Outdoor Adventures

From Spring, which starts in Laramie in June, to Fall, which also visits us early, Blake and I spend a lot of time outside on too many projects. We love to garden and landscape, but we also like to try to bring a homespun version of materials to our hobbies through our outdoor projects. I try to grow dyestuffs for my spun yarn and fresh veg for Blake's cooking.

Last summer, Blake and my big project was a garden on the side of our house between our wellhouse and our fence to the backyard. Over the years, we've come up with a good separation of outdoor duties: Blake is team leader on all hardscaping, while I lead the selection of the plants, weeding and management. To close off the space and make it feel secluded in our front yard, Blake built a pergola and we filled in the side next to the wellhouse with current bushes. (Blake was convinced that we killed them last year, but they came back this year with vigor.) Right away, this space became our little tea garden. This morning, Blake observed two hummingbirds enjoying the space too.

The view of our side garden from beneath the pergola.

Our other project last year was establishing our chicken flock. We bought four birds in the spring, two barred rocks and two buff orpingtons, and converted the goat enclosure to a chicken run, complete with cute house from our friend Annie, who had sent her birds to a no-kill farm while she went on sabbatical. Over the summer, Blake added a second larger house to protect them from the wind and cold during our frigid Wyoming winters. 

Inside our chicken run. 

The girls on their afternoon free range.

This year, most of our plants came back, after surviving a very cold winter. I still felt the need to add a few more plants, like lupine and hollyhock from seed and some annuals and new perennials from the garden store.  We also bought some pretty accents and started a fairy garden with the kids. 

Everett pointing to the fairy bridge and mini bicycle. 

Another fairy corner.

This summer, most of Blake's hardscaping energies haven't been available to me since he's been building a bread oven in the backyard. This is a dream of his. He still needs to finish the roof and a sandstone facade on the bottom, but we're already very close to a working oven. Next summer, we're planning a stamped cement patio, coming off of the oven, as well as surrounding pergolas and gardens.

Speaking of next summer, we are planning to fence off a space in the back of the pasture for a garden with a greenhouse and sheep shed in front.

The space. 

We got started on the garden space with our first two of four rows of wine grapes (Blake vints and brews in addition to making bread. We love yeast!) We ordered these grapes from a supplier in Iowa, who is licensed to sell Marquette and Frontenac grapes, which were developed by our alma mater, the University of Minnesota, to be cold hardy down to the negative 30s. Next summer, we're adding the Frontenac Gris varietal too.

Without Blake available to help get my back garden space going, I decided to experiment with a couple of techniques for gardening veggies. I did a lasagna garden with some plants that I hoped our ground squirrels wouldn't eat in the big ugly bed that came with the property. What a failure! Our ground squirrels may not of mowed them down, like last year, but our chickens ate everything. I gave up on this pretty early.  

Ugh.

I also did three square foot garden, which on the whole were most more successful. I surrounded one with chicken wire around the side leaving the top open for tall plants. I covered another completely with removable chicken wire, and I did a third in a wild area of our front yard with a tube top on that would allow for me to put on a frost/ sun cover for greens.

A square foot garden.

In the garden, I included several flowering plants for dyeing, but fortunately we also have several native and pre-McGee planted plants in the pasture that will be used for dying as well.

Chokecherries

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