I'm still here...

 Let's see if I still remember how to do this blogging thing.  I have thought and thought about trying to get a post done.  First it was hard to get in the blogging mood, then life stayed busy (maybe even a little busier than usual).  My Dad has been recovering from surgery for cancer, then has been back in the hospital two times since (he's in right now).  My youngest sister and her husband had a baby boy.  Plus, all the usual things that come up.  Then the record setting rains came, then finally today I had both time and some sun!
I found that I had only taken one picture of the garden in October and it was of the pond.
At the beginning of November I started taking some before pictures of part of the backyard where we were finally getting a tree taken down.

 You can see how close the tree is to the deck, and our yard is not very deep so it is also very close to our house.  We had to pull up all the stepping stones in the area as well as dig up some plants.

 The guys who took the tree down couldn't believe such a large tree was planted so closely to our house, but I'm sure years ago when it was planted no one guessed it would get to 90 feet tall and continually drop needles, pine cones and sap all over our roof, gutters and deck.  Nothing other than a Currant bush, which was very scraggly, grew under it.

 These guys were amazing.  They lowered each branch down into exactly where they said they would.  Then they cut sections off and dropped them in the same area.  I wish I would've taken some pictures of just how big the sections were.  Very heavy!  We got rid of all of it over the weekend but it wasn't easy.  My cousin and her husband came, as well as fellow blogger April.  It was fun to meet her in person even if it was over watching our husbands move some heavy log rounds in the rain.  She brought me some peppers from her garden too!

 For now we are leaving the stump and I actually think I like it.  Here you can get an idea of how wide it was.  That is a wine barrel plus another planter and still room left.

 One big difference is light!!  I will be able to grow so much more now in the garden as well as containers on the deck.  Our neighbor said she noticed more sun coming into her house too and she was happy for that.

 Our little rabbit in his hutch is back in the garden.  Next to the stump I planted a Hinoki cypress 'Fernspray Gold'.  The parents of the girls on the soccer team I coached gave me a gift card to my favorite nursery, and I used that for the pretty cypress.  How nice was that?!  It will slowly grow to about 6 feet tall which will be perfect for the area.  I moved over a Limelight Hydrangea and planted some bulbs.  I'll wait until spring to plant more.

 It just feels so much more open and light now.  I've still got lots to do to get it back together, but for now it will be fine.

 I moved the wine barrel planter that had  been under the Japanese Maple which left this nice open area.  My girls decided to move all the fairy garden things here.

 The pond is very full from all the rain we've had.

 Behind the pond it still looks pretty good.  I'm glad I started planting things here that would look good into the winter.

 A couple of weeks ago my husband and I made a couple of batches of fig jam.  It turned out so good!  We still have more figs from our tree in the freezer and will hopefully get another batch done before Christmas.

Our chickens are still laying, we've added supplemental lighting which makes a difference.  One chicken is STILL not laying, but that's okay.  We've been sharing eggs with everyone because we can't use them all.  My husband has become an expert quiche baker.  It's difficult to tell that the bottom egg is actually light green.

Hope all is well with everyone.  I feel so out of the loop in the blogging world. 

All words and photos in this post are property of A Gardener in Progress.