The Arbor

What I call the "arbor" was a four-post wood frame for a bench swing and a tire swing for kids. Its posts were sunk in the ground with concrete blobs at the bottoms. It had solid (no holes) pavers at its base in the area where the swing would have been if it had one.

Click on the photo to see it bigger!

In the photo, taken on August 23, 2013, the post sticking out from the right side of the frame is for the tire swing. A bare patch below it indicates that the previous owners' two kids liked the play there.

The arbor is in front of the water oak circle, which I had surrounded with narrow logs. The two trash bags contain grass and leaves that the yard service left for me to use for compost.

As part of my initial push to garden in the back yard, I cleared the ends of the arbor of grass and planted beans there in late August or early September, 2013. This photo shows the new bed on the east side of the arbor on September 12. A few seedlings are poking up out of the mulch of dried grass.

Here is the bed on the west side on the same day.

This is how the arbor looked a few days later, on September 16, 2013.

By October 27, the bean plants on the west end of the arbor were flowering, but the ones on the east end had hardly grown at all. At the same time, plants were starting to appear between the pavers under the frame, and gaps were forming between the pavers. That this all happened within six months of my moving in makes me think the previous owners must have put in the pavers shortly before putting the house up for sale.

On November 3, basket grass and an oriental false hawksbeard were growing in gaps.

On March 9, 2014, I started a new crop of the same bean variety.

A month later, on April 6, the seedlings were growing slowly while the condition of the paver base deteriorated quickly. On one end, woodsorrel, St. Augustine grass, water oak catkins, and leaves are in the spaces between the pavers.

 On the other end, basket grass and burmudagrass seem to be taking over.

The arbor on April 29, 2014.

By May 11, the bean plants were producing bean pods.

On May 28, 2014, I discovered that a raccoon or possum must have taken a tomato up to the top of the arbor to eat it and then, hopefully after that animal had left, the water oak dropped a branch on the arbor.

By October 26, 2014, dirt was starting to cover the base of the arbor, and I had begun a phase of letting the back yard grass grow long.

On March 15, 2015, snap peas were flowering the the arbor's beds. This was the last photo I took of the arbor. I didn't record much of my activity in 2015.

On February 28, 2016, all that was left of the arbor was one post and the three concrete bases I had removed from the ground. I must have removed the rest in early January 2016 since I built the closest raised bed frame where a portion of the arbor had been.