More raised beds = more food
We have wanted to move our food growing operation to the front yard ever since we removed the two trees which kept our front yard in almost constant shade during the growing season. Now that I finished the flagstone path, it’s time to build a few more raised beds and move the farm to the...
A New Path
Ahhhh, my first big yard project of 2012. It has been many months since my last noteworthy homeowner project and this one is a doosey: A flagstone path and steps up to the front patio. It took 3 full weekends to actually complete the work and many, many hours of preparation, looking for inspiration photos,...
Our New Privacy Policy
After living in this house for just over 3 years, we came to the conclusion that we would like some private outdoor space to call our own. We live on a corner and up to this point our small backyard has been exposed to the street and our neighbors casual glances. Not that our neighbors...
The Smothering Begins
Since the removal of the two large trees in our front parking strip, the front yard now receives full sun for around 8 – 9 hours. Before this, we only had a small strip in the backyard that received full sun for about half the day, which is where we placed two small raised beds....
Revenge of the Sinkhole
This is just one of so many times when a project takes a completely unexpected turn. I was digging a 2 ft deep trench from the house to bring power to the garage. One section of the trench wasn’t deep enough and when I began to scrape the bottom, some of the dirt gave way....
Finally, it’s a front yard
Our goal for 4th of July weekend was to finish the fence, build a small dry stack rock wall to hold back the dirt and do some planting. Here’s where we started: First up: borrow a friend’s truck and head out to Boring Bark and Landscape Materials in Boring Oregon. They’ve got a great selection...
Learning to fence
Before we get into the photos, let it be known that this fence took almost three weeks of evenings and weekends to build. This series of photos makes it looks like it took two full days, but nope. Luckily we had a design to work with because we were matching our fence we had built...
A Major Milestone
This past week we hit a major milestone in the front yard. The sidewalk was poured, we back-filled a ton of dirt in the parking strip and we planted our new Paperbark Maples. Last Tuesday we came to the realization that at the rate we were going it would be a month until we got...
People say the darndest things
When you work in the front yard and people walk by, they often want to lay some witty quip on you and then chuckle to themselves. My friend Kevin warned me about this even before we bought a house. He said, “If you buy a house and you work in the yard, you will hate...
I will not tolerate infestation
Oh boy, it must be mid-May because the ants are back. This is the time of year when my reluctant inner Buddhist collides with my reluctant inner genocidal maniac and I have to pick my ant poison. Well, two years running Terro brand liquid traps are the best. The ants eat it, take the poison...
Tagged
Some outstanding citizen tagged our house Friday night. This exterior wall is around the back of the house, so they had to really want to do this and walk up the driveway, into the back yard and step over some bricks I dug up last year. To all graffiti artists, taggers and scumbags: If you’re...
Stumps be gone
We spent the last week collecting bids from more stump grinders because the guy we had come out a couple weeks ago just didn’t have the right equipment and didn’t get very far. It took him two days to get the stumps down 8″. Last night, Roger from Treescapes (971-235-0674) came by and said he’d...