Project Fairfax

Moved...

2011-12-18T17:01:00.001-08:00

Hi anyone who might stumble here, the blog's moved to ProjectFairfax.wordpress.com

Bloom Day

2011-11-15T20:06:00.000-08:00

Daylily

Alonsoa meridionalis 'Red'

Salvia greggii 'Dusky Pink'

Strawberry blossom

Armeria maritima - Sea Thrift

Gaillardia x grandiflora 'Oranges & Lemons'

Asclepias curassavica 'Silky Gold'

Agrostemma githago 'Milas'

Agastache aurantiaca 'Coronado'

Verbena lilacina 'De La Mina'

Pea ‘Oregon Sugarpod II’

Ceanthonus 'Dark Star'

Saucer Magnolia

Divisions and Seed Starting

2011-11-12T21:24:00.000-08:00

Oh, I think one of my absolute favorite parts of gardening is dividing my plants. That time in their development when they're finally big enough to fill the space I put them in originally and look lovely... but awkward as well because they suddenly seem to stand all alone or in a strange arrangement compared to how I thought they would look. Take my two little island plantings, originally they were arranged like this:

Now the Ladybird poppies were gorgeous but as an annual inevitably does, it died away. That left me with two rather sad looking planting beds on either side of the pathway. But it's fall and I've had quite a few plants for nearly a year now so a couple weeks ago I became possessed and divided half a dozen plants in one evening.

Now I'm in love with the arrangements on our little island again, even if they still need some growing in. The right side now looks like this:

The plant colors and texture mesh much better now. In the bottom left, there's a large clump of lambs ears that I took out of the clump I started from seed last year (it does look like new leaves will have to grow in before it's beautiful again but there are clearly new ones growing). Then in the middle is an Agastache 'Purple Pygmy' and the Aristea inequalis I had on the other side of the island earlier. Their blue and purple flowers will blend beautifully next year I think. Then, in the slightly bare space below them, is a hunk of the pink dianthus I bought a year and a half ago from Annies (they don't carry it anymore and I've forgotten the name!) and some reseeded Nemophilia 'Baby Five Spot'. Also for added texture the one clump of blue fescue that I had before is now two much prettier clumps and I also have a short bronze grass I never got the name of. Lastly, you can barely see the newly two clumps of Sisyrinchium hybrid 'Devon Skies' at the top corner. I'll take another division of those and fill the very corner as well eventually.

Then on the other side:

As the plants aren't in bloom at the moment, one has to imagine the effect but large and in the middle is a Cleveland Sage and around it I have put another division of Blue Fescue and lambs ears. Then, in the same place it has been all year, now hidden by the sage, is my Foothill Penstemon, one of my favorite california natives. Here's a picture I took of it earlier:

But shortly before my division spree, I cut all the spent flower stalks off this one Penstemon and collected the seed. It was an amazing amount of seed! I thought after cutting the stalks that I would just lay them down on the porch and go back to the garden for a while but when I put them down a spray of seeds went flying out of them (apparently I was just in time to collect the seeds). So I swept what I could of those seeds into my hand and put the stalks in a large mixing bowl and by the time I was done, I had covered the bottom of the bowl completely with seeds, probably a thousand, maybe even two thousand seeds. And those from maybe four or five stalks. (by the by, the seedpods for Foothill Penstemon smell very much like dung)

Shortly after collecting them, I planted some into four small pots and put them out next to the lawn and in a couple weeks had this:

The two in the top row on the right, I had thought were Mask Flower seedlings but I was so happy to find out that they were baby Agastache Coronado. I knew when I finally touched them last week and smelled the strong mint scent. So last weekend I carefully split up these six pots into two full flats of baby plants.

With the Agastache, I was very happy to find, I had enough plants to fill 16 pots and even put two to a pot for a few of them. Then, even though I only had four pots, I split the Penstemon into 14 larger pots with a bunch of little plants in each one. God, I'm going to have more groundcover than I will know what to do with.

As if those aren't enough seeds to be going on with, before splitting those, I planted a bunch of other seeds in this flat:

If you wanted to look at the plasticware I've written on with a permanent marker to make cheap plant tags (I quite like the look hehe), you would see I have: Dianthus (from before), Geum 'Mrs Bradshaw', Ladybird Poppies, Blue Flax, Lambs Ears, Catnip, Broccoli and two types of Lettuce. Other than the vegetables and Catnip, everything is from my own garden collected seeds. And I can confirm since about last week, every pot has some germinated seeds! So happy! Especially for the poppies because I wasn't even sure if the powder that was in my seed bag with the seed heads was actually seed or dust.

Since last week, I've taken all my flats of seeds and added them to the top of the garden in my vegetable area.

As I don't have anymore Sluggo and the weedy bulbs of onion and oxalis are coming out in droves, I put my flats on top of a weed suppressing blanket of cardboard.

Next time, I'll hopefully be able to say the other two and half flats I have up there have also germinated.

Home Renovations

2011-09-25T21:58:00.000-07:00

Yes, amazingly, as promised I am actually doing a post on our interior work! Over the summer, over two months ago, I finally finally finished plastering the living room. I did all the plastering, and most of the paint removal before that, so it was supposed to be my husband's job to sand the walls. Of course, there was no attempt to sand the walls in the last two months, but eventually, we decided we should sand it together the weekend before this.

So we draped everything in plastic to avoid the dust problem we had when we stripped the paint.

We even taped up a tarp over the doorway, though with a quite weak tape that failed a few times as we worked. The draft was fun to watch, making it billow back into the dining room.

Apparently, you should use duct tape instead, next time we definitely will. Also, we probably should have know not to pile everything we had in the living room on the dining room table. As you will soon see. Here is what we had after the three or more hours of sanding (Not bad for all the grueling hours I put into getting the plaster onto the walls; electric sanders are wonderful).

Then, a bit of the way into those three hours we noticed a light snow building up behind the curtains so tried to lessen the damage by draping another tarp over all our things on the dining room table.

We had had the forethought to close the doors to the bathroom and two bedrooms, however...

As you can see from the fog of dust, it might have been a good idea to shove some towels into the inch wide opening between the bedroom doors and the floor. The bathroom came through pretty much unscathed though because there's a raised lip of wood to cover the edge of the tile floor, pretty much eliminating that gap.

Then, there was this weekend. Starting at noon yesterday and working leisurely until about 6 o'clock tonight, we finally painted our front room. Let us please remember where we started.

Now, finally, a finished room - viewed from sunset, of course, but you can just see the light subtle green.

This makes 4 out of 6 rooms painted, but this one feels the real accomplishment. This is the only room that has been properly replastered and sanded. There were a dozen large cracks throughout the room, now all completely invisible.

Maybe this will make us more eager to get the rest of the rooms done.

Stress Relief

2011-08-08T21:08:00.000-07:00

These past two months have been filled with stress after stress. First, my husband, the OUSD teacher, received his pink slip, along with 1/3 of all the teachers in Oakland. About a month ago, that slip was rescinded, but two weeks before that I found out that my near senile boss had advertised my job. Not that I was looking for jobs at the time, I was good at my position and enjoyed the work, the ridiculous old man accidentally showed me proof of the ad himself. One of my many roles was to draft the occasional e-mail for him, so he asked me to do that for him on that Monday and I see a response to his ad at the top of his inbox (he's an old man who doesn't really understand e-mail). Even more shocking, two weeks later, I was able to quit for a new position in a walnut creek medical office. Again, it doesn't end there, the seemingly kinder, more level headed new boss turned out to be a completely deluded nutcase and about a million dollars in debt with no income coming in (to be brief - I could go on forever about my month with her and prove it but this is the wrong blog for that). I practically didn't stop looking for jobs because of what I saw the first day I logged into her QuickBooks.

But for the past week and a half, I've been at my new place of work - God, I hope this one will work out. I'm working for a landscape design and construction company in Berkeley - 5 Elements Design.

This could be a dream come true...! And the end of our problems...?

During all of this, I've found comfort in working in the garden and house. Next time I post, I'll try to show some of the house. It's just hard to show the slow slow progress that I've made in plastering the front room. But the garden has changed quite a bit in this month.

The lawn is firmly established, about 60%-40% grass to weeds.

About a month ago, you could see the ladybird poppies and lupine, the stars of this area.

The lupine grew shockingly fast, from a tiny 6" puff to 3 feet with blooms in two months. But it grew too large for its place, so last week I pulled it out and pruned the lavender next to it and moved it into the vacant spot.

This spot isn't shining anymore but the lavender will fill the area nicely and of course, next year the daffodils will still have room to come back up.

These two sad looking plants, I planted just next to the pink Dianthus above. I started these from seed a year and a half ago, letting them die back three and four times, not watering them, and not repotting them until a few weeks ago when I decided to finally pay them some proper attention.

Now they've gone from scrawny and sad to beautiful pink Echinacea (with a little more growing, they'll look great from every angle).

Down closer to the house and my neighbor's garage, the wildflowers are completely faded now. I've cleared most of this already and collected tons of seed. I'll have more wildflowers next year but positioned around perennials so that I don't have totally wasted looking areas next year.

Already the perennial monkeyflower is starting to fill in that bare area. There's also a very small buckwheat and milkweed that aren't quite photo ready. I've left just one of the wildflowers standing because of the peculiar way the bees were acting around it...

I think this is Gilia capitata... and well the bees apparently like to use it as a bed... or drugs den. I can see them there everyday, completely stoned and oblivious to my presence. I can move the flower heads around, brush the bees themselves a little and all they do is twitch their wings or move their legs a bit.

Then, there's the new bed next to the garage which has filled in very nicely. The trellises are completely covered by the nasturtium vines I bought from Annie's.

From this angle, the vines are just what I wanted - a beautiful pop of yellow on blue. However...

The lower you look the worse it is. I've decided I'll be changing the vines next year, I really love the reddish pink bougainvillaeas or maybe a clematis. But no more yellow, it sounded nice and looks good up close but from far away it looks too much like yellowing leaves.

The little hostas are flowering quite prettily, not sure what type they are.

Geranium pyrenaicum 'Bill Wallis'.

Then there's our first attempt at edibles. My husband has a great weakness for rhubarb pie so here we are. One month ago, we had this.

Now we have this! What ridiculously huge leaves. The two lettuces I tried between them, I've ripped out now - turns out they were a bitter type, not something I'd like.

We've put the half wine barrel up in the back right of the yard where we plan on putting more edibles someday. Then, two weeks ago, I dug up and divided a very old Salvia leucantha and planted 5 large divisions along the fence here. I can just imagine how beautiful the line of them will look next year.

Focusing on the Lower Garden

2011-06-28T17:23:00.000-07:00

Just over a month ago, I was so proud of myself when I was able to post that I had cleared the grass from the island in the middle of our lower garden.

A months worth of evening gardening since and a few hours of rototilling donated by my husband, we've completely transformed the lower area. First we cleared the area next to the house and garage.

Then, we cleared the area past what will be the dry creekbed and spent hours flattening, weeding, rototilling and compacting the middle round patch for Patrick's lawn. It works well in my design, so I like it but it is definitely Patrick's lawn (he has to mow it).

This picture was May 30th and carefully examining the seeded patch every night after work, we found sprouts on June 6th.

This is Eco-Lawn grass seed that we bought from Annie's Annuals which is supposed to be less thirsty than a regular lawn. Also, from pictures around the web it does look like it will be a pretty grass left long. That besides how soft and thin the blades seem to be.

By June 8th we had grass that we could actually see a bit from a distance. And as of tonight, it looks like the picture below. The only bit we're disappointed with is that the one bag of seed we bought wasn't enough for this small bit of grass. Maybe it should have been but we still have a bunch of bare spots so we bought another bag over the weekend and seeded those spots again.

