June 2008 - This was the view of the North side of our back yard.   A big old pine tree with no grass underneath.

This was the view of the south side of the back yard.  This cottonwood, huge and mighty allowed no grass to be grown and dropped branches the size of trees when there was a storm.  Last August a wind storm tore off a branch the size of a small tree that crashed down on the playhouse, crushing it, and narrowly missing our bedroom window.

Although I love trees, and we live in the “city of trees” - it was time for the trees to go.  We never used our backyard.

We received expensive permission from the city to remove the trees and had a tree removal service come do the work.  The backyard instantly went from full shade to full sun. 

We had plans to plant a vegetable garden and to begin researching perennials that could be planted in our new sunny back yard.  Then we planned to have the yard tilled and leveled so we could seed it and actually have a grassy, green lawn in the back.  On my next posts, I’ll share some of the perrenials we planted, the vegetable garden and finally, the tilling of the yard.

The back yard is a work in progress, one that will take years, I’m sure, to complete.  I’ll be sharing the progress here on Tomato Drill.