Landscaping and the Front Walkway!

Sheesh, been a while... but we've been tirelessly (and tired-ly) working toward the goal of having the house ready to list end of August/September. I'll save all my emotionally conflicted ramblings about this for some other time and instead catalog all the new stuff.

Anyway, off topic to start with, my brother David and SIL Kendra visited in the beginning of May for a week. By the numbers: at least 8 hours of The Office and 3 Bourne movies watched, 3 trips to Buttercloud, 2 In N Out, 2 beers and 2 desserts at Schoolhaus Brewhaus, 1 enormous breakfast at Morning Glory, 1 Bella pizza, 1 trip to Crater Lake (pretty snowy, which made us happy, though the lake is not as blue on cloudy days) and 1 exceptional bottle of Gnarlyhead ancient vine zinfandel paired with steaks.

It was a fun time. Then Memorial Day Weekend, I gardened. I haven't really stopped gardening, actually. The back 40 was tilled, weeded and landscape-fabric-ed.

 And now looks like this, with things more grown in. We need to lay just a bit more pea gravel (in the foreground) to meet the driveway on the right, and then this will be pretty much finished. This year, I'm growing:

• pumpkins
• cateloupe
• cucumbers
• tomatoes (obviously)
• dahlias
• 5 kinds of squash
• onions
• potatoes (the organic ones sprout super fast in the pantry)

I just picked my first yellow squash today and have eaten a few yellow cherry tomatoes already. 

Sorry about the funky lighting on this, but this is how the back looks now (minus canoe, which we sold and replaced with kayaks). Few rough edges still, but looks really good mostly.

Finally, I got to fill these giant pots for either side of the garage. I bought them three years ago and they've been shuffled around the garage ever since. They're 23 inches wide, for scale. I made little carts for them to wheel around on and strung up sprinklers around the garage door so they're watered automatically. Insert heart eyes here. Sprinkler drip lines and whatnot were a SERIOUS PAIN to install but I'm looking forward to sipping my beer and watching all my plants get watered.

 Not bad, huh?

We need to mulch most of the beds next to the pool still. I planted blackeyed susans of various types to fill in where it's still blank. Hopefully the bed in the background finishes filling in. It's a bit spotty still, but eventually the plants will entirely fill the whole bed.

The best flower in the garden right now is this hot pink dahlia. When the sun hits the petals, they almost glitter. 

And out front, we have two trees full of peaches and (super excitingly) my Macintosh apple finally has apples. I have been waiting for six years to enjoy fruit off that tree. Two of the peach branches broke from all the fruit and an unfortunate miscommunication about pruning this spring, but we'll still have way more than we can eat. 

And lastly, here's a before (over eight years ago, when we were just looking at the house)...

And an after, now that we have our shutters up and Todd finished the brick walkway, which turned into a much bigger project than he expected. It makes me smile every time I drive past the house because it looks so dang cute. We're going to put window boxes up under the two big windows and fill them with begonias or something. It's going to be unbelievably charming.

Oh, wait...one more. I just loved how the kitchen looked one morning a few weeks ago with a kind of crazy bouquet of flowers and the filtered light. Hard to believe it was so dreadful three years ago.

Miscellaneous project roundup

I made this a couple months ago as a wedding present for our friends who recently got married and hauled it up to Seattle one weekend in October in a suitcase. It's fairly large, 1x2 feet, and it only fit in my huge rolling duffle (which we call the body bag, it's pretty big). It felt ridiculous packing that for a weekend, but you gotta do what you gotta do. (This also allowed me to take four jackets and six pairs of shoes, so I guess it worked out ok. Indecisive much?)

I'm thinking about making another one for myself :)

And...I don't remember when we finished this up. Probably also in October. Planted tiny arbor vitae shrubs along the back driveway, which will form a nice screen when they grow. I missed the privacy we had before the neighbors' 15-foot-tall shrubs died; the 6-foot fence just isn't the same. Plus the hedge was prettier. This should have a similar effect and also screen whatever's parked back there.

The Pool, Sprinklers and Miscellaneous Updates

...probably heavier on the miscellaneous updates part. Anyway, let's go in order...

