Site Lines

It's one of those cloudy autumn Saturdays where the day is not full of plans or obligations. A day to poke around the yard and see how things are progressing. One of my favorite elements of curb appeal is site lines. My goal is to have beautiful things to look at, no matter where your eye is turned when you move around our property. It's a combination of perspective, composition, size of elements, time of year and so on. Something that evolves, challenges and pleases all at the same time. Properties with curb appeal draw you in. It's inspiring to have these views. Like food for the soul through one's eyes.

I took some time to photograph a project we did a few years back. (Someday the stacked flagstone in the top photo will leave.) Originally, the stone wall in our back yard bordered a gully that we completely neglected and used as a buffer. When the kids were little it was a popular spot for hide and seek. After our neighbor raised his corner and built a much higher stone wall, we saw an opportunity to raise our side to the top of his wall and develop the area as useable space. We brought in 20+ yards of dirt and used the talented Annie McGinnis of Going Native to fill our gully and then tiered it with a lower patio using stone that was on our property. (Her website features a lot of my photography.) We broke through the original stone wall that lined the upper part of our backyard, and added the path and steps to the new lower patio. The Japanese maples are volunteers from a friend's yard that I rescued a while back and we moved to this spot. The lower level was my chance to have lilacs, grasses, mock orange, a platform feeder for the birds, boxwood, ferns and hostas. Plus another spot to hang out, read, and hide from each other or gather with friends at night and make a fire in the portable fireplace- as my kids like to do.

Last weekend I went back to the gardener from whom we bought the lilacs and bought a new addition for the yard. It's called barrenwort and will turn shades of crimson as the fall progresses. The amazing thing about curb appeal are the opportunities imagined and obligations required of living in a house.