This year we've been busy in the front yard, but last year was dedicated to the pool area.

(If you want to know who we are, visit our Family page)

Here you can see where we removed a 5 foot thick holly hedge and found a lovely "rustic" fence underneath. For a fence that's 30 years old, it's in good shape.

We gained at least 2 feet of extra surface around the pool - as you can imagine, a pool area isn't an ideal place to have prickly holly bushes!

Just another angle on the pool here, and you can see the kids play area in the back yard better.

The kids have a blast in the pool in the summer - some days they're in there for 4 or 5 hours!

Some of the trees out there in pots have to come inside in the winter though.

Here you see the back steps into the house from the pool (which is to the left of this picture).

There used to be a huge lavender bush there (which smelled wonderful) but we've replaced it with some rose bushes.

Not much to say about any of the other pictures, but I've posted them up here anyway (so Grandma can see, really)..

A silver birch which we love. (Did you know that the bark will light easily even when soaking wet? A useful fact gained when I was a cub scout).

After being empty for the spring, we had a small family take over our bird house during the summer.

Then they left, and tidied up after themselves, even re-packing the house with fresh twigs for next year.

Just a shot of our new lemon tree which will be moved into our sitting room this fall.

And a rather over-exposed statue that I bought Tara for Christmas.