Now to the details. The foothill penstemon has been in bloom for some time now. I'm just in love with its beautiful blue. The one I have planted is a bit scraggly this year but I'm sure next year it will be much fuller.

My wildflower patch with wrinkled apricot poppies, five spots, and tidy tips were at their height a few weeks ago.

But are now acting floppy and not shining so much. On the plus side, I'm starting to collect seeds for next year. Below you can see what tidy tips seeds look like. Apparently, the tidy tips seeds I separated out from the mixed bag last winter were the ones I thought were yarrow. Oh well, I prefer tidy tips and next year I'll have thousands it seems.

While the wildflowers fade away, the two Agastache I planted next to them are in a wonderful full bloom that should only get better in the coming months.

Agastache Rupestris

Agastache aurantiaca 'Coronado'

Then we have the gorgeous ladybird poppies. God, I've wanted these for two years, ever since I first saw them at Annies, they are so beautiful. And finally I have two of my own. Sadly, they are supposed to be annuals so I'll do my best to try and collect seeds from them.

Behind the first picture, you can see some blue flax, now in bloom as well. Almost all of these planted only a month ago.

There's one other big change to the lower garden. In just a couple of hours and after one swipe of rototilling by my husband, I cleared the area next to the garage and created a small planting bed framed with some redwood 4x4s.

Hostas and lady ferns (a bit sun bleached but this is the shadiest part of the garden just now)

Some Astilbe, finally sending up flower stalks after two years.

And for our two trellises, we're trying Nasturtium (Tropaeolum peregrinum) "Canary Creeper" which started out too short to attach to the trellises.

But with just a month, they're halfway up the wall. There are also quite a few other plants along the garage but I'll go into that later when I have nice pictures of them.

And finally after sitting on our back steps for two or three weeks, I went on a planting spree this Sunday and put 10 of the suffering little guys in the ground. There are some Gaura that had reseeded in my parents Antioch yard that I rescued, two blue gentian sages, two more foothill penstemons, a milkweed to hopefully bring in the Monarchs, Galvezia speciosa "Island Bush Snapdragon", a Monardella villosa "Coyote Mint" and lastly my second Ceanothus 'Dark Star'. I feel bad for leaving that one so long; a lot of the leaves had gone yellow, but I'm sure that I got it in the ground within enough time for it to recover.

New Creatures and Rototilling

2011-05-16T19:37:00.000-07:00

The weekend before last, we had what I guess was the last storm of the rainy season and the clouds were amazing. Also, as you can see, over the prior week, I'd gotten a bit more ground cleared of grass and planted 3 basket fulls of Annie's Annuals.

Here are two Ladybird poppies, some native carex grass and the rest of my five spots.

A native Penstemon heterophyllus "Foothill Penstemon"

The first edible I've ever planted, Fragaria vesca "Alpine Strawberry".

And a bunch of others mixed with some of my much neglected earlier purchases, such as this bronze grass.

But once the plants were planted (the ones I could figure out where to plant, there are still a couple without homes), I worked on removing grass around what will be the dry creekbed. It was a slow slow chore but not too difficult using my handheld garden spike to lever the clumps out by their roots. But as that's not very interesting I haven't documented much of the process. However, this Sunday my husband finally came out into the yard and we went to work rototilling the area close to the house.

This is our before picture. Everything was very weedy and bumpy. We had a pile of dirt infused with lumps of concrete that the contractor's men left behind last year. You can see it next to the green bin in the picture. So there was quite a hill away from the house, growing flatter as you got closer. What we wanted though was the opposite. We want a nice flat area to eventually put outdoor furniture. That would involve a quick steep hill near the house (to maintain proper grading at the foundation), then a flat expanse, and another slope to what was the original level of the area. Like this, kind of:

It certainly an amazing improvement, its still not quite level, quite close though and a huge change from what it was. It's hard to see in the first picture but we created a nice hill near the house and now we need to compact the built up area and do a little more rototilling in the area we've been removing the dirt from to really make it level.

But isn't just beautiful, flat... ish and clear. I can really imagine that patio area being their eventually.

Another bit of fun this weekend - I sat down next to the batch of native wildflowers just above the "patio" area and watched the creatures moving about. And I actually took some good pictures! These are all my pictures, not stolen from around the web like before.

A native sweat bee, Agapostemon (angelicus?)

His back legs are covered, rather disgustingly... or at least weirdly... in pollen, both yellow and blue from the tricolor gillia that he's diving in here.

Here's one of the many pasted down metamorphosing ladybug pupas. This one has attached itself to a leaf on my Salvia leucantha.

Continuing with the same Salvia, here is a big black bee... maybe a carpenter bee, but the other pictures I see don't look like carpenter bees are fuzzy and this is fuzzy, right? Maybe it's just my picture.

Now, I'm not crazy about bugs or creepy crawlies but when it comes to my backyard and the creatures living directly around me, I'm extremely interested. I'm amazed by all the new different creatures I've found living on our property. I grew up just twenty miles from here and in my entire life I had never seen a sweat bee, to my knowledge, until two weeks ago. But now I've seen dozens of them! It's shocking that there have been all these creatures around me and I've never known it.

Here's a pretty common butterfly, a Fiery Skipper (Hylephila phyleus), on my five spots.

Wings closed.

Lastly, an awesome action picture, an Anna's hummingbird. After a few clicks of the camera, the hummingbird got interested in the clicking of my camera and freaked me out a bit by suddenly flying a very quick three feet closer to me, right at the camera and seeing it through the camera lens, she was like crazy divebomber. But no picture because I flinched at the teeny little bird.

Planting Out

2011-05-03T18:10:00.000-07:00

As of yesterday I have a bigger better bed next to what will be a patio area in our backyard. I already had some bulbs, poppies, and wildflowers.

The red near the middle are the flowers for some freesia I planted around the same time as the daffodils, in late winter.

This last week the poppies I planted out about a month ago really started blooming, a beautiful mix of oranges.

Then there's the fluffy bunch of various wildflowers behind the freesias, three of the plants in the mix have just started blooming.

Gilia Tricolor and unidentified yellow flowers

And two short baby blue eyes, hidden below the other taller two.

Everything to the right of those plants are new to the ground.

I finally planted out what was a baby Dietes. I separated it from its mother when it had only three blades and I found it quite rootbound when I popped it out of its pot yesterday. To plant it I tried to stick a shovel into the ground but even with all my weight I could only get about two inches down because I haven't watered that spot all year. So I took a hose and filled it with water and let it drain sloooowly for the next twenty minutes. Meanwhile, I took my hand-pick and worked on a trough in front for my Five Spots, 7 little pots all from seed. Still have three more to go.

These little plants have popped right back since my taking them out of their pots.

Lined up behind them, are a bunch of Tidy Tips plants just about ready to bloom and taking a close look at my little transplantees tonight, I noticed that despite their short time in the ground, my tidy tips already have a little defender: this ugly ugly lady bug larva. I've been seeing ladybugs every which way since it's started to warm up and before moving out to Oakland, I had never noticed a lady bug larva before but now they're everywhere.

Last weekend, I worked with my garden spike inch by inch trying to clear away the grasses and weeds around what will be the dry river bed to plant out all these little plants I'd started earlier this year. I cleared quite a bit as you can see but you can also see I have plenty more to do.

In this picture, what you can't see in the grass is the other trench we dug in order to form a cute little island, I want to have that entire area and two feet all around the other side cleared of grass eventually.

Also, on another subject, two weeks ago, I found this little maple tree up in the field of my backyard and decided to keep it since it had the cutest soft fuzzy leaves. I'm a sucker for soft fuzzy leaves. It lost all its old leaves but has since grown all these and is now a good 6 inches tall.

And for fun, here is a Stig in a box. (I didn't put her in there, but I admit to leaving the empty basket because I love seeing here jump in and out)

My Bloom Day

2011-04-22T20:00:00.000-07:00

I know that garden bloggers have a specific day of the week they call bloom day... but I can't remember which day that is so today is mine! I really want to share the pictures I've taken recently in my garden but I don't feel much like writing... So today is bloom day!

My first California Poppy (Eschscholzia something) from seed, sadly it had closed by the time I took the picture.

Right in the middle, the first little bud on... my baby blue eyes? Maybe... (Nemophila something. A bud counts for bloom day right?

Buds and aphids on my seedling Red Horned Poppy (Glaucium corniculatum), grown from seeds I took from the one I bought from Annie's Annuals last year.

Buds on my red princess lily (Alstroemeria).

Beautiful pink carnations (even if the plant itself looks quite ragged)

Heuchera Sanguinea

Lavender Sancho Paza (Lavandula)

Blue Marguerite Daisies (Felicia amelloides)

Nemesia, in bloom year round.

Soon to be red Freesias from bulbs that I planted this winter.

Now my roses, all of them came with the property so I don't know their names but I love them now. I used to hate roses for their thorns but these are so simply beautiful. These are the three currently blooming, three more colors are still just buds.

Then in front of this last rose, is the far to tall for where it is, my Geum.

It's about 3 feet tall now from less than 1 foot when I planted it. After I've fixed up other areas of the yard I'll move this baby over to the left where it won't block my rose anymore.

Lastly, my long awaited iris. There are more than a dozen buds on them now and still not a single opened flower. But I finally know what color it will be.

New Flora

2011-04-14T18:26:00.000-07:00

As a counterpart to my last post and as a way to make my posts not unbearably long, I will now talk about the plants that have been coming back to life in my garden.

Last week I decided I was fed up with the way my tiny bit of cultivated front yard was looking and added another barberry and a new daylily and salvia, taking out my ailing Dietes. It has a clear hole in the middle showing me that it needs dividing (even though it's tiny!). I was also greatly motivated by the wilting of my Daylily. My husband bought it for me as a Christmas present (actually, he let me go to a huge out of town nursery to buy $100 in plants, great Christmas present). I've been keeping my potted plants watered during the dryspells over the past few months best I can, but last week even my daylily finally wilted once. A quick watering solved that but now it's in the ground so it will never happen again.

The only other part of my front yard that I've had the time and patience to work on is the tiny square for the street tree. Last year, when I first put the plants (all started from seed) around the little tree it looked like this:

Now the plot is well filled in.

I've said before I don't like the Gazanias (the ones with the flower buds) so soon I'll be taking those out but it won't take long at all for the lambs ears to fill the open spot. I might also stick another plant in their place, something that will flower.

But the care I gave to the soil in this little plot and the water I started giving it late last summer once we'd bought the house has really paid off. The street tree, a small crape myrtle, has leafed out beautifully and very early. The other crape myrtle across the street is probably a year older than mine and still has no leaves even a month after mine started.

And taking these pictures, I thought it's been such a long time since I've taken a picture of the house and I've never really captured the correct color of the new paint job so here is a new one, very true to life:

Clearly we're not very into taking care of the lawn, if one can call it that. Our intent has always been to take it out, so we don't waste time on it except to pull out some of the suddenly appearing 3 foot high grass seed stalks, like the ones I found two weeks ago. And though it is a small victory, see my nicely grass free sidewalk, I spent ages out there with my small pick scraping it all out (don't look at the grass in the driveway!)

Now onto the backyard, where I've put in a bit more time. The irises that I divided and moved to the back of the garden last year finally have buds! I was worried that I didn't divide them properly and wouldn't get any flowers until next year but I must have done it right after all. I can't wait to find out what color they are.

When I did that dividing, there were a couple small tubers that had no leaves or didn't look so healthy, so I threw them into one of the big paper bags we were using in removing all the extra debris that wouldn't fit in our green bin. Well, a couple of those bags never got thrown away and sat decomposing in the back corner of the yard. And last weekend, I noticed this:

This really shows how much you don't need to baby this type of iris. There should actually be one more, taller iris in this picture, but feeling bad for the tough little baby, I had already tucked it into the earth behind my other irises when I took the picture.

