06 Late Spring - Columbine

This columbine was one of the first flowers we planted in the spring, 2006. It did very well and is still in the garden almost two years later.

I let several of its flowers go to seed; and once the seed pods were dry and brittle, I carefully collected the seeds and put them in an envelope.

I still have some of these seeds.

In the late fall, 2007, I spread them over a side garden at the front of the house. We call this garden the "fride" garden, as in "FRont sIDE."

Columbine seeds take weeks - if not, a month - to germinate. Then, tiny leaves unfurl along a single purple stem. It stays like this for quite some time, before growing rapidly.

I'm told columbines need cool or cold weather to germinate, but mine do well throughout the year. Maybe, it never gets too hot for them in San Francisco. I'm happy to report the ravenous birds leave the seedlings and larger plants alone, though the slugs and snails enjoy them too much.

06 Summer - Garden Unfinished

Here is the garden in the summer, 2006, before the terraces were in place.

You can see lots of sweet peas, larkspur, and nasturtiums. At the top left are pink ladies coming up out of the ground like long, pink arms.

Phil is a huge fan of nasturtiums. In fact, he said aloud one day in the gardens how much he loved them, and the god of nasturtiums must have heard him, as that cascade of flowers seemed to appear from no where.

Charlie the owl sits at the top of the stairs. He's supposed to scare away birds, but no one has yet told the birds.

07 Late Winter - Top of the Hill Built At Last

Here is how the top of the hill looked after we finished building the terraces to the right of the staircase and across the top of the backyard. You can see they were constructed with boards, rebar and fence posts.

We spent a very long day hauling buckets of dirt up the hill to create the trail I'm standing on to take the photograph, and to create the little space in the distance, which is a nice place to sit and relax in the garden and gaze out at the Pacific Ocean on a non-foggy San Francisco day.

To make sure all the dirt didn't settle during our winter rainy season, we jumped up and down on it for quite some time - long enough, in fact, for a curious neighbor to ask what we were up to.

In this photograph, you can see pink ladies (amaryllis) and Mexican salvia, both of which were flourishing in the backyard long before we moved into the house.

To create the trail in the foreground, we had to dig up and move several pink lady bulbs, which were larger than your hands clasped together in prayer. The bulbs didn't like being disturbed, so we had very few flowers in the summer, 2007.

07 Late Winter - Gardens

So, here is the same section of the backyard about 13 months later in January or February, 2007.

It took a lot of man hours, dirt, boards, fence posts and rebar to terrace the hillside.

The steps are pavers set on cinder blocks kept in place by rebar drilled deep into the clay hillside.

You can see next to the steps the waterfall Phil was starting alongside the steps.

The lemon tree at the base of the stairs thrived with just a little attention.

06 Late Winter - Spider Web

Here's another photograph of the backyard in late winter, 2006, just after we'd finished pulling out all the Scotch broom, strangle vine and blackberry.

I think this photograph shows the backyard even before we started shoring up the hillside with boards and rebar.

As you can probably see, the hillside is very steep. There was a narrow animal trail up the hillside to the left of the spider web. To reach the fence at the top of the hill, you had to run at full speed to make sure you didn't fall down the hillside.

I have to admit Phil was very indulgent. I told him I envisioned gardens up the hillside. He asked me if I'd ever gardened. I said, no. And, frankly, I didn't even know if I liked gardening, but something about this hillside inspired me to transform it.

06 Late Winter - Earliest Garden Picture

Welcome to Mike and Phil on the Hill!

Here you will see photographs we've taken of our gardens, since we moved into our house on the hill in late winter, 2006.

This is the earliest photograph I have of the backyard. You can see we started shoring up the hillside with boards and rebar.

Before this photograph was taken, the backyard was nothing but a jungle of blackberry, strangle vine and Scotch broom. A neighbor told us that no one had done anything to the backyard since at least the early 1980's, when she moved into the neighborhood.