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.

Sprinklers and some fun stuff inside

Sprinklers are officially a go! Please note the 300-some feet of pipe strapped to the top of my car. The Home Depot guy was not confident about our use of ratchet straps, but those things are the greatest. 

So now our front yard looks like this. Back yard is similar. Lots of small trenches. Todd's dad (who's heading up the project) used a Ditch Witch to dice up what remains of our pathetic lawn. (Also I recently got an iPhone 5 and am working on mastering the panorama shot.)

Inside, I hung the floating terrariums I bought a couple months ago. My air plants arrived earlier this week and will be living in them, hanging in the kitchen window for now.

This one has three: it's a 6-inch diameter bubble and has a big plant and two small ones, one at 4 o'clock and one at 7-8 o'clock.

 This one just has one; it's only a 4-inch diameter.

Cool, huh?

I also (slightly intoxicatedly) did this to the powder room trashcan. The idea was devised while fully sober, but Todd pointed out that I might regret executing a drink and a half in. He was sort of right, although I could also argue it adds to the desired irregular nature of the pattern. Anyway...this bathroom is slowly getting a little more personality. (And it was really good gin from Bendistillery.)

And this variety of asparagus fern is living in the back entry. Seems happy so far. It's so fluffy!

And lastly, I painted the artichoke lamp in our bedroom a lovely glossy white from the tan-with-gold-glaze it came as. I'm still working on finishing up the plan for our bedroom. Missing art, bedside lamps and possibly a couple accessories, depending on how the lamps turn out. Something about this still seems a little disjointed to me, but I'm sure it'll come to me eventually.

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.

Water stains and other small wars

I finally got fed up enough with my office ceiling to paint it. It's one of those things that I notice all the time and it annoys me, but I HATE painting ceilings, especially after my experience in the dining room in January. Anyway, my office had some pretty gnarly water stains on the ceiling (which we think came into being pre-1995, when the roof got redone. You can see water stains on the shake shingles in the attic), which I semi-successfully painted over.

I say "semi" because apparently, painting over water stains is no picnic. I would have known this if I hadn't decided beforehand that people who whine about painting over water stains just don't apply the paint thick enough, and bothered to do a quick search about it. After the paint started refusing to stick to the plaster, I did just that. THEN I applied another coat of paint, extra-thick. Results:

Not bad! Definitely an improvement, especially after I....

That's right...bleach. In the course of my Googling, I ran across some savvy mom who recommended wiping water stains with straight bleach. I would NOT recommend doing this on any wall that's not white to begin with. But we had some water stains on the ceiling of our bedroom, which happens to be directly beneath the upstairs bathroom. This is the other ceiling-painting project I've been avoiding and stewing about. It's only a relatively small area, but I figured matching the paint color would be impossible, so I'd have to do the whole ceiling.

The bleach was worth a shot, and it WORKED!! I put on my protective eyewear, grabbed a glove, and took my cup of bleach and sponge into the bedroom. A few wipes later, and the stains were gone. The ceiling's slightly whiter than the surrounding areas, but I can live with that.

I also "fixed" our vacuum cleaner, which had developed an odd habit of working for 7 minutes, then slowly turning off, by removing the world's biggest clump of dusty crap that had lodged inside it.

One more thing....

Last Sunday, we brought back enough mulch to finish covering this bed in our side driveway. Minus those prickly juniper bushes and plus a little mulch, and it's looking a lot better.

Aaaand...we're back!

So, since the ottoman-building adventure, it's officially become spring here, and some days are seeming downright summery. I have lots of pictures to share, so let's get to it.

This is a not-very-gorgeous shot of our camellia in front blooming (a month and a half ago). I was really excited, after babying it all last summer, to get a reward.

In late Feb or early March, I did a little work inside, namely installing quarter-round in the "hallway" area outside the bathroom downstairs. It still needs to be puttied and touched up, but we're liking how it looks. We will eventually put this in all around the downstairs (it's sitting in the garage now, waiting for a second coat of paint before its date with the nail gun).

I also painted and installed the vent covers for the living room. I was dreading this job, because I knew it would take at least four coats of paint to get the color right. Plus, hanging vent covers is one of those irritating little jobs that always takes longer than anticipated. But it was finally getting to my vain side, since it's probably the first thing people noticed when they walked in. So, action required. Crown molding is still not done, yet, but that's because the store's been out of our size every time we've checked.