Flowers are also opening up now for my Geum. This Geum started out as a tiny little Annie's Annuals purchase just over a year ago. But it not only survived being planted at my dad's for a short while but lived through the flooding that the lavenders next to it did not (I rescued them and put them into pots but I'm starting to think I was too late). Now it has over a dozen flower stalks and multiple buds on each.

The rose behind my Geum is also starting to flower. It looks so much better than when I first saw it, with dark green leaves and tons of buds. I do wish that I had cut it back a bit more though because I can't see my baby Ceanothus on the mound behind it.

Then there are the potted Hostas that died away last fall and I kept, hoping against hope that they would sleep through the winter and come back. I've never had Hostas before so while I knew that they die away during the winter, I didn't know if I did anything bad to them at the same time. But their pretty little leaves have come back and are still growing. I bought these last year before I had the house and split the one plant into these two. Once I get a nice shady spot cleared to put them, I'll get them in the ground...

New Fauna

2011-04-11T18:31:00.001-07:00

Not much work has been done in the past month but I've found I'm still able to enjoy the garden, despite my busy-ness, sickness, and plain bone idleness. Now that Spring has gotten started, I've gotten into the habit of having a walk through the yard every night and on the weekend... trying to put in a couple hours of weeding.

At the top of the garden, ever since Abel and his people emptied the contents of the old garage, there have been two cabinets sitting in the very middle behind the lemon tree, back to back. While it gave me a relatively snail and slug free platform for a couple of neglected pots of seedlings, they never made me very happy so we finally finally moved them two weekends ago.

With the cabinets gone, I finally weeded the oxalis and onions that had been coming up between the doors and cabinet frames and all around them. In the process, I discovered a slender salamander. So interesting to find a new creature in your garden, especially when it's a beneficial one and not an evil looking bug... It's hard to see in my picture, but he's running away from me right in the middle of the frame, on his tiny little legs.

He clearly was enjoying the moist ground under the oxalis and gorging on the hundreds of slugs I had been finding all through my weeding. But he apparently wasn't the only one. Minutes later, I found an arboreal salamander too! You can just barely see the tiny yellow spots on his sides.

I'd read about them on another blog and knew not to pick this guy up in my hands because of his sharp sharp teeth. Reading about him before, I never thought I'd find one in my yard, either of these salamanders. They sound like creatures that couldn't survive the long dry summers away from creeks and rivers but that must not be true. I grew up in Contra Costa County and apparently they live there too, though probably not in any of my backyards which were mostly packed clay and grass.

The last in my new animal discoveries, I was not so happy to discover; not that this creature was deserving of my disgust.

Sadly, I found this Jerusalem Cricket and another one minutes later before I tried to find out what they were and I sent them to cricket heaven. I found them when I started to attack the dirt pile near the house, about a foot high and there, like the cabinets, ever since Abel's men took out our patio. I was trying to break it up and spread it out evenly on the ground when I broke into these guys' homes. Jerusalem Crickets are apparently everywhere in the west and far down past Mexico, though this is the first I've ever seen one, probably because they are nocturnal and prefer to stay underground. This one is trying to scramble out of a 3-inch pot so it's a good inch long. They look disgustingly evil but are apparently a good creature all around: They aerate the soil, eat dead animal matter and provide a good food source for many larger animals. I found this page about them quite interesting.

Nearly two months ago (only two posts ago, sorry), I wrote that I had bought a bird feeder and hung it on my magnolia tree. It's been so interesting watching the little birdies ever since flying to and from it, fluffing their wings and hopping around. I've never properly watched birds before and I'm not yet interested in doing so much farther than my own backyard but I've been searching around the internet to identify each and every bird I've seen so far. There aren't any rare birds yet, but I'll admit that I didn't even know half of the names of these birds. And here they are:

(Not my pictures, but I fully intend to capture my own birdie pictures once I have enough money to justify buying a new camera lens)

Male Anna's Hummingbird

Female Anna's Hummingbird
One female dive-bombed the Salvia next to my brick step. I was standing there, about to go back inside and I hear a loud crescendoing buzz and boom, it was there three feet from me. Goes from my Salvia to the Nemesia and the lavender before zooming off again.

The next three are my most common offenders, often jumping about and twittering in groups of 5 to 10.
Golden Crowned Sparrow

White Crowned Sparrow

House Finch

Mourning Dove - There's a pair that always come to the yard together and peck at the seeds spilled by the smaller birds and those mischievous little squirrels.

Scrub Jay
I've seen these before, even as a child and they don't come any more often since I put up my bird feeder. Interesting thing, these are actually a type of crow (which explains the loud screech it makes) and they sometimes eat the eggs of others birds and even small hatchlings. Still, they are beautiful.

Crow
I've only seen one land in my yard once, about two weeks ago, but who hasn't seen them everywhere else.

Painting and Weeding

2011-03-13T18:22:00.001-07:00

Forced to stop due to the rain, this seems as good a time as any to give an update. Last weekend was busy with Patrick pushing me much harder than I prefer to work. But as long as he's working, I feel bad to relax. Right now it's a bit different though, while he finishes the final touches in the closet, I'm resting my back. I guess I pushed myself too hard and have had a horrible back ache since Wednesday.

So yes, we're finishing the closet now because last weekend we got a bit distracted and painted the kitchen.

Now we finally have a finished room. We even put up our first picture frames. The light yellow makes the room feel so wonderfully warm and cheerful. Patrick has had breakfast in there a few times now, despite the wobbly table and ugly cabinets. Now it's about the nicest looking room we have. We also spent a large chunk of our time, most of Sunday, creating a frame on the wall above the washer and dryer so that we could put up shelves. We attached the frame to three vertical studs and then were able to attach the shelves nicely in the middle of the nook. I helped draw up the design and find the correct dimensions for everything, but mostly this project was Patrick's. He's clearly very proud of the job he did.

Those three pictures took all our time last weekend and shockingly, even though we were so close to finishing the closet we didn't work on it at all. We just can't focus. The closet is finished now though. We sanded down the new plaster and painted yesterday and Patrick has been in the bedroom most of the afternoon assembling the closet organizer.

The rest of this weekend, I got out into the garden and finally put in some good time pulling up Oxalis.

Actually, this one isn't a before picture, these pretty flowers are still taunting me in the corner but here is the nice stretch of ground that I worked on.

I cleared out everything around a bunch of irises that we apparently mowed over last year, not being able to see them under all the weeds. They're badly in need of dividing which I'm sure I'll get to eventually...

But the irises that I divided last fall and moved to the back of the garden look wonderful and now that the lavender next to them is in bloom, I really love the contrast.

Everything is finally starting to come up, even the bulbs that I planted far too late in the season. And I can't really be bothered to think of transitional phrases etc. so here you are.

Our Dark Star Ceanthonus, still only partially blooming.

Grape Hyacinth growing around some of my roman chamomile. The chamomile helped while I was picking out the tiny clovers in and around the grape hyacinths, the smell was absolutely wonderful. I'll be putting many more of them around the garden.

The daffodils in this group will be opening any day. Two have already opened in a slightly more sunny spot.

There are two left over tulips in front of the group. Then, the same tulips, just plain red ones, in the front have opened on each side of the front stairs.

Not quite up yet but looking promising are the Hostas I had in pots last year.

Other things coming up aren't so welcome. I have slightly fewer onions spread throughout the yard than Oxalis and their pretty white flowers are starting to emerge.

I quite like the flowers but the leaves are pretty ugly, besides the fact that these are weedy. The blackberries are also coming back.

And I guess that's about all.

Paint and Plaster

2011-03-02T17:49:00.000-08:00

During the past three months or so, we've worked on and off, little by little, on the front room walls. The front room more than any other had very bad paint, not color, although I can't stand any of the colors the house came with, but the paint was dimpled and cracked on all the walls. It wasn't peeling or falling off but it wasn't good. I decided that I'd scrape the paint off the walls, around the cracks, at least, but found that all the imperfections we were seeing in the paint were not coming from the plaster. The plaster is wonderfully flat and strong away from the cracks that actually were telegraphing through. So I decided to scrape all of the front room. Took forever and was quite dusty, but it's done now.

We've repaired all the cracks on this side of the room and skim coated the wall on the right of the picture and one more across the way. We won't remove the paint above because when we first started to scrape in that area we found that there isn't any finished plaster up there. There used to be a border all the way around the room and above it there was just the rough scratch coat and it's really hard to peel the paint from that. So we'll just plaster over it all around and put up a new border. You can also see to the right a paint sample! I want one more, slightly lighter but this front room will be green.

We went a little paint sample crazy last weekend. The front room has been our focus for months now but actually the kitchen and bathroom have been ready for paint for a while. The bathroom will probably be bluish but I'm not happy with the samples I put up. The kitchen , though, will be yellow (with white cabinets and wood countertops) like the picture below.

I'll pick up another yellow sample slightly darker to see if it works better but this might be the right one. I also put up a very light purple before but it doesn't work, the room will need a warm color with all the white, stainless and fluorescent white lights.

This last weekend, we also finished replacing the missing shelves in our kitchen built-in. Inexplicably, when we bought the house, there were these wire shelves resting on the remnants of the solid shelves that were cut out of the built-in (and not cut well either).

But now we have pretty primed pine shelves. Still need to paint them with glossy white but we also need to use the shelves.

Then there is the big job we took on this last weekend, the first Patrick and I have done together for a while. When we first bought the house, the closet in the back room which is now our bedroom, was big (about 7x2) but it had a regular 30 inch door. So you could step into the closet, turn and walk three feet more into the closet. Very strange and not very useful so we had our contractor make the opening wider.

They widened it quickly enough but they didn't finish the framing and drywalling until last month... not really excusable in my mind. But it's done now.

You can see the purple paint sample that I bought to try in the kitchen in the middle. I like it in the bedroom but it's a bit too light. Anyway, super eager now that the closet was finished, we bought this simple closet organizer.

The pink wall looked like it was in good enough condition. The back baseboard was rotten on one side so we would replace it but after that just a bit a plaster repair in that area, paint and install. Finally an easy job.

...But when we stepped into the closet to check out the baseboard, I noticed a very straight line down the middle of the back wall. I pick at it a little with my finger and some fell off. Damn. That pink is paint on top of green paint on top of 80 year old wallpaper.

So a bit annoyed, we went off to Home Depot again and got a wallpaper scorer and a spray to dissolve the glue, then scraped late into the night determined to install the organizer tomorrow. Most of Sunday, I plastered over the wallpaper we couldn't scrape off and the holes from the plaster that was pulled away with the wallpaper until it got to whitish yellow state above. Sunday, we also wrenched off the baseboard and about 5 pieces of lathe that were also rotten in the area and maybe half a square foot of plaster. Before screwing in the new baseboard, we sprayed in a can and a half of spray foam to stop the strong draft that had been freezing me since the moment I knelt down to do the plastering. Seems to be working. After spreading on a second layer of plaster Monday night, the bottom corner looked like this.

With the third coat at the bottom yesterday, the area is almost flat. This weekend I'll sand down the plaster repair and the top of the baseboard which has gotten its own accidental coat of plaster, then we'll paint and Patrick will be able to finally install the closet organizer.

Eight months without a working closet has certainly been long enough, I'll definitely be posting a finished picture after this weekend.

A Month Later

2011-02-23T20:40:00.000-08:00

My last post pretty much corresponded with the beginning of my new job. Things have been far too busy for me to even imagine what I could write about but luckily, not so busy that I haven't been able to detach from my job over the weekends and spend time enjoying the garden and working on the house.

