the back yard

We got a new fence in the backyard!

If you remember that old collection of wires that used to separate our yard from the neighbors, then take a look at this.

There's no question about it, that is a fence.

action shot...

Strawberries on the shelves <3

This grape vine is doing really well, climbing right up the trellis all on its own.

And of course our tomato harvest.

Check out the overexcited fellow back there in the corner. That is a plant with ambition.

And also in unrelated news I installed a light in the garage.

Which let me tell you, makes a huge difference in terms of usability. It almost seems like a place I might do stuff, now.

the birds and the beets and the flowers and the cat

Let me tell you about these pictures.

Two separate families of birds have decided that the ledge inside our front porch is the perfect place to build a nest.

It is adorable. But they also get really freaked out whenever we enter or exit the house. You win some you lose some.

Speaking of winning some.

Oh my goodness. (And there's another beet in the garden still that puts this bunch to shame.)

The roses are doing pretty well:

We had to replace a couple of them, but I think we still ended up with a good variety of colors.

Also, a while back Chloe had to wear this collar. You might have seen this scene before on Annie's blog but the picture... well,

Yeah.

the front yard

So, the picket fence in the front yard has been done for a while. After that was finished we planted a salsa garden there for the tenants.

Cilantro makes a rather effective ornamental, except for the fact that it's an annual. The tomatoes and tomatillos and peppers seem to be doing well too.

And then more recently we also added some stepping stones. 

These stones are really cool, they're basically pieces of a sandstone that formed a stream bed, and they have fantastic colors and textures. We got them from a place called Bourget Brothers in Santa Monica, which has a fascinating collection of...rocks. Maybe someday we'll put some ground cover in there too.

mural

Here is the mural Annie painted in our living room!

It looks so great.
(also that's our new tv <_<)

our windows

We had a window guy come by this morning to talk about replacing all of our (terrible) windows. We'll have an estimate by Monday. We'll have another company coming by next week.  This is exciting!

white picket fences

Well since the last post, we've got some great tenants in the front unit, and we've been working on things in front and in back. In particular, we hired our gardeners to install a picket fence in the front yard for the tenants. They did a great job with that, but they didn't paint it white. That was up to us.

So we did that a few Saturdays ago. It was really hard work actually. There are so many surfaces on a picket fence, many more than on a regular wooden fence, because you paint the sides of all the pickets, and all the inner corners, and the two rails.

Well, it was a lot of work, and it made me think that that's why white picket fences are so iconic. Because they take so much work to maintain, they're a symbol of successful suburban domesticity. Color us domestic I guess.

We are stepping out of bounds a little bit though, because we're growing an avocado tree and a salsa garden in the front yard. It's well known that you can't grow food in a stereotypical American suburban front yard. What are you, some kind of hippy? :-)

We're getting ready to redo the side fence too, which I think will really start the ball rolling on more yard projects for our part of the yard. We have plans. Big plans. Well I do anyway. So far Annie's going along with them. ;-)

The Proverbial Putting-Up of Curtains Etc.

Eh, the trying-to-rent continues. =/ We thought we had a family ready to go, we'd done the background/credit checks, made up the rental agreement, and had an appointment to swap the security despoit and keys, but they backed out on us. We've got the ad up again, and have had a couple people come look. Some of the situations are definite no's (Six adults packing into the house, and you can't get us social security numbers for half of them? Ummmm... I don't think this is gonna work.), but we'll see.

In cheerier news, we got a long, low bookshelf thing to put behind the couch and by the doorway, so that we can have a better place to set stuff when we come in, and more storage shelf space is always a good/needed thing.

We also put up curtains in the bedroom! They're just some plain sheer Ikea ones, but we did have to cut and hem them to the right size. This may sound like no big thing to you, but I've always had this really... shall we say, strained relationship with textiles. My talents lie more in the realm of paper, pencils, and Wacom tablets, and fabric is just capricious and uncooperative in my eyes. But armed with scissors, a tape measure, and this totally sweet iron-on hem thing that the curtains came with, we now have functioning fabric window covers!

And also, and also, Nate found these really neato steel "things" to hold wine bottles, all metallic curvy, and he got them mounted to the kitchen wall tonight. Pictures of all this is possible later.


AKC

the craigslist blues

cross posted
http://truthinexorable.blogspot.com/2010/01/craigslist-blues.html

Trees and Yardstuffs

Last week, during vacation, Nate and I sat down at a coffeehouse and drafted up the Master Plan for the Backyard. I don't have it on me, but maybe we can scan it later.

The reason for this was that we vaguely wanted to go to Home Depot and buy something vaguely tree-like, but once we got the new baby peach and plum trees home, we had no idea where to put them. I was thinking sort of in the back? He was thinking sort of in the front? Both of us were totally open to the sides as well. You can see the problem here.

So we went the whole nine yards, getting a to-scale diagram of the yard ready to draw on. In true planning fashion, we listed out values, goals, and constraints... and then utterly ignored that list and drew trees, pergolas and koi ponds wherever we deemed fit on the page. There's a lot that isn't nailed down yet, but we did figure out that we'll have our row of fruit trees along the side, stretching back to the garden, and we were able to plant those first two yesterday.

It's been a verrry long time since I planted a tree (blah blah you make planet earth cry etc etc...), and I was rather taken aback by the pruning you're supposed to do. Apparently we coerce trees into growing through death threats. We'll see how these guys do... Planting trees is slightly frustrating since you know it's going to be years before you really get the payoff, but it's good stuff nonetheless.


AKC