Next, we can move outside, where we have been exceedingly busy. When people ask what we're doing on the weekend, we say, "yardwork," and we mean it. It occurred to me that it's not normal to spend all weekend doing yardwork, but that is because most people's yards don't need to be brought back from the dead. Since February, this is what we've done.

1. Ripped up the grass and built (or at least mostly built) a rock wall on the northwest side of the pool, to match the one more in the back yard. Also planted two varieties of Halls Honeysuckle, which is a flowering vine that will attract bees and hummingbirds and grow like crazy into the fence. In the foreground is the star jasmine that just barely made it through the winter and is looking a little worse for the wear.

2. Relocated shrubby honeysuckles that we planted last year in the rock wall on the other side of the steps (just to the right of the jasmine is the gate and stairs to the pool, and the wall is on the other side of that). They're now free to grow as big and bushy as they'd like, next to the driveway in the back:

3. Todd's dad came and tilled the "back 40" so it can return to its former glory as a garden. We are gardening with our neighbors, Tom and Judy (whose raised beds you see in the picture -- they're from that cedar tree we cut down last summer), and Todd's parents.

4. Our giant, stunning tulips are blooming! Clearly, the color boggled the little brain of my camera, since it doesn't come through anywhere near as lovely as it should, but still...

Once they're done, I'm going to relocate them to a more concentrated spot (or maybe just plant more) since they're kind of randomly spread out.

5. Last weekend, Jim Hutchins, a McD family friend, came with a sidekick and whacked the yard into shape. Jim expertly pruned shrubs, dug stumps and executed all other manner of landscaping expertise. Here's the oak tree that was in dire need of some pruning and removal of all those suckers...it looks a lot better.

6. Jim also yanked out those awful junipers that I've been hating since we moved in and they jabbed me with their prickly branches the first time. We are in the process of mulching the bed in the middle of the circle drive, and don't have plans of planting it this year. Someday, though, it will make a lovely spot to fill with flowers.

Decisions are still being made about what to do with the lawn at this point. We probably won't be installing a sprinkler system this summer, so it's likely we will just spray the weeds to kill them, hopefully have a little grass left in our yard when the weeds are dead, re-seed, and water the old-fashioned way.

I am really excited for plans that I have for planting black-eyed susans all over the place. For a while, I was bummed because I couldn't think of a sunny place for them, but I've come up with several spots that should do the trick. I'm going to smear our whole yard with them. For reference, here's what they look like:

Just looking at the picture makes me happy. Anyway, that's all for now. More to come soonish.

"Freezing butts."

Last night, the predicted overnight low was 9 degrees. NINE. Single digits are fairly unheard of in our pocket of the country, so we had to do some things to prepare. Tonight's not supposed to be much warmer, coming in at 12. We left our water trickling so our pipes didn't freeze (yay uninsulated crawl space!) and threw an extra blanket on the bed. Also, this:

which, if you can't tell, is our little laurel shrubs covered in paper grocery bags. And this is our pool, which was covered in a sheet of ice about an inch and a half thick. I have to go bust it up again.

Plants and things (laurels and camellias, mostly) are looking a little ragged, but I'm hopeful everything will survive. I'm looking forward to camellia blooms this spring, which won't happen if all the buds fall off.

Anyway, on to more Christmasy matters. We put lights on our tree last week and were told by our neighbors up the street that it looks awesome through our front window. It has about four ornaments on it right now...I have to finish decorating.

Here's that footed bowl with the pomegranates. They're deepening in color to a nice punchy red, and they look very festive. Isn't the bowl great?

The kissing ball (nod to sophomore year of college) is hung. I need to figure out how to get some mistletoe out of our oak trees so I can hang that, too. (In the background of this picture, please note the wreath hanging on the dining room wall. That was a clearance steal last year, for five measly dollars...marked down from 80. Who pays that for a wreath!?)

Lastly, continuing with the pomegranate decorations, I made this doorhanger that I saw in BHG. It's hanging on the closet in the dining room. Nice little shot of color.

I tried to get creative and improvise another hanging, but I'm not sure it took on quite the style I was hoping for. It kind of just looks like an orange wired to some tree branches. Oh well. Win some, lose some.