This is the first year in my life that I feel like our garden is ours. Well, I guess the year in Baltimore I tried to garden is the summer I broke my foot. No gardening after that. Our tomato plants produced 2 tomatoes, but the basil grew like a weed. I think Baltimore is an easier place to garden, though. So much rain, and the trees are HUGE! Here there aren’t as many huge trees. Our neighbor says trees grow very slowly here because of the altitude. Another neighbor told us that most the trees in the city died from some bug or fungus about 15 years ago. And have you heard that all the pines in the mountains of CO are going to die-off within the next 10 years? Crazy. I guess it is in part because fires are not allowed to burn, so an insect is going unchecked. This is all second hand knowledge. I’m sure someone else would be a more reliable source of this kind of information.
In any case, I would like to share with you a few ideas that I have found to make our yard more interesting for the kids… without having a giant, ugly play structure. I found a few awesome sites dedicated to natural playground design. Most the companies do school design. I found one that shows a residence. Oh, you have to check it out… it is so cool.
We aren’t doing anything quite so fancy, but I would like to embed a slide into our little hill out back. In the mean time, as I sell the idea to Zach, I have spent a small amount of dough on other things… the most expensive being the copper chimes. Don’t get me started on that. The kids better play with them! So far, the most popular thing in the yard has been the dirt. But the dirt is our soon to be garden bed. We have already planted the broccoli and cauliflower seedlings, spinach, swiss chard and some mesculin salad seedlings. Oh and seeds for the salad along with chamomile seeds.
Now for some photos:

These are the infamous wind chimes. Although they only make sound when the kids strike them. I think they look pretty great in the landscape. Using vinegar, I was able to patina them a bit. Not yet green, but at least not shiny copper.

These logs will become a balance beam. These thinner ones will be free for the kids to move where they want.

These will eventually have peas growing over them, creating an edible tunnel. We just have to keep Ezra from pulling them out of the ground.