Not much has changed in the garden since we dug the trenches last month except for some rototilling. We bought ourselves a small rototiller to tear up our weeds and grass and it's worked quite well for the little we've used it.

One note, I've seen more than a few times people advising against rototilling oxalis... I think I disagree. We went over a couple square yards of wonderful clovers without going deep into the soil, no more than an inch (very easy to do with a small rototiller). So we ripped up the green vegetation in a very short matter of time and the bulbs are still undisturbed underneath. Seems to me that the result is the same as handpicking but with sooo much time saved. It's also so much more thorough. Now, we'll just wait for the clovers to reappear and go over them again to weaken the bulbs. Hopefully in a few years the bulbs will about give up.

Anyway, for some whimsy, I bought a bird feeder!

I don't know why but growing up we never had a bird feeder at any of the places I lived. It's made me so giddy watching the birds fly around. I caught a squirrel hanging down from a branch and spinning the feeder to knock down the food. Mischievous, but so fun to watch. As soon as I have some free money, I'm getting an Adirondack chair to read and watch from.

So, I have few wonderful photos of my back yard moving into spring. First, the most dramatic blossoms, our star magnolia.

At first the magnolia flowers were looking pretty bad because of the occasional frosty weather, but now the blooms are better and with the leaves half emerged, I think it looks better than it ever will.

Next, the tiny clusters of flowers on my new Manzanita (not sure what variety sadly). Not in the ground yet but blooming like it doesn't care.

I'm so happy with the Manzanita and the Ceanothus, just now bursting its buds, that I'm sure I'll buy at least one more of each.

Next, no flowers yet, but I'm loving the leaves on the irises I moved to the back last fall. They're finally growing large enough that the blades are growing wavy and really quite beautiful.

I've also started a majority of the seeds I ordered and collected last year. Before now, I'd never collected and planted seeds before; before last year, I had never started plants from seeds. But I bagged up a few seedheads from my plant pots last summer and a couple from plants I'd put in my parents backyard. I've also recently harvested over a hundred little black seeds from the penstemen gloxinoides I planted in the front this winter.

This time around, I decided to go the slow and steady way and have had my seed plants growing outside from the beginning, avoiding the problem of my curious inside cats. My seedlings may be slightly small, but they are very strong. They even survived that surprise hail last week! No casualties.

Columbines collected from a double pink and a double purple variety I bought for my parents (they actually reseeded at my parents house despite the poor soil). I have four or five pots of these.

Dianthus 'Ideal Violet' from Parkseed.com

Galliardia 'Mesa Yellow' and 'Arizona Sun'. Galliardia was what I meant to buy when I got Gazania last year, but oh well, I have dozens of them now.

Here are some of the poppies. The long thin blades are regular California poppies from a seed packet, but the thicker leaved ones are Red horned poppies from the first seeds I ever harvested (hehe my babies). Click on the picture, the hairy leaves are so weird.

Lastly, I haven't written about work on the house in some time because there hasn't been much that was picture worthy. Perhaps in another month, I'll be able to post pictures of our living room, painted and decorated for the first time. As of now, the paint has been scraped off the plaster and maybe a tenth of the wall space has gotten a skim coat of new plaster.

More later.

Finally Emerging

2011-01-21T19:42:00.000-08:00

I've been horribly negligent about the bulbs that I so badly needed to buy over the last few months. Not on the buying side, I bought lots of bulbs but never got to planting them. Not until past all the recommended planting dates. On either January 8th or 9th, can't remember, I planted the Muscari I bought back in November. While I've already seen pictures of other people's gardens with emerging Muscari flower buds, mine are just getting started. But I'm very very glad to say that I didn't plant them too late! It's been just under two weeks but the tops of the leaves are starting to emerge.

I was trying to count up the emerging tips but kept getting lost and seeing more where I'd already counted. There are at least 30 already coming up.

And on to the bulbs in the front yard, I discovered three days ago that my tulips are also starting to pop up. Does anyone have tulips coming up already? I thought I waited too long to plant these too but it was still in early December. Much better than my other bulbs. These are on either side of the steps to our front porch.

You can probably tell that I didn't amend the soil as much (as well) with the tulips as I did with the Muscari. I think I'll work some more compost into the soil when the bulbs die back next year.

Like the bulbs, everything else in our garden just now is in the development stage. There seem to be just two plants blooming just now, the breath of heaven shrub in the front and the ground cover Gazania next to the street tree.

I'll just have to do my best to add more plants that will give winter interest before the next one comes around (shouldn't be difficult as I have so much to add). I've already taken one step in that direction by finally planting one of the barberry 'red glow' shrubs that I bought, again, ages ago. It looks small and pitiful with only a few leaves remaining but those leaves are gorgeous.

Then there's the Dietes or fortnight lily that I planted a few weeks ago which is finally starting recover some of its darker green coloring. It had been going slightly yellow in its pot but this year will be a better one for it. (This is my baby of two and a half years now, I'm determined it will be happy this year and bloom abundantly).

Last, on the topic of my developing plants, the newly planted Ceanothus 'Dark Star' that I mentioned before has little buds meaning I can be sure that it's happily developing in its new home.

Last of all, I just have to post a few pictures of the new exterior of the house. The better lighting in these pictures is just begging for me to post them.

And I told you, see? The back porch, though still with ugly siding attached to it, is straight and level.

Ours is the Most Beautiful House

2011-01-13T08:27:00.001-08:00

...at least, on the street, if not farther out. To say the least, that Robin's Egg blue isn't on our house anymore. The painter's finished the day yesterday sooo close to being completely finished with the house and for the first time this week, we came home before sunset and were actually able to see their work. Two days ago, we gathered up all the paint samples that I'd left out on the porch and put the one we'd chosen on the porch rail for the painters to see. But silly me, of course, even though I've been viewing the color choice as an extremely serious decision, I was less than serious when I was quickly moving the samples about before work on Monday morning. I believe I accidentally left the second choice color for the house on the porch. heh. heh. Luckily, choosing between those last two colors was very difficult and I really loved both of them.

Soooo... It not like I'm narrating this in person and you haven't actually seen the final pictures yet but~~~ *drumroll* Ta~dah

Even our garage with its tiny little window looks beautiful.

Maybe you can see (but probably not) that there are a few spots that need some corrective painting . We're not complaining though since it free and goooorgeous. We'll want to paint the trim white around the two back doors, and that small spot on the middle pillar blue. Then, just two harder ones, that we might not do anyway, the top of the chimney wasn't painted for some reason, it's still quite pink but we might be getting the chimney rebuilt anyway, and the rafters on the side of the porch and house would be better white, not that they stand out strangely for being blue. Then, that back porch, ick. But really, in person, you can see that once the siding is taken off it will be fine and it is straight and level, as well, though for some reason it doesn't look it in the picture. Probably because of that siding.

The only thing lacking now is the landscaping and now that the painting is done I can finally plant around the foundations!! Not that I have any money hah.

So to finish...
Come on Google Street View!! I'll let you retake the pictures for our street now.

Paint-tastic

2011-01-10T13:24:00.000-08:00

So wonderful news, we're getting a New Years Gift from our contractor! He's painting our house, completely, instead of just priming it like he's required to. So no more pink house! He told us this last Thursday when he came by in the evening and they started painting on Friday. We had already been thinking about the colors we wanted and had grabbed some paint samples from Home Depot probably over a month ago so we gave those to him since he wanted to use a tinted primer. Fine with us, though we did make sure to tell him that we don't know the final color yet. Good thing too cause the colors we pick out were UGH Ugly! Take a look:

Easter candy blue, don't you think? Quite a shock to come home to. Apparently, choosing lighter colors than you would guess you like is something you do for inside paint colors, NOT outside. So over the weekend we went back and forth to Home Depot two times before we had all the paint colors you can see on the front of the porch. But I wasn't really satisfied yet, so I went back one more time Sunday afternoon and pick out three more (total 12 samples = about $48, I think worth it for an exterior color choice) and applied them to the other side of the porch.

Love, finally I'd found the right shade and saturation. I was crazy for both of these colors so spent a ton of time making large swatches to compare. And then, I just couldn't decide. I made Patrick, who was getting quite tired of the process and seemed a bit convinced that I was trying to get the house painted teal, go outside and look at the colors twice before he finally convincingly said that he would like either one of them. So.... I decided as I was going to sleep that the brighter blue that I do very much love might not be acceptable to enough people, or me after it was on the entire house so the one of the left it is.

While I write this now, the men have probably finished spraying the correct color on the house and should be painting the rails and trim the whitish color we chose. Also, today, the men should be taking down the ugly metal awning over the front window. Seen here along with one other dramatic front yard change:

Do you see it in the shadows? No?

No more Port-a-Pottie!! That wonderful surprise greeted us about a week ago. Also, quite a few other things have been completed in the last few weeks. The regrading, new drainage, and concrete around the chimney is finished. It started out like this:

This picture was clearly taken on a dryer week and the problem isn't so obvious but just out of the picture is our chimney - our water trap. One morning after a rain, we took a look at this area and saw puddled sludge, because the water was just collecting there, trapped two inches below the concrete drive, and over the past century slowly making the chimney sink along with the rest of the living room. But now the foundations are a bit taller and the downspouts lead into a buried pipe diverting all the water down past the chimney. And to block any other water from pooling there anymore, we have new sloped concrete over this area.

It doesn't look obvious from the picture but the new concrete is nicely sloped and water won't be collecting there anymore.

Now walking up the drive in to the backyard, we finally have a back porch again!

...it isn't quite what I was expecting... but this is my fault for not drawing up plans for what I wanted. I was pretty much thinking that a small back porch is a small back porch, there's nothing really to explain. Well except the landing, I wanted that to be brick so I did talk with Abel about that and the men built it to the pattern I wanted using the extra bricks that we'd found around the yard. I'm happy enough with that. We'll have two planting beds on either side of the landing so the rough concrete underneath won't be visible. Now the siding however... Don't know why they put that on there. But then I didn't specify that I expected the lower part of the porch to just be open. I thought that later I might add lattice to it the open porch but of all the problems that have come up due to bad communication, this is one of the smallest so I didn't complain. All the side pieces of the porch are just screwed on so we'll just take off the siding sometime on our own.

So anyway, next, to the lemon tree at the back of the garage.

And yes, I know it looks like I just weeded a spot next to the tree but I actually finally planted some of my suffocating bulbs. This patch has about 50 little muscari all over and 5 lily of the valley towards the right side. Then I took my ailing chamomile from the tiny pots I should have removed them from months ago and put them on top for a pretty, mossy cover growth (eventually). Also, good to note is that the muddy pit just visible below isn't full of pooling water anymore, after the week of dry weather, all the standing water has finally drained away and even better, despite all the water clearly flowing down the trenches to the bottom of the yard, the bottom area was dry after only 2 days (not so for the top half of the yard, we still need to do a little digging but we can only do so much on our weekends).

Our last bit of progress is in the back corner of the yard. Here's what the blackberry patch looked like in spring before we had the house, before we'd even been able to cut down the weeds.

You can just see a red spot from a rose buried inside it and an orange spot from a nasturtium. Well, we took down the pear tree the first weekend we had the place because it honestly had no roots and was obviously dieing. But it took until the weekend before last for us, that is to say me, to cut through the rest of the thicket. It took two weekends but now it's almost gone.

Sorry for the bad lighting but then the picture wouldn't be very pretty even in the best lighting. The lump towards the left side is apparently a bush that the blackberries engulfed and I assume, killed from keeping light off it for two or more years. Next to that is the pretty rose that had been throwing up reddish purple flowers during the summer and that now had bright orange hips, looking very healthy despite the brambles. Then, there are the three volunteer trees that I'll just have to get to later... when I've gotten over this cold.

