Five Acre Farm

I've been living in Georgia for 13 years. The last seven of those years have been spent here at Five Acre Farm, just northeast of Atlanta. Winters here have been varied, usually cold, with some warm spells, sometimes cold and wet, and usually, just before winter takes its last bow, we get a light snow or ice storm in late February or early March.

This year, however, winter has been exceptionally warm, and frequently wet. For the most part, temperatures have remained in the 60s, even the 70s, and rainy. Every couple of weeks we've had a cold spell, with rain, and temperatures dropping into the 50s, 40s, or even as low as the upper 30s for a couple of days at a time. When it isn't raining, it's usually overcast more days than not.

We had a huge storm yesterday morning, and then, surprisingly, the sun came out for just a little while. I ran outside with my camera and took a few pictures of the house and garden. I don't have many clear shots of the house. In the spring and summer the trees and flowering bushes are so full, you can hardly see the house.

As you can see from the photo above, the house isn't some romantic old farmhouse (I wish). It's just a manufactured home that my late father-in-law placed on the land when he cleared it some 27 years ago. His vision was not a working farm, but a comfortable home and a little bit of land to work when he felt like it.

My father-in-law's landscape plan for the area around the house was ingenious! The first rays of morning sun come up from the bottom of our property, the bulk of which is beyond that bank of naked forsythia bushes in the photo at left. Even in the hottest part of summer, it can be reasonably cool at the back of the house early in the morning. The sun is practically over the house before we feel the real heat, and that's a good thing since the summertime sun in Georgia is hot and intense!

At the front of the house, which faces southwest, a bank of tall Poplar trees, naked in the wintertime, let the warm rays of sun through; but in the summertime, when they're full, they block the harshest rays and provide a rich, dappled shade that lets in just enough sunlight to feed the camelia bushes, azaleas, crepe myrtles, and other flowering plants. Besides being beautiful and comfortable, this layout of the property means our heating and air conditioning bills are very modest, which works for us on our limited income.

Here are a few older shots of the farm in spring and summer.
(Left) View from the road, looking up the driveway. (Right) Azaleas and Camelias blooming at the front of the house. (Below Left) The back of the house. (Below Right) The Poplar trees in the front.