After throwing around a few ideas that we have for our garden, we’ve decided we definitely need to get our butts in gear. It’s starting to be a bit warmer during the day, and we’ve had lots of wonderful sunshine. We’ve got seeds to plant, a greenhouse to recover, an aqauponics setup to build, trees to prune and a raised bed to remove. One of our beds (pictured below when we had tomatoes growing in it 2 years ago) is just way too big to be really practical, so we’re going to take it out and flatten it back down to use for a recreation area…and possibly a keyhole garden with some herbs.

We also hope to eliminate ALL of the grass back there. Hauling a lawnmower up and down the stairs to get it outside of the barn is not fun at all. And the less we have to maintain in the end, the better! We plan to put down foil to prevent any grass of weeds from growing through, put down some gravel and lay down these wooden tiles that you see in the photo below. We decided to lay tile in the outdoor kitchen once we finalized our plans for it…so we have the stack of these just taking up space in the barn.

outdoor kitchen

The weather is supposed to be really nice this weekend, getting up to almost 60°F. So we will hopefully be using that opportunity to get some of the beds weeded again, clean stuff out of the greenhouse and maybe even get started with recovering it!

While I’m certain that Mackenzie would love for us to get a some playground equipment back there with big slides and wood swing sets , we’re not likely to go totally overboard. But we might. 🙂

Last fall, our neighbors asked if we’d like to have the playhouse he build for his own children several years ago. They’ve completely outgrown it and he needs the space in his courtyard.

So we’re going to put it on the back fence line which we’re hoping will further block our view to the neighbor’s house. We’re also trying to figure out how to add a sandbox into the mix. It’s got to be covered since our neighbor’s have cats that wander all over our garden (and like to use it as a litter box).

What do you think?