of the shrubs that I tried in that spot and worked well last year.

Up on the porch I have a few hanging baskets of fuschia and petunias. I am not a big fan of plastic planters so this year I repotted the plants in white metal Socker hanging planters from Ikea. At only $4.99 each they look nicer than the plastic and were pretty inexpensive as well.

I've had everything planted for a little bit with everything doing well so far. I'll just have to wait and see how the bed continues to grow over the rest of the summer.

If you are curious for reference, here is the same garden bed from last summer.

How is your summer gardening coming along? Do you have any difficult spots with mixed light?

Front Tree Bed Makeover

This weekend I worked on some gardening around the house. About four years ago I made a bed around the base of the tree in my front yard since no grass seemed to be able to grow there. Unfortunately, due to some neglect this year a bunch of weeds and grass had made the bed a huge overgrown mess that was in dire need of some help.   

Because I had let it go for so long it was quite a lot of work to clean it up. I had to use a shovel and trowel to dig everything up to get at the roots. I also removed all of the stones to pull up grass that had grown in between the rock border.

After about an hour I had the whole bed cleaned up and cleared of all the weeds. Much better!

I was thinking of putting some ferns in, but when I got to Lowe's I saw that they had these pretty blue green hostas for only a dollar in the clearance. They were a little rough looking but they were basically healthy plants and it only took me five minutes to trim the dead leaves and make them presentable. Beside the hostas, I bought some New Guinea impatiens to add a little color for the bed.

I'm not keen on measuring so I usually just place out my plants and move things around until I have everything where I want it before I start digging.

After I finished planting the hostas and impatiens and added some mulch the front tree bed now looked like this.

I can't wait until the hostas start to fill in.

This was definitely a much needed item to tackle on my to-do list around the house. It makes it so much nicer to walk up to the front of the house and see a neat garden bed around the tree instead of a mess of weeds.

Have you been working on any gardening projects around your home? Do you hate weeding as much as I do?