The Great Outdoors of our Backyard

This is going to be a long post, so bear with me!  It won't be long on words, though...just pictures! :)  Many of you have been wondering just what the backyard of our place looks like.  Short of taking a video, which I do plan to do in the future, this is what I can do.  Come, take a walk up our hill!

This is the view from the top of the stairs by the garden.  Yes, I did forget to take a new picture of the stairs. Oops.  But, if you go back a few posts to the one about the bees, then you can see the stairs that I am referring to.  The white building in this picture is a warm house.  In previous days, the owners used it to keep plants, well, warm. :)  The boys currently use it as a hideout/playhouse!

When you have walked up to the warm house in the previous picture and look to your right, you will see the path that we take to the current spot for the chickens.  They are not in the picture, but are up to the left, behind the mass of green.  And there is a tree that fell across this path long ago and that is now covered up with ivy.  I have to duck under the tree to go this way.  Also, you can't see the flowers in this picture, but there are periwinkles growing on both sides of the path, along with some giant calla lilies!  More on those later. :)

Now, turn back with me and we will continue up the hill.  This is the view from just to the side of the warm house.  The path winds up through the trees.

When you get to the top of the path, you come to what used to be an orcard.  There are still fruit bearing trees here, along with grape vines at the very top of the hill, which is also the fence line of the property.  It will be interesting to see if these trees actual bear decent fruit.  We've already been harvesting pumelo and two different types of lemons.  But the trees are in great disrepair and need lots of care.  Unfortunatley, we don't know alot about caring for fruit trees, and we arrived to late in the season to tend to them properly. So, we'll see. :)

Here's another view of the fruit trees, looking to the right of the above picture.  You can also see the slope of the hill in this picture.

Now, from where I was standing in the two pictures above, I turned around to look back down the hill.  Here you can see the warm house, again.

Looking to the right while facing the top of the hill, you can barely see the bee hive.  It's just on the other side of the tree in the "back" of the picture.

And here is the back side of the bee hive.  It is literally a "buzz" of activity all day long! 

Well, more about the yard later.  Trust me, there is more to see! :)