Here's what the pool looked like when we left last Saturday for a week. I'll spare you the algae soup shot of the bottom.

We returned last night to find this, which is the plaster bond coat before the Pebble Tec goes on. I know it's not terribly exciting, but it gives just the vaguest hint at how this whole area is going to be transformed from a ratty, stained, pink-rimmed, algae-ridden antique into a great modern space. I can't tell how fancy it might look, but at a minimum it'll be simple and clean, and I'd happily take that.   

Next, we have sprinkler liftoff!!!I realized this afternoon that this meant I could actually plant a ton of blackeyed susan seeds and they would grow, because they were watered on a timer and didn't depend on me to help them turn into little plantlets. I am not very reliable with watering.

And now, miscellaneous updates. Seriously, the iPhone panorama shot knocks my socks off (or would, if it wasn't 99 degrees outside, and I was wearing socks). This is from last Sunday at the top of Twin Peaks in San Francisco, where we visited my very oldest friend Laura, her husband Zack and their Yorkie Artie for a few days. They took us on a tour of the city and this was our first stop.

 Next picture stop, Sutro Baths. Hi :)

And a gorgeous, clear afternoon on Monday; this is the view from their super cute apartment. 

Tuesday morning, we packed up the Q and headed south. We took the 101 for a change of pace. Neither of us can count how many times we've done I-5, a route most noted for its incredible boringness, so the 101's more varied landscape was a welcome change of pace. Tuesday we landed in Glendora, half a second where we went to college, and caught up with some friends (one of whom we were there for meetings with, since this was actually a very productive business trip we were on). Cue quintessential California palm tree shot...

And a few housey things... I enjoyed an afternoon by myself poking through Old Town Pasadena and nearby stores and found some fun ideas to bring home. Like these lanterns, which I'm totally going to make myself. I found a tutorial on someone's blog a while back and decided it'd be a worthwhile project. Fun additions to the pool shack area.

I also found myself enchanted by this fountain. I want to make one, or buy one...HAVE one. I also wanted to sit in it, because it was a bit warm and it looks like an amazing natural bathtub. You can't quite tell in that picture, but the water spills down the sides and into the rock bed below; it's like a zero-edge swimming pool. UGH. Want.

I was also kind of taken by all the succulents everywhere. I think I'm going to do a bowl of them out by the pool, where I unceremoniously murdered a fern last year. Few plants can be so visually fascinating, with all the textural variation.

Then, we went home. By the time we'd been in the car for 8 hours, I was feeling a bit antsy and convinced Todd to stop at the Olive Pit in Corning, CA (olive country), which we'd driven past a zillion times. I enjoyed sampling a wide variety of offerings and wished they'd had a few varieties of Castelvetrano olives, which are my favorite. (BTW, how amazing is my pineappleologist hat? Amazing. Bday present from Todd.)

And lastly, no trip to California is complete without a stop at In N Out. This may have been my third stop at In N Out (I also had Chic-Fil-A twice ❤️ and it was spectacular.)

Oh, wait, one more thing. I bought a mug at Anthro to commemorate my trip, because I like having an assortment of mugs to pick from and tying them to specific memories.

Obviously, blue, white and yellow is kind of my jam, but I think what sold me is that bright coral color inside. I love that color, but I don't think I really wear it that well. Looking at it elsewhere is the next best thing.

So, LA, you weren't nearly as terrible as I remembered. Here's something I never thought I'd say: looking forward to the next trip back. (Gasp.)

One more down, lots left

I've been meaning to post this for a few weeks, but we FINALLY got that dead cedar tree cut down! I have video, too, but my new camera takes much higher-quality videos than the old one, so it's taking a really long time to upload. I'll post it later, probably. Anyway, you may remember that we used to have this lovely tree in our hedge:
I'm referring to the one right in the middle. It looked much worse in person. It's been on our list to cut down for about two years, but we didn't know if we wanted to put up a fence or plant more shrubs, or put up a fence while we waited for the new shrubs to grow.

Then we discovered that city ordinances placed restrictions on fences near roads, so we decided to just put in new laurels. BIG ones. (This may have been done, but Todd's dad did it for us. We weren't around for that part.)

