I know I’ve been talking about showing you pictures of our backyard forever.  Well, it’s finally starting to come together enough for me to take pictures and show them to you.

We have a few guiding tenets to make decisions regarding our yard.  The first is that we need to conserve water, since we live in the desert.  We chose to forego grass in favor of mulch.  Mulch keeps the yard cool, repels many bugs and helps keep the weeds down.  And, to be quite honest, we were unlikely to take good care of grass.  The second tenet is that we invest in plants that do something for us, such as provide food.  The third tenet is that we have plants that grow easily in our high desert environment.  Our yard is a place for us to have fun.

A pole bean teepee

Miss Petrie's play area is covered by a sun shade.

We’re starting to get food from the garden, which is incredibly exciting!

More pictures to come.