Even More Water

2010-12-29T08:11:00.000-08:00

As forecasted, Oakland received just over two inches of rain during the night. Did our newly dug trench survive the night, did it move the excess water away from the boggy top of the yard? Yes! And it still is!

Looking just at the sky, one would think that the rain has stopped already but our property doesn't seem to understand that. There is so much runoff from the hill behind us that we have a proper creek of water running down our trenches. And it's so sweet! I was a bit mesmerized looking at the tiny babbling brook this morning, watching the light bounce off it as it swirled about to the end of the system where it then made it's own eddy across the flat mud where our patio used to be and curled toward the back gate at the side of the house, like it actually wanted to join the french drain buried just below.

So these pictures show the rest of the system that I was too tired or lazy or muddy to take pictures of when we finished it on Sunday. After the trench drops down to the lower level of the yard, it goes down a bit and then we decided for a bit of whimsy, it splits in two and we have a little island. We will probably make a cute little bridge to go over it or maybe two. We will need to work a little bit on the leveling though so that the water flows more easily into the inner branch, right now the only water in there is the back up from the end of the trench. Also, can you see the silt (or debris left in the trench from our digging) that has traveled all the way down the yard to try and clog the lower branch.

In the second picture, you can see the water edging ever higher in the trench till it overflows at the end flooding this new area of the yard! But this is what we were aiming for. Even without the rest of the trench dug out the water is continuing to flow down and is leaving the yard in the french drain put in by our contractor.

Far too Much Water

2010-12-28T09:45:00.000-08:00

So this weekend, I was finally set to stop procrastinating and fill our green bin with blackberry brambles. And I did, as much as could fit at least, which happened to be a bit less than half. In the process of pulling and separating the amazingly long canes (some twisting nearly a dozen feet), I found some oddly high tangles of grass, right in the middle of the brambles, surrounding flat depressions of grass... kind of like a bed... It was empty when I found it but this must have been a nest for something big - maybe raccoons or opossums?

Recently, we've found some rinded lemons sitting around the yard, like rodents have eaten the sweet skin and left the sour flesh - my coworker rents a place with garden full of rats that do a similar thing.... but luckily she said that they always leave a mess of lemon peel bits around the part they leave behind and my thieves are very clean, taking every piece with them so I'm crossing my fingers that it's just squirrels or raccoons. Anyway, I don't think they've been living in our blackberry stand for a while now or at least hopefully they won't be coming back now that I've open their nest up to the cold.

So while I packed our bin with the thorny thorny canes, trying to not get pricked, I glanced over to our back planting bed and noticed (for the second or third time) that standing water had collected in the left side of the triangle. I wasn't happy the other times I'd noticed this but didn't have the time to deal with it, this time I decided that now that the bin was full, I should try to fix that problem, too. Here's the first picture I took, sadly after I'd taken a couple spadefuls out but the problem is still obvious:

A few minutes shoveling didn't take care of the problem so I kept going, discovering more and more water just barely under the boggy ground I was standing on. At the least, you can see below that the standing water has moved away from the roses, pelargoniums, and lavender that were probably drowning a bit.

Now the other side didn't look bogged down but if I was making a drainage ditch for the one side I wanted it to do it's work on the other side as well. Also, I noticed that much more water came out and gathered in the areas I had dug already than one would think possible so I figured something would appear even in the dry looking side. And it did, but there's no good pictures to show off the digging I did for the rest of the night, well past sunset (I haven't been that enthusiastic digging ever, I think). And eager to get started on Sunday, I came out to take a picture of any continued flooding the next morning.

And yes, I did all this awesome trenching with my own girlishly weak arms. And all the horrible mucky, muddy mess, that's mine too. It was also all over me the night before and destroying the only pair of shoes I really wear, some little black flats, that I'm now wearing, even though they're still a bit caked. Feeling that after the night before, flats with no tread and very little waterproofing power weren't the best footwear to continue in, I went with Patrick and we both got some wellies (or galoshes if you prefer) to work in.

This time, I dragged in Patrick to lend his more powerful, less sore muscles to the trenching. Together we were able to get the trench continued all the way to the end of the grass in the lower part of the back garden. Very proud of our weekend work, although it is true that I'd hoped that I'd finally get the rest of my bulbs buried and my maybe some of my new plants - Christmas Eve nursery trip, my present! - in the ground.

Still, this means we're finally started and even halfway done on one of our many projects. Now that the trench is dug out, we just have to get gravel and rocks delivered so we can make our dry creek bed. In my original plans I didn't have the creek going up into the top garden but I think it will be better this way. Now our large decomposed granite flat space up top will be bisected by a cute little creek and we can place flat flagstones for steps across it. Also, any worry about bogginess in patio area up top will be taken care of.

But anyway, one to two inches of rain is forecasted for tonight so I'll take more pictures tomorrow that include the second part of the trench and we'll see if it survives the night and serves its purpose.

Weeds and the Lemon Tree

2010-12-16T10:07:00.001-08:00

I don't have so much to add after my last post, just a couple pictures to post. I've mentioned before that I knew the top of my garden was weed infested and that I had even seen some of those nasty Oxalis clovers next to the fence when first viewing the house. Well... there is quite a bit more Oxalis than that. See:

It is all located in the top of the garden at least. The ugly retaining wall kept them all up top I guess. And, well, anticipating weed growth spurts (though not this much clover) and the inability to pull them all in good time over the winter wet season, I laid out some extra cardboard in the top left side of the garden that we had from moving. They're now nicely soaked, starting to breakdown and working wonderfully.

I pulled some up last week to see what was underneath: dead yellow grass and spiders, of course, but also long yellow Oxalis that was obviously trying to find the sun and failing spectacularly. The uncovered clovers are very happy and green and I've pulled some of it - many buckets full but it's just too much for the dry time I have to devote to the chore. Luckily, we are planning on eventually having a large central gravel area in the back and a pergola with pavers underneath. Also, the one bed we have dug out is almost completely clover free. So digging helps remove the clovers. Go figure.

The second thing, obviously has to do with the poor lemon tree I wrote about in the last post. Well, just to better illustrate why we must take the drastic action of topping the tree in order to help it recover, I want to post this picture that was hiding on my home computer of the very spot that is the tree's main problem.

Enlarge this one if you doubt our reasoning. You can see that the previous owners topped the tree at the now enlarged spot. When the main leader of a tree is cut, or topped, the resulting sprouts fight to become the new leader growing oddly thick compared to normal lateral branches, and you can see on our lemon that there were branches that sprouted out in all directions from the beheaded trunk and the branch to the left sprouted a perpendicular branch which became the new leader. But topping a tree doesn't make pruning easier but more and more often necessary. These guys didn't follow up (and well, they never should have topped the tree in the first place) so all the side the branches from the topped spot grew bigger and more distorted, running into each other and warping. Eventually the one to the left cracked away from the replacement leader because it was too weak to support the weight of its canopy at the angle it had sprout from the trunk at.

So, as I said in the last post, there are just a few options open to us:

Let well enough alone. The tree produces well over a hundred lemons a year, it seems. Downside, it's inevitable that other branches will eventually crack away and fall, hopefully on the ground, eventually killing the tree. Also, the tree would continue to be an eyesore.
Chop down the tree wholesale. Seems a pity though to waste such a well established and well producing tree.
Prune the tree to help keep the branches from becoming overburdened. Though, this will likely encourage growth and so might not prevent #1.
Drastically prune the weak members and joints away. And as the entire structure of our tree is terribly weak, this means topping the tree down to just below the previous top point. AND unlike the previous owners, we will properly prune after the cut, encouraging limited stable growth.

Weekend Gardening

2010-12-13T14:21:00.000-08:00

I was so so happy that the weekend arrived and it was actually dry like they said it would be. I've had a great desire to be out working in the garden lately but by the time I get home on a weekday, the light is already going. I'm barely able to look around and see if work has been done on the house while I've been gone. But this weekend I was able to get out and do some work. Muddy work, but overall very satisfying.

For the past month or so I've been telling myself every time I go out to the garden that I'm going to get my pruners and chop down the big strand of blackberry bushes in the back corner of the yard but easily distracted as I am, I haven't so much as touched one of the canes despite going out 5 or 6 times since my resolution. This time I distracted myself with the mound of grass, weeds, and clay that I had heaped up in mid-summer to dig our solitary flower bed in the back of the garden.

Our flower bed has since expanded in both directions but the heap has remained. I thought it might naturally form a small hill once the rains started to come. Instead, it stubbornly remained a lumpy heap, which I have to admit I was actually quite sure would happen. You can kind of see it, lazing there in the picture below from mid-October.

Since the rains started, it has also started to sprout a new growth of weedy geraniums and grasses (luckily no oxalis, the bulbs must be buried deep). And since there was also a couple inches of original grass between it and the finished bed that have been trying to spread into our precious, clean flower bed, I decided to procrastinate on the berries, by hacking at the heap this weekend. Also, it's the low impact, easy on the muscles kind of gardening I especially like. So here it is, after picking it apart for two hours or so, it was finally a nicely manicured little hill behind the flower bed.

The lump was kind of resting against the bottom few inches of the fence for these 5 months so you can see the dark soaked wood behind it... I know, very bad of me, very unneighborly... but looking at it again on Sunday, dried out, it looks like that area of the fence is in no worse condition than the rest of it.

Also, sidenote - I cut out the two overgrown Coreopsis plants I had between the Agastache and Foxglove. I also cut down the Agastache and harvested the seeds a week ago. I don't know if the Coreopsis will come back, it might, the roots look very healthy, but if they do I'll move them to a new place. The Agastache and Foxgloves next year should be enough for that part of the bed.

And so, Sunday! Having conquered the heap, I decided I must now use it like I originally planned to. Now, the lighting is pretty bad but here:

That's a very well shaped, at least I thought so, Ceanothus 'Dark Star' sitting on top of the heap. I've always wanted to plant one in the back garden, so this is what I was thinking when I originally made the heap. I've read that a little additional water in the summer can be good for it but that too much can kill it and that it needs to be in well drained soil, so I think it will do well there. Also once it expands into a small tree, it will go very well with the two roses in front and next to it. While the roses are cut down and resting for the winter, the Ceanothus should be in full bloom, winter to spring. Then as it turns into a normal evergreen shrub after the bloom, the roses will take over.

And so the back flower bed is starting to take proper shape. I want most of the plants in the top of the yard to need little water: Agastache, Lavender, and Ceanothus. This next year, I plan to add native wildflowers and shrubs, a pergola and wisteria, a redbud, a Black Oak, and a large dry space in the middle with Decomposed granite or something similar.

There are already two trees in the back of the garden: a deciduous magnolia and an ornamental lemon. While I was lazing about in between weeding this weekend, I stared off into space in the tree's general area and noticed that a few of the blossoms are starting to open!

There are three or four buds nearly ready to open. In fact, I checked again briefly last night and this bud had open about 2 1/2 inches at the top. I'm glad to see that the drought stress inflicted on it during probably the last 5 years hasn't injured it too much. Last year, I saw beautiful blossoms in March, when I first saw the house, but forgot to take pictures so I still don't know what type of magnolia this is. Once I get some fully opened blossoms I'll probably be able to finally identify it. At first, we weren't sure if we'd want to keep the magnolia, as it isn't in the best of shape but I think if it survives our restorative pruning, we'll keep it. What do I mean? Well here are the biggest problems with the tree:

One of these took care of itself (kinda?). The lower rotted limb just fell off when I touched it one time. It did leave a rotted hole in the trunk like the one in the middle of the picture though. Obviously there used to be a branch there, where it went nobody knows. Then, there's the crossing branch in between the two main trunks. We finally bought a reciprocating saw this weekend, via Craigslist ($50! At home depot, the exact same one for $149.99) so we took care of that and a couple of crossing branches above. What to do about the rotting holes, no clue...

