Backyard is my Fave

I was talking to one of my managers the other day and found out that she and I both enjoy gardening. No, nothing too serious, but we were comparing weeds we deal with, design ideas etc. I'm a bit of a gardening enthusiast. 

Mostly, I'm the gardener in our family because my wife isn't. If it was left up to her, it would be grass to the fence line without a single bush, tree, or flower to change things ups. Maybe we can say she likes zero-scaping. We can say that to be nice. But really I think she just doesn't want to be bothered. 

Me, I don't mind the bother. I rather enjoy it. I like that we have place with a fire pit and pergola and pool. A place for shade and coffee or working outside. A place to cool off and hang. Or even to kick the soccer ball (I took down the ninja course last year). 

I like that we have so much variety and craziness in the backyard. I once ran along the levy and was able to look into the backyards of hundreds of our neighbors, and the best ones, . . . the ones with variety and ornamental yard art. So, that's what I've done in our backyard.

 There's a turtle, a butterfly house, several bird feeders of all types, wind chimes, clay pots of all sorts and sizes, and more. There's also a ton of variety in terms of the plants. Everywhere you look you see an explosion of different types of plants, plumbago, mint everywhere, rosemary, succulents all over the place, traveling jew, English ivy, agapanthus, elephant ears and variegated ginger, a huge butterfly bush, butterfly weed, eggplants and tomatoes and peppers, a huge fig tree and a half dozen crepe myrtles. But then, when you look closely, you see themes as well. I like that a lot. 

What I like the most is that there might be a burst of color or overwhelming growth, then next to it perfectly cut and shaped grass. It's one of my favorite places the backyard. I wrote a while back about how much I love my pool, this year, I think it's the backyard in general.