Our Mess of a "Garden"

So, I promised a while ago to upload garden photos... and, well, our garden has gotten rather overgrown since then.  Okay, so it's been overgrown for a while.  Olin and I don't work in it nearly as much as we should, but recently Target has been scheduling us to have afternoons off together, so now we finally have a chance to get some work done!

Our garden is split into two halves: the vegetable garden half, which is surrounded by a fence and completely overgrown, and the tropical plant half.  I like to hang out on the tropical plant side, since all the care it needs is some weeding/vine-chopping every now and then.  I let Olin handle the jungle of a vegetable garden.

Recently, we've been discussing the idea of replacing the vegetable garden with regular old lawn grass. I was hesitant about it because I hate to lose the space for a vegetable garden, and the feet of good soil beneath it!  (Deep soil is pretty rare when you live on a young, volcanic island!)  Still, I kind of warmed up to the idea, so yesterday, Olin endeavored to take down the fence surrounding the vegetable garden.

Here's Olin and the ex-vegetable garden.  Proooobably not one of his better photos, but at least he's rockin' the swim trunks proudly!  I also swear to you that at one point, that square of land had veggies growing in it!

 Oliver saw us hanging out in the yard, so he came to hang out, too.

While I waited for the sun to go down a bit, I took some photos of my half, the tropical plant side!  To be honest, I am a terrible gardener and I have no idea what the plants on my side are called.  Alls I know is that we got this red and green guy from Olin's parents' tropical plant farm!

This one I know the name of!!  We bought at a garden store - it's a "bat plant", and has a beautiful and eerie white and black flower, but ours hasn't been doing so good, and I haven't seen it flower in a while.  Olin built it a little shade hut, so we'll see if it gets better!

 Olin and his new boltcutters vs. the fence!

 The view of our house from behind the vegetable garden.  I love looking at it from here and pretending that nothing else in the world exists except this house!

I forgot to mention that behind both halves of the garden is a ton of warabi ferns leading up to a small stream.  Olin's been working on chopping the ferns down.  Our ultimate goal is to weed all the ferns and vines out and reclaim the lawn all the way down to the stream!  

Sorry, no photos of the stream this time.  Mosquitoes eat me alive down there and I wasn't in my mosquito gear (aka jeans and a jacket).

 All done!  Fence: gone!  Spreading the grass further down: completed!  Oliver: hanging out with some balls!

Hopefully, as summer goes by, we'll be able to do a lot more work in our yard.  I can't wait to turn that giant overgrown pit into lawn grass, although I will miss having a place to grow vegetables.  I feel like if we can set up some patio furniture down there, it'll be worth it.

I keep trying to get Olin to post here, but he pre-ordered Diablo III and has been using all his free time to play it.  He even got the fancy collector's edition with the giant box and the art book and what not.  Maybe I'll make him take photos for you guys.  I'm sure some of you would appreciate the geekery!