From Bare Soil to Garden Paradise

Did you ever attempt to move a mountain? We did, I mean my husband and me dare to do this. Well, not a mountain and not "we" actually... But we had moved a hill behind our new house farther away from a house and created some kind of flat bowl shaped backyard in place of former hill sticking against our house's back walls. Through many days filled with plans, concerns, good and bad ideas, discussions, dealing with a bad, average and great professionals, spending big, reasonable or a little money; through many obstacles and nerves we finally got it - our new garden.

Well, I glad we did it. I wish I will be watching this garden to grow through many-many years. If not for whatever reasons - well, may be next owner will enjoy this garden as much as I do.

As with any new garden, I'm greatly in a planting mode now. I have already planted a lot of trees, bushes and flowers and no done yet! I do not want to stick to any specific style of garden and do not want to pursue any materialistic goal here. I mostly follow my intuition and common sense. All I want for this garden it's:
- to be beautiful;
- to be sustainable which means to be good home for all live things around;
- to have some edible plants for me and for birds (how? you still do not know that I love birds?)

Here are some pictures "before-and-after". Looking back 2 years ago when all these started, I'm pretty satisfied with what I see right now :)

To support white grape vine (on a left) and black grape vine (on a right), my honey made this arbor all by himself.

No worries - this forest on a left still breaks in gorgeous colors when fall comes.

We dropped this bright shad there to match those beautiful colors (see picture above).

A lot of soil still mixed with construction materials were removed from this corner. The most challenging task was handling a storm water drainage, we've got some professional help in it and hopefully made right strategic decisions.

Last summer, on one foggy morning, same spot but so different picture from the above.

Still, the same garden corner but pictured couple days ago.

This is close up view of the same corner. It's there, at the top of dry creek, I have spotted birds nest I was talking about in this  post.

Here are some random pictures from around the garden, I hope you will enjoy it.

Out of curiousity, I'm growing peach tree in a pot. This year it's full of peaches.

Here are those peaches!

I finaly satisfied my "sour cherry" nostalgy. Back in Ukraine, there was a lot of sour cherry and we cooked a lot with this kind of cherry. So, this year I was able actually taste sour cherries from my own tree, potted by the way also.

Sorry daddy long legs, I have no desire to share it with you - I better move it onto my phone for photosession (see below).

It is rose from my damask rose bush, planted last fall and giving me enough rose petals already (that I can start making my rose jam again as I was doing at my old place where I had beautiful roses for this).

This ground cover roses with a strange name "Candy Oh!" have being have productive this year!

Same "Candy Oh!"..

Pink Knock-Out roses never disappoint.