So we had a good old time borrowing Tom's chainsaw and creating a new pile of firewood.

And here's the hole it left. I didn't take a farther-away picture...maybe next time. As you can see, it left a big gap. So that's the story of the great tree-cutting-down.

I also have some very exciting news in the remodeling category: it looks like Kate and Trevor might be moving into our house in a few months, and we've arranged a work-exchange agreement, so we're going to be able to finish our house, with their help!

On that happy note, I think I might use this river rock pebble stuff in the upstairs shower pan. But I would pull out all the black/gray pieces and replace them with white. It's probably going to be an all-white bathroom. EXCITING!!!

Memorial Day Weekend Update

Just a little update from our weekend a couple weeks back...weather was sadly cruddy, but we did get out for a little while. Todd found cherries...and little peachlets on our fruit trees. I don't think the apples had anything yet, but there were actually a fair number of peaches on the peach trees. Totally excited about that! They're so adorable and fuzzy :)
I also weeded this bed in our circular driveway, which had grown a number of normal-size weeds in addition to these trees. I left the trash can and shovel in the picture for perspective. The one in the middle was taller than me. Yikes.

The rock border around this bed was where I had my first true run-in with a black widow (I picked up a rock with an un-gloved hand and the evil little spider was sitting there on the rock about five inches away from my finger. GAAAHH!!!) so I was a little wary and careful poking around in there. No spider encounters to report this time.

I forgot how high it is when you get to the top of the roof (and how steep the climb is), I decided to scurry up to inspect the chimney that used to vent the furnace. It's a bit on the crumbly side and was supposed to have been capped when we got the fireplace chimney fixed a few years ago. I HATE HATE HATE going on that roof. It's very high.

I was inspired by Todd, who went up to the garage roof to sweep it off (oak leaves and acorns and whatnot collects there)...he finished his job and is sitting around in, taking in the views.

One bigger project we're planning on getting done this summer is cutting down the dead cedar tree. You can see the lower branches just to the right of Todd in that picture above. We've been stalling because it'll leave an open space that we're going to fence, but fencing is (probably) a day's work.

We'll see about tackling that later in July or August. The tree's a magnet for landscapers, all of whom want to cut it down.

Springtime

Thought I'd post a little update since we've been getting a few hours in occasionally every few weekends. I love yard work. I seriously can't wait to have tons of it to do again. Our little laurels, which have been in the ground for about a year and a half, are coming along really well. You can't really tell from that picture, but most of them have at least doubled, if not more. Compared to the linked image, they've grown leaps and bounds.This is a bud on Todd's Red Delicious apple tree, with a ladybug that's enjoying it. Please note that it was in fact warm enough to wear my Birkies this weekend. (It snowed in Bend today. I love the snow, but it's almost May.)
These are blooms on the peach trees. We're not supposed to get any fruit for a few years, at least, but they look pretty. All six trees (Red Delicious, Macintosh, two peaches, Rainier cherry and some other kind of cherry) are healthy and growing well!
These honeysuckle vines that I planted along both sides of the pool fence are just going bonkers. I spent 45 minutes pruning them and weaving the new growth into the fence. I probably should have chosen between the green variety and the purple variety instead of alternating, but I couldn't.
I'm working on another little project for our apartment garden...you can check out the Purloined Pizza Stone in a few days for the details. I'm eagerly anticipating the day we get to move home. This apartment might fit my body just fine, despite the amount of Easter candy I've recently consumed, thankyouverymuch, but it doesn't have room for my soul. Or my circular saw, which I used this weekend and remembered how much I missed it.

More to come next time!

Updates and other news

While I'm fully aware that a sound shaming is in order for not posting for two months and a week, I do have a good reason (more on that later...no, not pregnant). First, a few garden pictures!

Below is our and our neighbors' enormous cherry tomato plants. Theirs sprawls about five solid feet, and is the thing lying on the ground in the bottom left corner of this picture. Ours is tied up to a bean teepee, and I estimate it's about eight feet tall, and still adding height every day. Needless to say, there are more cherry tomatoes than anyone can eat.

