All of my weekends in October and November were devoted to putting in the front landscaping, a job that was so tiring that I am just now getting around to writing about it. Obviously these photos are a few months old, since everything now is covered in snow and ice! The fun began by ordering a few dumptrucks full of materials: topsoil, compost and mulch. Then my dad tilled the compost and topsoil into the front yard area while I graded and moved piles of dirt around with a shovel. Then the real fun began as I started planting shrubs and ornamentals that I’d been collecting for a long time—some of which I’d had so long that I had temporarily stashed them in a pit in the field over the summer.

I envision an untraditional front landscape for my house. I want to use this space as a dynamic garden that changes through the seasons, instead of typical landscaping which I view as as bunch of boring evergreens lined up underneath the windows. Thus, I chose only a few evergreens that I hope will fill in and provide masses of color and texture that will anchor more ephemeral annual and perennial material. The centerpiece of the garden is a small ornamental evergreen, the Horstmann Blue Atlas Cedar, which I chose because it won’t get too big nor will it block my view from the porch to the garage/guinea coop. This small tree has an intriguingly architectural shape and a blue gray color that reflects my trim and porch colors. In fact, I chose several blue gray evergreens, including Grey Owl Juniper, to reinforce this color palette.

In between drifts of Juniper, which also include the beautiful Gold Lace variety, I did a swath of Nandina ‘Chardonnay Pearls,’ which is a modern chartreuse that I hope will brighten the garden, particularly in spring when the plant sports tiny white flowers. Other shrubs include Albelia ‘Rose Creek,’ which I enjoy for its vintage cottage look and flower clusters that continue to provide interest well into the winter.

On the front corner of the house I planted a Doublefile Viburnum ‘Igloo.’ This plant has amazing double white flowers in the spring that look like butterflies, and it also keeps its interest throughout the fall as its leaves turn red. I plan to prune this plant into a small tree to anchor this front corner of the house. I also indulged myself with a few ornamental elderberries, ‘Black Beauty’ and ‘Black Lace.’ These shrubs resemble Japanese maples with their fine, dark foliage, and they also make pink berries for the birds to enjoy. I have very much enjoyed learning about shrubs and trees through this process. I had only ever had the space for vegetable and cut flower gardens, so a whole new world of plant material opened to me when I finally got land to spread out upon.

The garden doesn’t look like much now, but I considered it a huge victory to just have some plants in instead of looking at the bare dirt that had been there all summer. There are all sorts of other neat plants tucked in, including Japanese anemones, inherited iris, Korean lilacs, and perennial ‘Kent Beauty’ oregano. I also stuck my prized Pat Austin rose close to the porch for safekeeping—we will see if it survives the winter. Oh, and I also spent a weekend planting more than 200 daffodil, snowdrop and lily bulbs in this yard with the hope that in the spring they will fill in the bare spots where the plants have yet to grow.

So that’s the front yard—a project that consumed many hours and much muscle strength. Next spring I will tackle the side of the house that faces the road and the back yard. I’ve got big plans for both those spots!

I don’t love this time of year, when the drive home from work in the dark is a twelve mile deer slalom with a pitch-black house at the finish line. When the moon is hiding, it’s so dark out here that I need a flashlight to find the front door. I walk unsteady up the driveway under the kind of disorienting black sky that opens wide above and makes me feel flipped upside down.

But the reward, once I am safely inside with lights a-blazing, is seeing my house in an entirely new (lack of) light. It’s so beautiful to me that I made pictures while a family of coyotes sang against the mountain.

Through my camera, I caught a glimpse of the soul of this house. Despite the darkness, it was shining.

My favorite thing about fall is the light, which lately has been doing wondrous things.

Testing paint samples last night. Even after the sun went down, the mountain kept tricking my eyes because the gold trees looked like the last reflected rays.

This morning I enjoyed a gorgeous sunrise reflected on the mountains and field out back. That block in the left corner? That’s when I set my cans up to shoot them off the porch.