But on the subject of trees and pruning, we did something else this weekend that is probably... not so good... So our Lemon tree! Wonderful lemons, even last week we picked two for cooking, but the body of the tree is about beyond repair. Originally it looked like this from one angle:

After some basic pruning, there was this:

And as we didn't have a reciprocating saw yet, we left some stumps on the tree to clean up later. This Sunday, we started at it. Sawing off those bits first and the ends of some rather less stable look limbs and branches that shot off into the canopy 6 feet... and we kinda... didn't stop.... By the end of the day we had this:

Now, we didn't just go crazy with saw rage. Patrick and I were talking it through, trying to find what was best for the tree... But all we could conclude is that no matter what cuts we make, if we thin out the canopy and cut the ends of branches to promote stronger growth, there would still be a very unstable base structure. For example, the front right branch we cut off extended another 4 feet out from the trunk at a very low angle and then had a very heavy canopy depending on it. If we cut back just the top growth of that limb, it would grow back and become thicker and heavier than before, eventually causing the limb to snap at the trunk. So we cut it to short enough a length that the limb, at that angle, should still be able to support new growth year after year. We had to do the same for two other limbs... obviously...

The final step will be to commit the biggest pruning sin ever... topping the tree... We're planning on cutting it just below the horrible knot you can see if you look closely at the second picture I posted. As this is a citrus tree, something that is very often pruned hard, and it's already in very bad condition, I think this is the only way to help it. I can't be sure what the previous owners did to this tree over the years, but I think it was topped before right where that knot has formed. I think as long as I carefully thin the new growth, selecting the branches growing in the best directions, I think it will become better than before. It has to, heh.

So, it will be topped.

Modernizing

2010-11-29T09:41:00.000-08:00

Almost two weeks ago now, we finally got a kitchen floor. So simple and such a pain to be without. Although I've already had to get on my hands and knees to clean up dirty little footprints left by one of our new kittens.

We've been in the house since July but the floor so far has been the bare floorboards left after the men took out the old grimy brown and orange linoleum.

Imagine the loose plywood in the bottom bit of the picture removed and that has been our floor. The bare redwood planks wouldn't have been too bad but the men only removed about half of the papery substance stuck to the floor beneath the old linoleum (just one of many shortcomings I've found, sigh). But now we have shiny new linoleum floor in a much more pleasing, mostly white pattern with black accents. I asked for checkerboard black and white but it wasn't in stock Still, installed, this looks very nice.

Try not to be critical of the mess, Patrick and I made separate dinners the night I took this - twice the mess. And I don't think I'll post the picture that shows the majority of the mess in the other corner of the kitchen.

So the next step we took to modernize the house took about all of Friday. But first, we decided on a bit of a whim Wednesday night that we needed a proper workspace to prepare Thanksgiving dinner for ourselves and my brother so we went to Ikea to buy the kitchen island we've been craving for at least the last two months. However... after spending a good hour there, we go in the warehouse to claim the 3 boxes for it and find it's sold out (very angry...).

And well, thwarted in our fun spending, we were considering going back to Ikea on Friday but with the nearly freezing temperatures we've woken up to inside our house in the last two weeks, we thought... better idea! Insulation! I had told my coworker last week that we had absolutely no insulation and her incredulous stare and repeated "Really!?" got me thinking... maybe Abel didn't say no insulation... so I asked Patrick to get on the ladder and look up there Wednesday night.

On the plus side, don't our rafters look nice and strong. So on Friday we went to Home Depot, very glad to find out that the insulation blowing machine was available and we bought 10 bags of fluffy pink fiberglass blow-in. With 10, just enough for R25 to R30ish through our whole attic, we got the machine for free for 24 hours too! We had to rent the Home Depot truck to get the stuff to our house but we did it in one trip and it didn't even rain so that was nice. And about 5 hours later, at least an hour and a half of that as preparation, our attic looked like this!

We put in barriers around all our pot lights and the shower vent and had to dig out the fluff that went in there anyway. Also, I was vacuuming bits of fluff that had traveled all around the house for the next two days to be sure that cats didn't try to eat anything but overall, between the two of us, it went smoothly and wasn't too difficult, only enough to make us quite sore. Patrick had the worse part of doing the blowing and crawling around the attic but my loading the machine and getting things for him was enough to make me hurt too, although maybe only half as much as him.

But it was definitely worth it. A week and a half ago, I woke up and turned on the portable heater to see it tell me that it was 39 degrees in the room. But this morning when we found ice covering our poor car outside, the bedroom before I turned on the heater was 47. Doesn't sound great but I'll take those 10 extra degrees if I can have it! In a few months, with a bit of money saved up, maybe we'll hire some people to come blow insulation into the walls and spray the underside of the floors. Then, our house will be a cozy little oven.

Boring Little Things

2010-11-22T08:36:00.000-08:00

Over the last couple weeks, progress has slowly been made. The garage is still electric doorless since the door is a bit rich for our blood, at least until about new year, but there is now a side access door and Abel's part of the job is finished (except for them emptying it of their tools etc).

The french drain is working well, now with it's entire tubing buried and a let-out at the front of our property. Also, I noticed the other day that the drain pipe from the garage is properly connected to it now and so is the drain pipe on the side of the porch. The back porch is in progress now, the men poured the concrete supports about two weeks ago and built the frame about a week later.

Also, you can see a bit from the picture above, but the guys have also been scraping and sanding our house all the way around over the past two weeks. You can see it more dramatically in these two pictures:

And you can also see that our window bars are off! I love the way it looks without them, so much brighter and friendlier. But Patrick insists that we'll have to have them put them back up after the painting because our windows are old easy-shatter ones. But they'll be off again some day once we get the windows updated. Also, on the lower picture, that large dirt plot next to the house isn't there just because the men cleaned up, they cut out a couple feet of concrete so they can repair and regrade. Before the foundation was practically at the same height as the small strip of dirt that was there before.

Now, I was surprised to see the concrete gone in the first place, but not only were they preparing to repair the rotten sills and the grading issue, but I found yesterday that they had actually poured additional concrete on the lowest parts of the foundation on that side.

After that, there are a few more things, but I'll post about them in a few days when I have pictures. In the meantime, so that I have a couple of pictures that aren't so brown and dull, here is how the front garden is doing.

The plants are filling in nicely, it's been a bit more than a month and a half since I planted all these and they're not quite double in size yet but then everything has been slowing down now that it's getting colder.

And in the larger beds, the seedlings are doing even better, only the Lantana is looking a bit scrawny, I think it's waiting for high heat again to burst into growth. I also finally got some of my larger plants in the ground, the Penstemon in the front and Coleonema 'Breathe of Heaven' in the back.

Oh and just for fun - I caught my older grumpy cat being nice to one of our new kittens hehe.

Why I was too busy...

2010-11-04T08:19:00.001-07:00

...to work on the house this weekend

Bluebell and Cookie snuggled up on Patrick. (He's the cause of all this! Not me!)

Confused...

2010-10-29T08:14:00.000-07:00

Now, yesterday, we came home to find that nothing had happened around the house, but two days ago we came home to find three things entirely unexpected. I haven't been able to talk to Abel yet about it, but as these are extras being done to the place and not negatives, I guess I'm okay... Just don't know what's going on.

1) Gutters - I already knew that we were getting one free gutter on the side of our garage that hangs over our neighbor's yard (because she has been nagging my contractor nonstop). However, I was not aware that I would be getting another one along the other side... And it's not like I can afford to pay for one or that Abel doesn't already know this so... Free gutters! Yay.

2) Drain Pipe - Not the one coming out of the ground there, that's the unfinished end of our french drain which we were fully expecting and paying for. No, the white drain pipe curling its way around our porch. Now, Abel did say he'd give us one new drainpipe... but not here.

Here, where the old one is still attached. He said he'd gift us this even though we don't have the money for full gutters right now, because this one drains water right into our chimney base, probably creating the conditions that made the chimney and front room sink 4 inches in the last hundred years. So... Perhaps there was a bit of miscommunication between Abel and his gutter people.

3) Paint Scraping - Apparently, we paid for a good powerwashing of the exterior to remove the peeling paint. I'm not aware of paying for it but I don't think I'll complain, we were going to do it anyway when we painted the house ourselves next year.

A little annoyed about all the lead paint chips on our soil... but I guess I'll just have to make sure they clean up.

Walls and a Tiny Window

2010-10-21T12:05:00.000-07:00

The shell has now been covered up in a mix of the old and new siding and everything is nearly complete with the garage.

I would say it is all just in time for the rain but the roof is still just bare boards. But then, I know Abel is at the site right now working on the french drain across the property and he promised he'd get the roof at least waterproofed, if not finished, by the weekend.

So there's the big update, all finished. We also have nice big flowers around the place - the Salvia Leucantha now has long purple flowers and that first rose we transplanted is now in full bloom mode.

The roses are definitely more yellow and pink this time around, maybe next year they'll have the red orange tones I loved from before we transplanted it. On the plus side, the flowers seem bigger and healthier than they did earlier in the year. Compare the first two new pictures to the last one, I swear that they're the same rose and these pink-yellow guys aren't coming from suckers, not possible.

Lastly, to perhaps make myself find some time Saturday to dig more in the front yard, here is a picture of the sad little plants waiting to go there.

The Walls Go Up

2010-10-14T13:30:00.000-07:00

In just the last four days, the men have changed the bare foundation of the garage to a fully framed and almost roofed structure.

They've created a much taller structure than what we had before. We will have a full-sized side entry door where before we had to duck to get in (and neither of us are taller 6ft mind you) and they're going to install the double-hung window they took off the back of the house in the spot you see above. I asked for that one, should help the new structure tie into the existing one better and provide good natural light.

New Foundations, Lil' Front Garden

2010-10-10T21:08:00.000-07:00

So pulling into our driveway on the first, we found that the carcass of our garage had been carried away during the workday (well, most of it, some being around the backyard).

And we now understood the sign we saw hooked onto our back door the day before.

We quickly decided to take their advice and have been using the front porch for the last week. Then, in the past week, the crappy old foundations for the garage were beefed up. One side was knocked down and wholesale replaced. The other two foundation walls were built up half a foot or so and all of them now have rebar to strengthen the bond.

Last in the backyard, the men have also started on the french drain.

Then, starting last weekend, being blocked from easy access to my backyard maintenance, I decided to finally start digging up the front yard. Last Sunday:

Just about the very first thing I did once the house was officially ours was clean up the grass and weeds in the front sidewalks and growing in the little hole for the street tree. But until last week I hadn't done anything except try to deeply water it once a week or so (we still don't have a front hose bib so I've had to drag the back hose around or use a bucket). But last week I finally got out there and saved the tree from it's ugly weedyness. I've put in all plants that I started from seed at the end of July, not even 2 months ago.

My pretty little lambs ears. They should spread out over the whole area eventually.

Then, Chamomile. It seems a bit of a sensitive plant, don't know if it will do well in the low water street planting but they've been bursting from their little 3" pots. And I love the way they smell! And Patrick will like the little white daisies.

The last bit of the planting, they're hard to see but there are two tiny little blue fescue clumps on this side. I think I'll move the one that's farther back over the the chamomile side soon - that's probably not enough room for two clumps of grass. There are also a bunch of Gazania but I've decided since they bloomed about two weeks ago, that I don't really like them. They were listed as an annual though so I put them in anyway as by next year the lambs ears will have taken them over.

Anyway, this weekend we started digging up the front "lawn." You've seen it before in pictures like this.

Now we have this!

