After much deliberation, I decided to try my best to work on getting my backyard back to the way it was, before I had chickens. Ideally, I’m shooting for a moss garden, but those are difficult to establish during the summer. Not only that, but the amount of unwanted weeds and grass that grows back there is somewhat of a nuisance as well. The following two photos are from the first time I completely tilled the backyard in order to start from scratch. The second photo, was what my yard looked like about a year and a half later. This year, I decided to move the raise bed out of the backyard, in order to utilize all of the space back there.

I was able to find a handful of free pine and cedar planks from craigslist, and decided to fence off the chickens to a certain part of the backyard. The next day, however, I came to realize that the “small” openings I left in the barricade weren’t small enough, so I had to fortify it a bit more (which you can see in the second picture). It looks quite muddy due to the fact that I drenched the ground in order to stimulate moss and plant growth. The area closest to the patio is somehow the muddiest, so I used some chopped up tree branches as a type of boardwalk. I stuffed some moss patches in between the boards in hopes that they take over.

Most of the pictures don’t do the backyard much justice, as it looks better than the pictures my cell phone can handle, but I’m hoping to plant a few more patches of moss as well as some other flower bulbs from my front yard. I’m curious about how my yard will look next year… I’m somewhat excited, to be quite honest. I’m even tempted to shower the yard with some miracle-grow just to see if that’ll help speed things up. Time will tell.