My Backyard-History...

I know i'm a week or so late on this topic, and before your all collectively roll your eyes and mutter "Showoff" let me take you back five years, before I'd ever even thought about what the backyard and house could turn into.

The first two years I had the house not much happened, to be honest I REALLY didn't want a yard. So I put up a makeshift fence, I used lattice fence panels to split the yard in half and where I didnt have lattice I painted pieces of plywood to look like old billboards.

(Be nice, I was 15 when I first decided to become the "Master Landscaper" for the Casablanca)

 At this point the yard was split into three sections. and I only cared for 1/3rd of it. I loaded the fenced off portion of the yard with tables and chairs there were three... all of them impractical for the outdoors.

(This was called "The Fiesta Table" wooden chairs and super exclusive)

(Next was "The Hollywood" Table, named for the the makers stamp "Hollywood 1939" on the bottom)

(Last was "The Cabana" Table)

I would literally haul all of this junk in and out of the house EVERY weekend.Then I decided  to clear out some grass and revive the old ruins of a fire pit that had come with the house. After much hard work, plastic laying and gravel hauling this was the result.

It wasn't to long after this my Grandma Jordan informed me about a pair of old beat up lawn chairs out in the barn that she said I could take and fix up... I don't think she knew what she was enabling haha! 

These three pieces have now grown into the 34 piece collection I have now! My next lawn furniture purchase  was my FAVORITE turquoise bench I dragged all the way back from Kansas. 

(Modeled here by the Lovely Brandi)

(One of our very first Postcards)

After finishing up the gravel pit, is when we put in the early stages of the Flamingo Drive-In, it also ushered in the era of "gravel patios" and I kinda got a little crazy with them...

(Altogether the backyard looked like this....)

 

At this point the backyard had shaped up into a hot mess... to much going on in to little a space, then one September evening a few neighbors that came to watch and Drive-In movie in their go-cart did me a "favor" of sorts. when the movie was over, and they got ready to leave the go-cart got stuck in reverse and they ran over the fence knocking a huge hole in it. I had planned to replace the lattice dividing fence with an iron fence, but whit the divider gone for a few weeks I really like how much bigger the yard looked.

And luckily the gravel pit craze kinda worked out and "flowed" with each other. As time went on I replaced the tables one by one with vintage metal tables and chairs (so I wouldn't have to drag them in and out of the house but once a year) 

The connecting walkway is now gone as is the Cabana table, but this is my paradise. I dream about being there all the time, and after working so hard on the Sets of Tom Sawyer I can''t wait to get back out there. As of the last two years its sort of bloomed into party/event central for friends and theatrical folk! I've loved every minuet of its evolution.

-Mick-