A man's Backyard is his OWN Backyard

Saturday morning I got up, got John Edward his breakfast and played with him for a little while, then Amber woke up demanding her breakfast. That woke up Liz who decided to do some laundry and clean the garage a bit.

I decided that the sections of lattice had been sitting in the corner of the garage long enough so I dragged them and the 8' stakes out and went to work in the backyard. The goal was to erect a 2' high lattice across the top of the 4'6" stone wall along the back of our house.

The prep work involved cutting back the Bougainvillea in the north-east corner of the yard; an errant branch from the neighbor's Lemon tree; and the Bottle Brush tree which overhangs the stone wall. Sidenote: I just noticed (and I recall from back home) that the Bottle Brush is technically a shrub, although our Bottle Brush appears to be of the tree variety and is easily the 15' tall as mentioned in that website. I wonder, if I cut it right back, if it will survive and become a beautiful shrub, as opposed to the tall but scraggly tree that it is today.

So I did all that, then endeavored to get the first of the stakes in between the stone wall on our side of the yard and the brick/stone wall on the neighbor's side of the yard. There's a small gap between the two walls there, I don't know why there are two stone walls adjacent to one another, perhaps because (as I found out on Saturday) the walls are made out of stone blocks which look great from one side...but look like crap from the other side. So there are two, adjacent, stone walls, with a small gap between them. Now the gap was large enough for me to get the first stake in, but only if I carefully positioned it between the pieces of mortar and the chunks of stone sticking out into this small gap. I had envisioned the stakes going all the way to the ground between the walls, but this wasn't going to happen with the first stake. I did manage to get it in to a depth of approximately 2'. I could have got it in further, but it required the stake to be inserted at a severe angle, which did not appeal to the eye. At least not to my eyes. That was really the only stake I had problems with, all of the rest went in fairly well.

There was also a bunch of trash down between the walls, including a square of carpet. I have no idea why it was down there. I guess the builders were too lazy to carry the small square of carpet (small meaning approx. a 2' square) to the dumpster, so they shoved it down between the stone walls. One of the stakes was meant to go right where the carpet was, it ended up going a few inches to one side instead. I overlapped each section of lattice by a few inches as I went (to give the whole thing stability and strength), with the result that at the west end of the stone wall, underneath the Bottle Brush, the lattice ends while the wall continues for another 8 to 12 inches. I do have another 8' section of lattice, and I could have cut off a small section and concealed this gap, but I figured it's tucked away in the corner, it's fairly unobtrusive, and the Bottle Brush conceals that corner anyway. Plus, that corner is an important part of my plan.

In that important corner is a large pot. A couple of months ago (back in June, before we went to Australia) I planted a few clippings from the Ivy growing out next to the complex's dumpster. Two of the clippings died; the third survived and is growing like crazy. I had a couple of small stakes in the pot because Anzac liked to get up on top of the pot and sleep inside it...on top of any plants I had growing in there. No, this is not why two of the clippings died :P

The surviving clipping was growing up, as Ivy likes to do, and had wrapped itself around one of these stakes a couple of times, until it got to the top of the short stake at which point, unable to support its own weight, it sagged down in a pitiful "I need a taller stake" kind of way. I painted a 4' length of plastic tube a nice green color (coz it's going to be there to stay) and replaced the short stake with this much longer stake, which leads up to the newly installed lattice section. The Ivy will eventually grow up this stake, over onto the lattice, then spread like crazy down the lattice where it will eventually meet up with the Bougainvillea, which I'll be training to grow across the lattice from the other end. The Bougainvillea has these beautiful purple flowers, the Ivy has these awesome yellow and white flowers. Eventually (it might take a year or two) there's going to be a 2' to 3' wall of green across the top of the 4'6" stone wall enclosing our backyard, which will give us a very secluded and private oasis, with lots of pretty flowers :)

Not only will this make our backyard considerably more private, but I believe it will also greatly increase its desirability to any future, potential buyers. When you live in a townhouse/condominium, sharing your space with the other owners, the space that belongs just to you, I think you want that space to be all your own space. You don't want the neighbors' prying eyes peering over the top of the fence into your yard. You don't want to look out your kitchen window and look over the fence into the neighbor's yard, especially if the neighbor is out there looking right back at you...and you're standing there washing dishes...in your birthday suit.

No, if you have a backyard, even if it's just a backyard in the middle of suburbia in the middle of a townhouse complex, you want that backyard to be your space and only your space. You want privacy in your inner sanctum. In a year or two, or however long it takes for the Bougainvillea and the Ivy to meet in the middle, we'll finally have that privacy.