Little garden by the pool, and the pool - end June 2013

The little garden by the pool is not very exciting but it has certainly improved our enjoyment of this area of the yard so far this summer vs. previous summers.

We find ourselves taking most of our meals out here and Laura enjoys doing blog posts and Facebook sitting on the patio closest to the wireless router in the evenings after dousing herself in Off! and pouring a nice glass of wine.

(click on the continue link to view the photos)

Prairie Corner Farm - the barn, the cats, the mutt

Last week I published our main page for Prairie Corner Farm from our family website to the blog (did you miss the link? here it is --> http://www.udonet.com/prowicz/ Click on "pets" and "prairie corner farm" to meet our horses.)

This week I was pawing through the photos I had already uploaded to Google from last July's "barn cleaning" during our epic Midwestern drought and thought it might be fun to publish them.

Water garden (pond) end June 2013

prowicz family water garden (pond) progress
end june 2013

our pond is really looking great. I am amazed how things have progressed since may with relatively little work or effort on our part.

enjoy the photos!

July 4th Celebration at Prairie Corner Farm, Clyde rules

This July 4th, Clyde got the nod when it was time for the teen girls to ride.

Catching

Grooming

Jasmine and Clyde

Jasmine and Nicole

Building our original pond, c. 2003 Des Plaines IL

(we are re-blogging this from our web site; article 

was written in 2003 but recently updated for 2013.)

In the spring of 2002, we had purchased our first home in Des Plaines, IL and quickly discovered some problems with the yard.

The first problem was that it was an overgrown mess that neither of us had any clue how to deal with.

The second problem was that we had a sump outlet that was very busy, due to our close proximity to the Des Plaines River (approximately 300 yards) and thus our property was in a flood plain and "low".

Because of storm water regulations with regard to the city sewers we were required to shut off the house's valve and piping system that had been set up in the 50's to send the sump water from our house into the city sewer. Once that was complete, we did what everyone else did, and just sumped the ground water from under our house out into the back yard.

Soon it became obvious that we had an indentation in the middle of our back yard, as water started to collect there. Michael had optimistically built a fire pit in that very spot and I think we used it once or twice, but meanwhile we had some landscapers come in to clear out the jungle in the yard (old overgrown shrubs, half dead trees, etc.) and he had directed the sump pipe into the fire pit in order to keep the yard dry while the clearing work was ongoing.

When the water started to pool in the fire pit we joked about it being a tiny pond and wasn't that a cute idea. The more we worked in the yard the more interested we got, finally deciding to type "backyard pond" into a search engine on the Internet and finding a whole new world we didn't even know existed.

Introducing Prairie Corner Farm and its horses

 (this post has been re-blogged from our family web site, which you

are welcome to view in context at prairie corner farm on udonet.com)

Our small acreage family horse property is affectionately known as "Prairie Corner Farm".

We have just about eight acres: six of it is pasture/paddocks for the horses and the rest of it is riding area and living area (pool, pond, garden, front yard, etc.)

We live across the street from a 270 acre forest preserve which has four miles of nice single track trail for horses. Our neighborhood is all 5-10 acre horse properties (or larger) for several miles in every direction.

We are very fortunate to have a friendly relationship with our closest commercial barn owner neighbor, who allows us to use their indoor and outdoor arenas. We are also members of our local saddle club, Fox Valley Saddle Association (Laura manages their web site and Facebook presence as well) which has a 60-acre facility with a much larger indoor arena, two outdoor arenas with footing and an outdoor cross country course, as well as an extensive set of stadium jumps for practicing and schooling.

We have barn cats (most of whom live in the house), two dogs (who definitely live in the house) and six horses (who definitely do not live in the house.)

our horse herd in June 2011