And the light coming around the front of the house, hitting the Chinese chestnut and burning bush, was pretty great too.

P.S. And when I hit “publish,” I will have officially crossed the 100-post blog threshold. Whewee—triple digits, baby!

I was on a walk a few nights ago when I looked up and lo and behold, right before me was a holy grail I’d searched for since moving to the farm. Native persimmons, or the poetic diospyros virginiana!

This particular tree was maybe 20 feet tall and growing at the edge of the woods along a road. Its branches were full of orange fruit. I picked up a persimmon that had fallen to the ground and took a bite. It was a delightful taste I’d never experienced—and very different from the cultivated Japanese persimmons I’ve bought in stores and greatly enjoyed. This wild persimmon tasted like jellied honeysuckle, if you can imagine that.

I couldn’t believe my fortune and gathered a couple of the less-rotten looking fruits and ate them for dessert tonight. I kept the seeds and will plant them to try to grow my own trees. Though research tells me that the optimum fruit-bearing age for native persimmons is 25 to 50 years, with luck I may start to enjoy fruit by my mid-forties!

In the meantime, I plan to brave the ticks to again walk my woods looking for my own wild-growing tree. And last year I planted a tiny Fuyu persimmon tree, just to hedge my bets!

I came downstairs early this morning to make my tea and was greeted with the most stunning sunrise I’ve seen in weeks. We got two inches of rain yesterday, and the departing clouds made for a riotously beautiful sky. I could feel the relief of the trees and plants and grass as they exhaled well-scrubbed air.

I’ve never been a fan of rainy days. They make me sad and slow. But since moving to the farm and experiencing a summer of drought—and seeing and sensing drought’s physical and psychological effects on plants, animals and people—I am coming around to appreciate the days when no sun shines and water falls to earth.

It was a beautiful morning to celebrate an anniversary. A year ago today I “broke ground” on my house. Well, demo began on the old house, which at that point I was still planning to renovate. A year ago today I thought I was in the remodeling business, not new construction, as I would learn a day or two later with the discovery of all that termite damage. Isn’t it amazing what a difference a few days can make in the direction of our lives, and on a larger scale, what can be done in a year with the right resources, creativity, determination, and moral support?

And with that, I dedicate this post to my parents, without whom I would not have made it through this last crazy, terrifying, wonderful year, not to mention the entirety of my life. Thank you for farming with me.

I was on my way to bed last night when the full moon drew me outside onto the front porch. The September full moon has the very autumnal name of harvest moon, though with the recent heat and drought—mid 90’s temps today—it still feels like summer, not fall. I love it.

But fall is definitely coming. I felt it as I drove home late tonight, in the way the air grew chill as I drove across in the gullies and over bridges, but returned to warm and dry along the ridge lines and across the open pastures.

We’re 12 inches into a rainfall shortage now, and all the trees are surrendering their leaves earlier than usual in exhausted dehydration.

Tonight I went to check my rain gauge on the off chance that yesterday’s cloudiness produced something. This is what I found.

I was cooking dinner tonight and looked out across the field at this:

In the last week or so, a switch seems to have been flipped and we are officially in another season. I mourn the loss of light and not being able to work in the yard after work until almost bedtime. Even though we’re enjoying beautiful, clear warm days and open-window nights, it feels as though things are drying up and closing down as I think ahead to what’s the hardest part of the year for me.

I am not really sure what I am going to do during these long, cold nights. I better come up with a plan, fast, or I might make a grave mistake and order satellite t.v.

Finally got around to picking up the piles around the back of the house. Stacks of lumber and concrete, old stakes, all sorts of junk finally got “tidied away.” Which really means it just got hauled into the woods for what may be permanent storage. I’m a bonafide redneck now.

And I found three black widows in the process, so it makes me feel even better to get this area cleaned up.

Before:

After:

Much improved, right?