So far, from our basil, I've made and frozen three massive batches of pesto, plus made and eaten lots more than that. Fresh basil is spectacular.
Below is a picture of my still-ripening white pumpkin. Of the six seeds, four sprouted. Of those four sprouts, I kept three. Of the three plants, only one plant produced one pumpkin. Guess I will be saving the seeds and trying again...
We have collected what might be termed an obscene amount of squash. This isn't even one week's worth. I have foisted it on neighbors, visitors, everyone. I also chopped a bunch up and froze it with plans of making red sauce, lasagna and zucchini bread in January.
I also let my artichokes bloom. This picture doesn't even come close to the color of the flower. It's like a neon purple, like no flower I've ever seen before. Absolutely stunning. And the bees are obsessed with it. At any given time, there are usually at least four honeybees jammed all the way in the middle of the bloom, bee-ing around.
Sunflowers along the pool fence are just starting to bloom, and they're awesome. The honeysuckles that got more water and sun also took off, and almost all my second-round transplanted black-eyed susans made it. In the next few years, they'll fill in more and be really big and beautiful. Also planted some random climbing seeds I had lying around, and a few weeks later, morning glories!
This is an Autumn Beauty sunflower. At about eight inches in diameter, they are just lovely as cut flowers.
This is also a variety of Autumn Beauty. I like the yellow in this a little better than the brown above, but I think the first one is more striking.
Anyway, on to this news I alluded to earlier. We are moving to Bend, OR for a few years. Todd got a pretty amazing job, and so we're relocating and renting our house to some friends from church. Ironically, they're moving out of a studio apartment, and we are moving into one. After reviewing pictures, I am still not really sure how we'll be able to fit a bed, couch and media console. It's only 650 square feet (but really nice, especially the kitchen).

I took videos of how things look inside and outside (which are now a few weeks outdated)...they're kind of long.



And outside...

I am really glad that we have friends who can take care of our house while we're gone, so the shrubbies don't die and the pool doesn't turn green. While I will really miss living here, there is a lot to look forward to at our new place, so I've been focusing on that.

Probably more to come before we leave (we move into our new place on September 11), and I suppose the blog will be on hiatus for a while until we come back.

Summertime!

Sooo....lots to discuss in the garden, mainly. Yesterday, I took the afternoon to work on the raised bed I built last year next to the pool. Turned all the dirt, added some rotted manure Betsy brought from the ranch and some grass clippings and even things out. Six hours later, voila!After getting things in order, I planted some dwarf dahlias (below, LOVE the pink-orange bloom)
and some white petunias. I still need to put the drip lines back in place.

The other bed, which is in the background of the picture, is filled with hateful bermudagrass, and I am in the process of poisoning it. Once it's all good and dead, I'm hoping to transplant some of my black-eyed susan seedlings, so I can see them from my office window all summer.

I moved some of the sunflower seedlings yesterday, too. The "tiny" ones, expected to come in at 4.5 feet, are planted along the pool fences. It's a bit touch and go at the moment: two got decimated by earwigs overnight, and several others are looking pretty wilty, despite my heavy watering. It may have been too early to move them.

Also along the pool fence (above) are balloon flower seeds. Nothing's sprouted yet. I planted them a little late in the season. The purple and yellow should be a fun combo, though.

Speaking of a fun combo, how about some pool and sunshine? Thanks to the wind the past few days, there's leaves at the bottom of the pool, but it was looking pretty darn good on Sunday when I floated around for the afternoon. Come a long way since last year. Mom and Dad: please note use of hooks in the background!
Pool shack, also looking super cute with hanging baskets of red petunias (that hopefully won't get eaten by budworms this year).
The baskets hung on the fence (toward the street) are bigger, so there's petunias and blue salvia in those. I'm curious to see how the combination turns out.
I was running back across the street from the neighbors' a few days ago, and I thought to myself for the first time since I've lived here, "Hey, this place doesn't look so bad."

Perhaps you agree? In any case, it doesn't look NEAR as bad as it did a year and a half ago.
I've mastered the Photomerge Panorama option of Photoshop elements to bring you this gem. A nice picture of the back yard, which, again, doesn't look that bad. At this point, I'll take it.