Beginnings

People have lots of reasons for finally making that decision to buy a home. For me. that decision came back in 2001, and it was largely based on my desire to have a garden full of native plants. It’s not a feeling that just happened overnight. I moved to Washington State in 1999 to get much closer to the outdoors that I fell in love with on my first visit back in the early 90s. Once I had moved here, I began to explore the mountains on various hikes. One of the first hikes that left an impression on me was the hike to the Green Mountain Lookout located in the Glacier Peak Wilderness, outside of the town of Darrington. If you’re not familiar with that hike, it makes its way up to a fire lookout that has a tremendous view in the heart of the North Central Cascades. The highlight of the hike for me was the traverse through a lush, diverse alpine meadow.

I loved being up there, but it was still a 2 hour drive away. I wanted to have those same sights and smells but without the drive. And that’s when I became really interested in having native plants in a garden. Coincidentally, I started home shopping in mid 2001 and my highest priority in a house became a good sized yard. I eventually found my home and began making my plans for what I wanted to do. From 2002-2007, I worked my butt off and transformed a good portion of my backyard from a simple lawn to garden that had over 80 different species of Northwest native plants. I accomplished all this without any real training or previous experience.

As you’ll see over future posts, it was a LOT of work, and I eventually hit the proverbial wall. I hadn’t quite finished my original design but I took some time off from heavy, active work to just enjoy the fruits of my labor. In 2008, I entered a serious relationship and my priorities changed. My girlfriend lived about 20 minutes away and I eventually spent all my time with her, at her place. The flip side of this is that I spent less and less time at my house, and even less time working in my garden.

Years go by and now it’s 2016. As fate would have it, my girlfriend moves in with me into my home and, as the saying goes, home is where your honey is at. Today, I find myself almost starting over with my garden. I’m beginning the lengthy process of clearing out the years of neglect by pruning and weeding. I’m looking to finish what I originally started, and re-work what has gone wrong. This blog serve as a “progress report” as I continue my efforts. Before I get too much into the work I’m currently doing, I’m going to step back in time and go over what I did over those initial five years. Hopefully there’s a few useful tips or ideas buried in there.

In my next post, I’ll start out by going over the resources I used to help me get started.