This Global Walk Outside | Day 24: North Africa
Hi! I’m Ashley and I live in North Africa, along with my husband and our 4 children, ages 10, 7, 5 and 3. We’ve lived in North Africa for 7 years this month!
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So, we have two main outdoor spaces. This is a picture of the outdoor patio that is on the back of our house. You can access it through a door in our kitchen, or through a door from our living area. Initially, this space was just kind of there, and I didn’t know what to do with it except to hang our laundry. But, after a few years (... just being honest about how long it takes us to make home improvements), we added the table and chairs. Now, this is one of our favorite spots because we often eat dinner together outside here in the spring and the fall!!
A view of the other half of the back outdoor patio shows our homemade fire pit! This is the other thing we did to make this space useful! We always bring back marshmallows from America when we go, so that we can roast them over the fire pit in the winter and make smores!! This area is also where I hang my laundry to dry. In the first picture if you look closely you can see a clothes line, and here you see my drying rack!
This is the entrance to our house! The gate you see goes out to the street, and the wall you see surrounds our house. Every house here is walled in. In some ways I really like it, and in other ways it definitely isolates you from your neighbors.
From the front gate looking up, this is the door to our house! There is a landing at the top of the stairs that often the kids just sit and play on, especially on rainy days!! We also have a plastic table and chairs for the kids to eat picnics outside in the summer!
When you come in the front gate, if you go to the left, you find our yard!! Our first 1.5 years here we had basically no outdoor space, so when we moved we tried to make finding something with a yard a priority. The tree is a lemon tree and we LOVE it! It produces lemons almost all year long. The kids make lemonade alllll the time. In our country a “good” garden is one that is full of fruit trees. Many of our friends have small yards, and they are full of orange, lemon, fig, olive and pomegranate trees.
This is a view of the yard from the front porch. I love that I can peak out and check on the kids from up top!! The trampoline has been one of the best purchases weve ever made!! (It has a net, that we will be putting up, but we had taken it down while we were away for a while).
While we try to grow grass, the soil isn’t great here so we struggle to keep it nice, but we are thankful for what we have!! This yard is very different from the front and back yards that we are accustomed to in Alabama. There are wide open green spaces with lots of room to run! However, we have tried to add pieces and things that help our family to get outside more together!
Around a little bend by the trampoline is another little patch of yard where we put a swingset in years ago. It sits under an olive tree. While we don’t love to eat olives, everyone in our country does, so it's fun to share them!
Finally, I love to take pictures of my kids! And I love doing the same picture each year to see how the kids grow. Since we’ve been fortunate enough to live in this house over 5 years now, I’ve watched my kids grow against the front door!! All of their first and last day of school pictures are in front of this door!! Each year we take an Auburn (War eagle!), picture in front of the door. Its like the backdrop of our life and I hope that in years to come as the kids look back at pictures they will remember this house and outdoor space fondly!
I’m so thankful for our outdoor spaces!! We use them as a family, but also often utilize them to have friends over, and to host events. One of my favorite things we do is host a fall festival each year for kids from our kids school! We introduce them to all things fall, and have lots of games, and pumpkin painting and cookie decorating, and we do it almost all outside!!