the front yard through the years

although i work for a high tech company, i am a late adaptor for many things high tech at my house. for example, we just went high speed wireless at the house, up until now it was a 56k modem. also, i just havent gone full digital photography, the pictures posted to this blog entry actually span 4 years and i can post them here - not because i am supremely organized and have these digital photos stored on raid 5 protected disk arrays - i can do it because they are all on the same sd card that came with this camera when i bought it when my second son was born - in 2001.



in fact , for normal family snapshots, the wife and i still do the old school 35mm film and get it developed - with duplicates - at costco. we have boxes of pictures - and when i found out that costco no longer sells film (they will develop it) it made me wonder if we should go all digital. well, time will tell, but back to the point of this post.





picture #1: we go into the way-back machine to 2006 when i started building the front yard. as you can see we have piles of dirt and partially built keystone walls.













picture #2: late fall 2007 - the front yard is mostly in and we see the first fall for the october glory maples. i really worked to get 4 season color and i get a hint of what might be in the works.













picture #3: spring 2008 - the crab apples are in bloom and if you look real close, up the staircase, you can see hints of the crimson pointe flowering plums in bloom. these are great eating plums, fantastic spring color and a real space saving tree.













picture #4: christmas 2008 - not much to show for color here, but you can see how big the trees grew since fall 2007.














picture #5: fall 2009 - the maples have really exploded and their color continues to improve year over year. these trees are growing 18-24 inches a year, i planted them to also provide summer shade, as my house faces due west and just bakes during the summer.













these year over year photos, from the near same angle, really gives a good idea how the landscape as evolved, particularly, the maples and how fast they grow. only downside to the great fall color - is picking up that color when it hits the ground.