• Child crouching and working on building a bamboo teepee frame for planting or decoration in a backyard with a white house and trees.

    How triumphant we felt when we finished building the teepee and got it to stand firmly on the ground! The teepee is at least 6’ in diameter, so the kids had to work hard and long to dig a bed around it, especially given how hard our soil is.

  • A garden with a teepee-shaped trellis made of bamboo poles and ropes. There are trees and a white fence in the background, with gardening tools and supplies nearby.

    We had to figure out the proper spacing between the poles and the knotting of the rope on top; we watched some videos to help us.

  • Backyard garden with a white fence, potted plants, and garden tools on a sunny day.

    We also added a trellis between our two retaining walls. We use the area created by the retaining walls as our vegetable beds. They get a LOT of sun! And the poppies grow like crazy!

  • Close-up of yellow and orange flowers blooming in a garden with a house and greenhouse in the background.

    These poppies were grown from seed right after our retaining wall beds were ready. We love how they add so much cheer to our garden and how long they stay in bloom!

  • A backyard garden with flowering plants, a white fence, and tall trees under a partly cloudy sky.

    This is our other retaining wall bed. We planted strawberries here when the bed was ready, and they have been spreading aggressively since then!

  • A backyard with a teepee-style structure decorated with blankets, pillows, and a yellow cushion, surrounded by outdoor toys, a white fence, trees, and a blue sky with clouds.

    Setting up our teepee for our daughter’s birthday. This is in early June. We had sown seeds, but had to wait for it to start looking like a ‘bean’ teepee! Our baby cherry tree is on the right in the distant background, and incidentally, we got to harvest our first crop of cherries from this little tree on her birthday! What a gift from Mother Earth! :)