Sanctuary of Peace.....in Progress

Okay. I know I have been bad at posting, over a week...YIKES!  It's been crazy, SUPER crazy around here!  Here are some pictures of what we have been up to.  It involves the fantastic Robyn Pope and making our backyard a fantastic sanctuary of peace.  Something we are proud of after two years of living in this house!  I know you all saw the Garden In a Box and here it is, well part of it, come to life!  It's been a lot of work, and we still have a lot more to do, but the hard part, the patio extension, is done!!  Robyn seriously must have gotten into our heads because her ideas are just perfect for us and match what we have in mind.  We have taken her ideas and either done them to a T or tweeked them slightly, like the patio for instance. Robyn suggested decomposed granite but had also mentioned putting flagstone in the yard in front of Carlo's workshop so we took the two ideas put them together and voila, our patio was created!!  Here's the sneak peek into our backyard so far!

that is our Neem tree! Carlo is pretty excited about this guy.  Neem leaves are like an antibiotic.  They would tell Carlo in India to pick leaves off the Neem tree and put them in water for a sitz bath.

close up of the Neem tree

Audrey LOVES this!! It's a rock bed just for her! It still needs 3 more bags of rocks but Audrey could care less!

this is my favorite thing in the yard! This is a coral bark Japanese Maple! STUNNING!

is that not so.....cool!!??

this is our Oakleaf Hydrangea.  It is gated because to Eli it looks like a big stick and well.....Eli likes to eat big sticks.

it just sticks now but just wait and see!

maidenhair fern.  I split 1 large one into three.  I love how they look

our philodendron does so well in that spot it was just TOO BIG so.....  I split out that baby.  It looks much better now.

apple trees!  Those are two different kinds.  We are going to espalier them ourselves against a trellis so they will grow flat. we have a pear tree to still get that will be in between the apple trees

close up

close up of the other one

Carlo laid those bricks himself right after we moved in in 2010 but we moved 5 mini roses we had there and put small flagstone around it.  We are going to be putting deconstructed granite in between the flagstone this week.

a couple of the roses.  Carlo prefers to buy me plants instead of flowers.  He usually gets me mini roses.  I love that I am able to keep them and watch them grow! :-)

Japanese Magnolia! The Alexandria type.

close up

honeysuckle all along our fence.  Eleanor is guarding them from Eli as are the gates.

all of the grass pieces from our patio.  This was when it was halfway dug up so you can imagine how much we have now.

Audrey helped A LOT with everything from digging holes, to putting down limestone, to picking out rocks.  But, with that said, this was her favorite thing.  Starting veggies.

when we were done planting they went in our greenhouse.  This is an awesome Audrey sized bench that we found at a local nursery.  We couldn't pass it up!

this is a fig tree in a half whiskey barrel.  We got these awesome planters at LOWES

this is our Meyer Lemon tree.

this is our patio extension in the process

here it is all done!!!  We LOVE our extension so...much that we are going to make our whole patio look just like this!

We even added stepping stones to Carlo's workshop and check out where the coral bark is!