Before

At last, some photos! These are the “before” pics that I took in January before I began working in the garden. Sadly, I didn’t take any pics in December before we replaced the old fence, so you’ll have to take my word for it that the new wooden fence is a great big enormous improvement! I’ll head out sometime this week to take photos of the current state of things. There have been more improvements!

The front yard, taken from the corner. You can see we have a lot of space in the front. The oak trees cast some shade, but the branches are fairly high so I expect a lot of things will be willing to grow under them. What little grass there is, is brown in this picture, because of the couple of freezes we had in December and January. It’s greened up a bit now (and gotten weedier too).

This is also the front yard, to the left of the driveway on the side opposite the street corner. This large, sandy area will probably end up as an extension of the backyard veggie gardening. And speaking of sandy… look how WHITE the dirt is where nothing has been growing. This is what Florida soil turns too quickly without constant organic additions. Mulching heavily solves the problem, as there’s always something breaking down to enrich the soil. But it can take a couple years for a gardener to really amend the soil back to a healthy state.

On the other side of the house, just in front of the fence, our grapefruit tree.

And in the backyard, our tangelo tree (look at all the fallen fruit – I simply couldn’t keep up with how much fruit these yielded!) Fruit from these tangelos makes the BEST screwdriver you’ve ever tasted.

Here’s the loquat tree, which sits right by the rear fence. Look how blue the sky is in this picture. That’s winter for us. The deep, rich blue, the crisp clean light… it’s so beautiful here when the humidity takes a break.

Standing just off the back porch and looking left, towards the back corner of the yard, where veggie bed #1, future home of my spring squash, now resides. To the left of the photo you can see a dormant crepe myrtle, and past that is the tangelo. To the right you can make out part of the loquat.

And looking to the right, the rear corner on the street side of the yard, where veggie bed #2 with our beans is.

Looking further to the right, the rest of the side fence and the return facing the front yard and grapefruit tree. My peach tree is about halfway down the side length of fence, just past veggie bed #2 and just shy of the shade cast by the grapefruit tree. Since the old fence stopped right at the edge of the porch, all of this used to be “front” yard. It’s going to be much more useful reclaimed to the backyard!

Standing at the side fence looking back towards the house, you can see the porch and in the distance to the right of the picture, the crepe myrtle.

So that’s what I had to start with. I’m glad to finally have these photos uploaded, and to look at them again. It’s pretty satisfying, because even though I’ve only been working out there a short while, things are already looking quite a bit different. I can’t wait to see how gorgeous things will be when all my veggies are growing! I’ll take more photos again sometime soon to show the progress so far.