It looks teeny and insignificant BUT we spent hours and hours getting all the grass out of those two beds and out from under the concrete. We had to pick out all the roots you see below until the place was clean. It certainly wasn't quick, but I don't want to get this horrible grass growing up through our mulch and into my lil' baby plants.

But isn't it pretty for all of it.

It's mostly symmetrical, for this part. After the rocks, each side will be different.

See our new pretty little Cuphea and Yellow Lantana.

My Catmint from Seed.

More Blue Fescue. Just another two or so small pots of it that still need to find ground.

And Lavender Lady. It's supposed to bloom 3 months from seed but I guess in a month it will be too cold for it to flower, so next year.

Sadly, that's all we had time to get done this weekend but at least the change is quite dramatic. We have more than half a dozen more plants we wanted to get to but they will have to wait til next week I guess.

Surprises

2010-10-01T10:18:00.000-07:00

Came home to see some quite unexpected things for the past two days in a row. First we find that our porch is finished. Yaaaay!

Although, I'm sure you can see, I forgot to take pictures yesterday. But two days ago, we came home to this and were very happy too. The only thing left will be the staining and priming. So... actually I guess we aren't really done but whatever.

We saw the boards on the porch platform as we pulled in front of our house, still on the street, but then when we got up the driveway, we saw our garage had been struck too! See the progress made in the last two days:

Now look closely, they removed all the roofing material. And you can see below, the siding on the back of the garage was completely gone too... or well, on the ground around the yard. But I didn't see piles and piles of roofing material so that made me happy. At least they disposed of some things. Not like last time...

The piles were bigger when we got home yesterday though. BUT the big difference this time is that I know they're reusing the siding - most of the siding - after they re-frame the garage.

And of course, the garage was storing some of the debris now around the yard. Apparently they put all our gardening stuff under the house and porch for safekeeping - except for the mower and chipper which may be too big for the door. We'll have to try and get those inside though... don't want the mower to go missing. The chipper turned out to be pretty crappy so that's okay.

As if these surprises weren't enough to make us happy, they also did this!

From an ugly cracked patio

To lots of grey rubble! Isn't it wonderful. Well, not easy to walk on anymore but great progress.

Isn't it funny how the lines of grass that were in the cracks of the patio are still there now that the concrete is gone.

Also, you can see in the picture above that these guys don't understand how to transplant something. The hole they dug around the rose there would have made me really mad... if I had in any way meant to save it. Luckily, there had been two roses in front of the garage and the one that I thought was healthiest I decided to remove in preparation of their work on the garage. The other one I cut all the way down and figured they wouldn't care about it. For some reason they thought that I had wanted to save the nub though, and had attempted to dig it out.... I have no idea what they were thinking, where would they have put it? but in any case, they seemed to have given up on it.

Anyway, in case there is any doubt as to why we have to have the garage rebuilt from scratch, here is an average picture of on of the timbers holding up the current shell.

The Grand Design

2010-09-28T14:23:00.000-07:00

I've talked about it in pretty much all of the posts I've made before about the garden, but I haven't ever posted a picture of the design I'm seeing in my head. So today, I'm letting everyone in on the secret.

(BTW, I drew the outline based on the Google earth screenshot of my house, it's a little wonky but it's the right proportions)

It's a big picture, it's crowded with all kinds of little notes and circles. And then, it isn't fully complete either. In the backyard I'll have tons of two foot and smaller plants, most of which I didn't draw in. Even so, I look at and love it. I can't wait until we can finally take that first big trip to the nursery and start filling in the landscape. Sadly and happily, the contractors will soon be starting on the garage so we won't be able to do anything in the back for a while. But in the meantime, we'll start on the front, maybe this weekend! The only obstruction that will likely be there is the port-a-pottie... right where I want to plant a tree, sigh. It won't be much longer though, maybe a month and a half more of construction to get through and it'll all be done. By then, the rain will have started and it will be a great time for planting.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

A Short Postscript

I know I only just posted a minute ago but having posted, I looked down at my previous one and thought it made me look like I kinda don't know anything about pruning.... heh. I had posted this picture of my newly dwarfed Hibiscus.

But while I still haven't found the time to get out my pruning saw and clean it up, you have to see the disgusting plant I was dealing with. (Why did I forget to take before pictures!)

Now that is a nightmare created by bad pruning. Also, possibly termites because I found some oddly light branches - over an inch thick but weighing less than a small newspaper. So that first picture is the result of a long hour going through that bush and carting away the bits. I'm quite decided now that I'll cut the old branches farther down but I'm going to wait until it has a few more leaves. When I stopped before, I was pretty much thinking that I didn't want to completely defoliate it (and I was so tired).

New Growth

2010-09-15T12:48:00.000-07:00

Going out last night to take some pictures around the backyard, I found that two new plants were starting to bud up. These are two that came with the house, that we cut down to ground level just after the house was officially ours - so two months ago. Since then they've grown like crazy to about 2 1/2 feet high and 3 feet wide. Here's one of the many buds forming on the Salvia Leucantha.

This guy was just a tiny, scraggly little thing when we first got to it because of the towering oleander just next to it, depriving it of sunlight and any moisture in the ground. But since cutting all the pathetic little bits off it above ground and watering about 3 times a week for the past two months, it's become a beautiful, if flowerless, mass of shrub.

As to the Oleander next to it, this is a light pink double flowers one that looked just pathetic when we came round. I gave Patrick the okay to chop it down right away but when he gave up trying tot remove the large stump, I decided to try watering it, pretty sure that a shrub as vigorous as an oleander would be coming back.

I'm very happy with the way both of these have bounced back, much healthier than before. So much so that I also finally got the big loppers out and cut down the Hibiscus next to them. Ever since then though, I've been thinking each time I look at it that I should cut the old branches a bit closer to the ground. I'm so lazy. But I'm seeing new growth on it already regardless.

On to the back of the yard, the small bed that we dug out at the beginning of the month keeps getting bigger. The original plants have easily doubled in size and I transplanted a rose there about a month and a half ago, just before we moved in. As a result of which it dried up in its first few days and lost all its leaves after about three weeks. It was completely my fault so I, in shame, never mentioned it on the blog again. But in the past two weeks, it has started to come back to life so I'll no longer hide my pictures of it.

It really does have the most beautiful leaves of all the eleven roses we got with the house. I'm so glad I didn't kill it. Actually, even if I'd killed it, I have one more. We noticed also about two weeks ago that there was a sprout growing up out of the hole we left when we moved the rose. Somewhere down there a very persistent root decided to grow even though I never watered it. It's getting the water it wants now though and who knows, it might be true to its parent.

In addition, I already showed a picture of the place we moved the next rose transplant from, from in front of the garage to the back of the yard. Here's a picture of it, two days after the move. I trimmed of the wilty ends off the canes the night after the transplant and while the leaves still feel a bit like lettuce left out too long, I think this second night it looks a bit better. Or at least better than the other rose did after transplanting.

So that's on the left side of the planting bed, next to where we'll have a pergola eventually. On the right side, I have planted about 20 Tall Irises which I hear from our neighbor, might be blue. This weekend, I finally got to digging up and dividing the ton of Irises that had come under the fence into our yard over the past decade. After getting through the planting, it was so dark that I didn't take any pictures, but I swear, three days later, the new little blades have grown longer.

And yes, I am aware that I have planted them waaaay to close together, but that's just me, I'll dig them up again next spring when they're choking each other again and move them around the yard. I find that I always plant things too close together. Just take a look at a photo of the full planting bed.

The Coreopsis are taking over everything. The Geum is growing into the Coreopsis. The baby foxgloves will probably be slowly covered over by the Coreopsis. And once that sheared lavender comes back it will be pushing against the Agastache. But that's okay, for me, a crowded garden makes me happy. And I don't mind digging up the plants again and again to move them when they get to full size.

And while I'm showing you a full picture of this bed, take a look at this picture from July 26 - just a month and a half ago. Told you, they've doubled in size - at least.

The only other thing I can really talk about in our still very untended yard is our lemon tree. During the month before we moved into the house, we harvested just about all the healthy yellow citrus from the tree but I can now see tons of new lemons, already bigger than the lemons you get in the store and still green.

I finally bought a fruit picker this last weekend and did my best to get all the fruit that has been dive bombing the potted shade plants I put under the lemon tree. In the process I got a sack-full of good lemons and we made some lemonade. I think we're growing attached to this tree.

Grand Entrance

2010-09-14T13:16:00.000-07:00

It's taken a bit longer than we originally thought, but finally our front porch is starting to look like a porch.

Our little house started with an understated and after nearly a hundred years, an unstable and leaning porch but now its nearly transformed into the grand entry our restored old beauty deserves. Not to brag but we took a close look up and down the street after we looked over the stairs and our house definitely has the best looking stairs on the street (will have the best looking front when Abel's finished). We actually had three people stop and talk in front of our house about the new stairs on Sunday. Oh, it made me giddy but I'm a naturally shy person so I sunk down on the couch so that they wouldn't see me and told Patrick about them. Of course, he then decides to go out and talk so I got the courage to go out too. The house is finally starting to look like it's inhabited and being cared for. Makes me so happy. So happy, I'll give you a few more pictures and even advertise for my contractor in one.

Anyway, once the men are finished with the porch, it should be safe for us to begin working on the front garden. I was so eager to start that when I went to Home Depot this weekend, I bought a couple of plants. I think we'll start at the concrete pad in the very front and put some of the larger landscaping stones from the backyard extending in a line out from the first step, marking out what will be the front bed and creating a tiny retaining wall. Then I'll plant the two new plants I bought around there (don't remember their names yet) along with my Fortnight Lily, Salvias, and Nemesias. Then from that first step we'll put in two paths to either side of the yard, in some kind of stepping stones. Anyway, I could write more, but it really needs pictures, so I 'll move on.

Also on Sunday, we prepared the area around the garage for the work that will start there probably next weekend. There were two roses in front of the fence, horribly placed and sure to get trampled so with Patrick's help, the healthier one was moved to the back yard.

As you can see, the fence didn't survive the move. It was quite amusing actually, Patrick literally lifted the fence panels out of the ground and they didn't resist in the least. Now Our backyard is open... but then again the little latch shouldn't have really deterred anyone. About the rose, I check on it yesterday night and of course, it was very wilted. But unlike with the last rose I moved (which is growing again, yay!), I gave this one a haircut, taking off all the wilty ends of the branches so hopefully, it will be able to hold onto some of its leaves while it settles in.

Doors, Flowers, and a Porch

2010-09-04T19:38:00.000-07:00

So in the last few weeks, we've, mostly I, have made quite a bit of progress on the kitchen built-in refinishing... Phase 1: the doors. It may not look it, but the door below is finished and ready for painting, we have three such doors so far. Okay, actually we've only been working little by little, on the weekend.

We scraped and sanded, then added wood putty and sanded more. Then, actually, sanded again because I found that I was better at the finish sanding than Patrick. Finally, we were ready to start priming and pried open the paint can lid.... and found the paint completely separated... I guess paint shouldn't be an impulse buy that you get on clearance in Sears. Well, we shook and mixed it up as much as we could and put on a few coats. Here's a picture of the primed doors against the yet untouched cabinet.

I think no one will disagree with us about which looks better. I think since the primer was probably still not mixed thoroughly enough, the paint was a bit watery and the doors need another layer or two before we put on the semi-gloss finishing paint.

But once we finish these doors, we'll move onto the shelves we need to replace below:

I mean what the heck were they thinking? Why in the world did they cut out the original shelves and put in these chicken wire ones? And we know they cut out the original ones rather than properly removing them because these wire shelves are being held up by the wonky one inch remains of those shelves. Should be super easy to get new pieces of wood cut to replace these shelves. But when we get to that we'll also have to remember to ask our contractor to fix these holes:

See, there are four holes in the back of this cabinet section because of these screws that are kind of holding in our electric panel.... so it seems that the old plaster might be all that is securing the panel to the wall, but then, maybe not. Just have to remember to tell him, I completely forgot this past week.

