The Urban Verb's garden...

Spring is here in SW Colorado by the Florida River, but if anything wants to grow it will have to do so on its own.  While I am good at creating book gardens, I am completely daunted by how one might create the manicured-natural-out-of-doors-made-with-plants variety.  In this photo we see an enclosed space next to an unused chicken coop that one day COULD be a vegetable garden or something (or so people keep telling me.)  How does one go about doing that? Dig up the grass and weeds?  Hmn.  That should be fun as the grass roots around here go down about 6 feet. Then I guess you need to do something with the dirt.  Rake it or something.  Make rows?  Pile them up?  Add fertilizer?  When does water go on, before or after the seeds, plants, or whatnot go in?  If we ever wanted to raise chickens, would this be a bad idea for the garden?  Do chickens run around gardens?  Is chicken poop good or bad for plants?  Do chickens eat carrots?  I have no idea.
Urban Verbs: the only one of you

Purple something-in-the-yard

Now if you walk around our estate further, you will see there IS some nice foliage apparently growing on its own.  Like some iddy biddy little purple somethings-or-other.

Peonies.  Maybe.

Useda-be poppies

Plus we have peonies that never, ever, ever grow into anything much.  There was one year, like in 1989, when they produced one glorious bloom.  Since then, bupkis.  There are also a bunch of poppies that have been mowed over so many times that they too have forgotten how to produce blooms.

To my credit, I HAVE planted columbine in a few places, and they seem to forgive my lack of skills and do what natural things are supposed to do, i.e., NATURALLY grow and survive.  I mean, (the Urban Verb asks) isn't that what nature does?  Isn't that what makes it natural?

Something else I have planted that returns obediently and independently year after year: chives.  (Nota bene, JTH out there near Keystone-at-the-Crossing: If chives grow out here in the Urban Verb's garden, they can grow anywhere.  Maybe even in people's closets in their shoes.  Maybe we should give it a try):

Everything that grows here, including the eponymous chokecherry, grows by a river, which encourages everything along even when I can't.  I was looking into it for fish today, but I think they know how to lie quietly and blend in with stuff.  Moss and sticks and stones and whatnot. 

 I took a picture of the steps going down to the river (That's me on the right--I don't know what the hell that shadow is on the left--maybe a bear or something):

Here's further down, where the steps go up (if you're already down)...  

And the house this morning, just after I picked up the morning paper...

 Beware of mountain lions...