My Little Walden Pond sans a Pond

My Little Walden Pond sans a Pond

We Merry and I bought this house I was
a 1/2 acre lot with a lawn in the front
and a small lawn area behind the house
and a natural wood from the edge of the grass
to the property line.

From 1986 to 1998 I attempted to turn
the front yard into a floral garden with
some lawn.

In 1998 I began to turn all of the lawn areas
in mulch and natural areas like you would find
in a forest.

The backyard I had the lawn area and several flower
areas surround by brick borders.

I had rose gardens, Dahila gardens, herbal gardens,
pansy with tulips and daffodils, azalea areas, dogwood trees.

The front was to be a floral garden

But I planted trees not planning on them to grow large and making it very difficult to actually have a large collection of flower areas.

Also from 1986 to 1998 I attempted to recycle as much as possible:

plastic, paper, metal, leaves and wood mulch

From 1979 to 1983 while we lived in Married Housing I also reused cans, jars, boxes, toilet paper rolls to create storage for pencils, pens and other art materials.....

In 1998 I began traveling around the world again as I had in 1997 when I traveled through 24 countries: UK, Europe, Eastern Europe and Egypt.  In 1998 I accepted my Friend Dr. Kobus Neethling's invite to present at his 4th ACRE conference and have ever since each year along with 13 separate Creativity in Education ACRE conferences and two ACREs in Namibia.

In 1999 I began traveling to Turkey and traveled there in 2000, 2001, 2003 and 2005.

In 2001 I took my first trip completely around the globe to 16 countries that lasted 74 days.

In 2003 I planned and took my 2nd Global Trip and traveled for 84 days.  By the end of the year I had taken 3 global trips and been in 30 total countries

Since then I have taken trips to 6 to 12 countries and 11 more trips completely around the globe in single trips.

Back to how my Walden Pond sans a Pond looks now.

My 1/2 acre looks like it is in a raw forest. 

The various planned flower beds slowly faded away beginning in 1998.  The hundreds of daffodils, jonquils, tulips, crocus that the original owners who only lived in the house about 2 years or I planted.  The various dogwoods, sassafras and red bud trees have grown well.  I have had 30 to 40 trees of various diameters cut down and mostly removed.

Here is the MULCH BOX I bought and used from 1986 to 1998 or at least I tried to use it to mulch food scraps instead of throwing them in trash to be taken away by Robertson Trash weekly.

This is a very of the north side of the house that I attempted to turn into an herpal garden for a few years until 1997.

The cross hatch fence has had wisteria and other vines growing on it that never flowered and I finally removed them.

this is the west elevation or rear of my house showing the deck and the wonderful new railing that my 20+ years writer and cartooning friend built for me.  I helped with some of the preparation woodwork and to install it in November 2016.
What was lawn is now covered with English Ivy and mulch.

this is the Southern Elevation where I had veggie gardens for a few years until the area became blocked from the sun as the trees along my property line grew so tall to block the Sun.

this is a ground view of my 12 ft by 10 ft by 8 or so ft Gardenia bush I planted to honor Merry and when our love began on FAU's campus in front of a large flowering gardenia bush in March of 1978.

It generally blooms from around Merry's birthday until just after mine in June.  Sporadically it blooms a little in August or September.

this is the east elevation, the front view;

over the years there have been crepe myrtle, Japanese Maple, Red tip bushes and Almond trees.  All have died and have been removed the 3 pin oaks just happened where the almond tree had been planted by the first owners of the house.

this is the northeast corner of the 1/2 acre where I planted and replanted each year different flowers and eventually stopped in since 1998.

This is the view towards the southwest from
the northeast corner of the 1/2 acre.
I started by trying to create a low evergreen area beginning at the pavement and flowing into the creek bed of rocks I created up to the wall of azalea bushes.

view from my rear deck of my forest.

Here is a view from my deck down at the Gardenia bush and a series of Azalea bushes I added to create a wall of color.