Anyway, let's move on to more interesting and pretty pictures.

Here is that back planting bed that we carved out just before we moved into the house a month ago and the little plants are filling in very nicely. When these coreopsis plants were in their 5-inch clay pots they were wilting every couple days from my lack of a hose - watering cans just don't carry enough water (for me). But I haven't seen the slightest sign of wilting since.

My little seedling Agastache plants have been blooming now for nearly 3 weeks, looking weak at first, but adding more and more sideshoots and flowers everyday. They're not quite what I was expecting but they've grown on me now that they've gotten a bit bigger. The seed packet showed pink flowers, which would have probably looked better but then, purple is great too.

But just as a reminder of how much the yard is not finished, see this view from behind the flowers.

But nothing much will happen until the garage is finished - we wouldn't want the men to destroy all the work we do.

On a different subject, I wonder if anyone out there can answer a question for me. Take a look at this Coreopsis flower:

It's a bit hard to see, but there's a bug in there that I'd like to try and identify. Not the cucumber beetle, that one was easy enough and we do have a bit of a problem with them. They seem to be in just about every flower that I look into. But not them, there's a tiny nearly transparent little caterpillar or centipede creature. Does anyone know what that might be? The flower looks fine from a foot away but up really close it is actually a bit wonky... maybe that's because there is some kind of problem pest feeding on the bud? I have no clue and haven't had any luck researching it so I'm throwing it out to you.

Okay, last update to give, I talked last time about how the porch was finally getting started and after a week I can't quite step on it but it's looking good. As a reminder, we started at:

Then, we backstepped a bit to a nonexistent porch for a month and a half.

Then, this week, the carpenters started again and built the concrete forms on Monday.

Then, they poured the foundation and removed the forms.

And finally yesterday, we came home to something a bit more substantial, a bit more porch like.

We might have had a platform to stand from by now but Abel's given his men a full three days off for the holiday weekend so probably by the end of next week, I'll have pictures from that perspective. Can't wait.

Work Begins Again

2010-08-31T11:33:00.000-07:00

Finally, yesterday we had workmen at the house again. I don't think I mentioned it but we've had a break in construction and almost nothing has happened since we moved in at the beginning of the month. The problem was with Prospect Mortgage - even after we finally got through closing, they held us up again. They were selling our mortgage but I guess needed a full month to dress it up nice and pretty so that Bank of America would take it. Then, Prospect doesn't service FHA 203k Renovation loans like ours, only make them, so we weren't able to get any money for our contractor until after the sale and the two weeks processing time for B of A. But last Thursday we received the check for the nearly $30,000 our contractor was waiting for and we are all happy again.

On Monday, the men started work on the new porch for the front. Here's a picture of what we've had for the past month.

And here we are this morning.

They'll be pouring concrete into the forms today, I think, and according to Abel, we may even have stairs and a platform in front of our door by the weekend. Other work they did yesterday included moving some electrical switches to above-counter positions for when we have a proper kitchen and refitting the bathroom door. And, yes, it was awkward when family visited one afternoon two weekends ago. But we have the door now. I tried taking a shower with it shut and the fan on yesterday for the first time and I've seen much steamier rooms after a shower. The mirror was even usable.

Then, as for the garden - I have finally found my camera charger so I'll give you some updates. I'm not sure what day it was exactly but just before we moved into the house, I'll just say on 7/25, I planted a flat of new seeds. I kept forgetting to take pictures so you get to see them a month into growing. The seeds I ordered are all fast growing perennials so hopefully I can have them all flowering throughout the yard next spring. First, a picture of the little sprout, then the advertised plant:

Gazania Daybreak

I don't "love" Gazania but I'm giving them a chance. They're supposed to grow like crazy but not spread much so I think they'll be a good first stage plant even if I don't keep them. My parents have two of them so I know they're fast and very tough.

Lavender Lady

My third type of Lavender, hopefully they turn out as pretty as the pictures. I only have one type of lavender blooming right now and it's not the type I like, I'll probably get rid of it once the others start blooming.

Catmint Blue Carpet

Oh I can't wait for the blooms on these, such a beautiful blue. Stiggy might even like them, I get so many conflicting descriptions - some say Catmint isn't actually attractive to cats and some say it is. Regardless, this one I'll be carefully splitting into tons of plants, I want them all over the garden.

Festuca Glauca

These are one of my favorites - they need very little water, have a beautiful color, and very pretty seedheads. I planted one in my father's yard four years ago and we split it this summer into about 15 little ones.

Lambs' Ears
Ever since Patrick first saw this plant at the UC Botanical Garden, he's loved it. I can't think of another plant that he has really said he loved so I had to grow these for him. I love them too, they have the softest velvety leaves and they take almost no water.

Roman Chamomile

I just love the smell of chamomile and apparently ants do to, as they were swarming all over my hands when I split one of the pots last week.

I have all the little seedlings in little 3 or 4 inch pots in large rectangular flats out on the patio. They get pretty much full sun so they're all growing so much faster and looking much more healthy than the seeds I started at the condo. I just add water to the flat every two or three days and they don't seem to need anything. I'll just have to split them up soon into more pots so they don't strangle each other.

And now, I know the post has had too many pictures, but I have to add a couple very pretty shots of new roses we have in the garden. We're neither of us rose people but we bought so many established ones with the house that I'm trying to rehabilitate them. Everything else is weeds so these roses make me quite happy.

After the Move

2010-08-16T10:50:00.000-07:00

So we've been in the house now for just over two weeks and have been able to use our three weekends so far to bring a bit of order to the inside of the house. The outside may still have a lot of construction materials and a very bad looking propped up porch roof, but the inside is organized. (mostly).

Here is our living room the best looking area of the house at the moment. It looks much smaller and more crowded than it really is, partly because I wanted to have the sofas facing each other but not blocking the dining room entry. I really need to get a nice fish eye lens for my camera so it can look like we're living in a mansion. But it really does look smaller than it is.

And here is the beautifully refinished floor that I told you about. So many great lines and colors throughout the wood, it's the exact texture and color I would have wanted if I could have chosen new floors.

And here is the old old heater (or do you call it a furnace maybe?) in between the living and dining room. It may look its age and have a bit of paint on it from the previous owners poor painting jobs but it actually works. Without any modification. Although you do have to use a pair of pliers to turn it on because while there probably was a knob connected to it once, it certainly isn't there now. That goes on the search list - after all, it's an interesting piece and it will look nice once we clean it and paint it a nice nearly black color. Not to mention, best make it look nice and functional as it would cost thousands to remove it.

Here you see the living room from the dining room (bit of bad lighting in the picture, it's not so yellow). I'll agree with Patrick here that the sofa does not look good from this angle, blocking the passage, but it's the best place we can put it. Eventually we'll get a nice comfy chair for that corner and get rid of the loveseat. The blur around the light from the window shows our cheap one dollar shades from home depot. They really don't look bad. Certainly better than some pictures I've seen with sheets pinned up over the window. Once we repair the cracks in the walls and repaint, we'll chose curtains to go with the new colors.

Now, I won't show you another angle of the dining room because, really, there's nothing more to see except the still badly finished built-in and Patrick's messy electric piano.

The bathroom, however, is coming along - compared to the gutted hole from before. We have all the necessities - which is nice as I swore when I first saw that port-a-pottie in our yard that I would never use it. We have our brand-new clawfoot tub (in the end, after looking everywhere the only reasonable option - and easily the cheapest - was to buy new). You can see our beautiful tile and the old mats from our condo bathroom. You might also be able to see the gaping hole in the wall. That is where the previous owners had a toilet roll holder - our contractor removed it but I guess it took the wall with it. We want to eventually take off the remaining bead board and put up new stuff with a better technique. The other guys just tacked in up and left nail heads visible everywhere. It seems so stupid. I figure use screws at the very top under where the cap will be and at the very bottom under where the baseboard will be. But no accounting for all the crap they did.

Now look at the pictures below to find out what my little Stiggy's favorite thing to do is.

She is a real bathroom cat. The moment I'm even walking to the bathroom, there she is trying to squeeze herself in. And as we don't actually have a door to our bathroom right now, she has free range of it. It's really quite adorable, she's never more affectionate and playful than in the bathroom, she's always been that way. In the picture above she may look like she's just lounging about but she's rolling around and purring like crazy. I just barely got a picture in focus.

Anyway,

Here is the make-do kitchen. We have most of our appliances now, a new refrigerator and dishwasher. We got both at the Sears Outlet in San Leandro and they make me so happy, knowing how cheap they were. You know it's quite odd having a built-in dishwasher without the surrounding cabinet. Can you say over balanced? I'm pulling out the top rack, loading it for the first time and it begins to tilt, and I'm too slow to react so the bottom rack flies out and onto the ground in. Luckily all of the breakables already in the rack were okay. We now have a very heavily filled suitcase sitting on top of it.

See here our make-do oven, range, cabinets, workspace i.e. the table and floor i.e. the cardboard boxes laid about the room. But we've been over to Home Depot and planned out our future kitchen now and maybe this next week one of us will visit our credit union to see if we can get a two or three year loan to make it easier to afford. Our plan is for a kitchen as economical as possible while still looking good for resale.

We had chosen this style with MDF doors but then noticed that the white finish is applied after the door is put together making the corners and edges look really bad, so we changed to the painted maple which felt great under our fingers. It was an upgrade of about $1500 but the MDF was really ugly so I can't imagine the next buyers thanking us for the kitchen remodel. The countertops will definitely be of stone... eventually but to save the $1700-2000 it will cost, we'll put in laminate for about $200 and upgrade in a year or so.

Moving on...

Here's our new back of the kitchen configuration. That new corner houses our water heater, accessible from the outside only. Obviously, our laundry next to that, no pedestal for the dryer yet. But, really, no dryer yet because that one is electric and silly me, we don't have the correct 220 hook-up. So we're currently waiting for a good gas dryer to pop up on the Sears Outlet website in our itchy clothesline clothes. We'll get that one returned when we find the replacement and hopefully we'll get the restocking fee waived by buying the new one in the same place.

Next, our badly badly painted built-ins. I finally started my first DIY project - refinishing our kitchen built-ins. Above you see our first door missing. I used a heat gun to strip off the four layers of paint on the backside of that door - every color horrible to imagine. Then, after getting practice on the back of the door I turned it over and found out that there was only one thin layer of white paint on the outside. So the other owners took care of the nice finished outside of the cabinets up until the last poor paint job. And the wood for the cabinets - now I'm not exactly knowledgeable in this area but I think it looks like a beautiful redwood. You tell me. You can only just see the clean sanded wood in the picture below on the left side door.

These two doors show the progress we've made so far. I stripped the back of the left one to where it looks like the far right side of the right door. The right door is the interior side of one of the doors. I half stipped that with the heat gun and then we tried out a chemical stripper. When I found out that there was only one layer of paint on the outside of the doors, I also found out that the heat gun doesn't work very well on such a thin layer of paint. So as I went on to the next door, Patrick tried to sand off the thin layer which worked pretty well - you can see the smooth sanded middle of the door. Then, he went to get a chemical stripper to see if it would work any better. It was definitely easier - the part surrounding the sanded middle is what we had after two chemical layers were scraped off. He also tried it on the rest of the door that I was peeling and it worked quite well but I prefer using the heat gun I think.

In the closeup you can see the residue of the mushy paint which is left behind after scraping the chemicals off. With some washing I guess it will all come off but I kind of prefer the slow gentle removal using the heat gun. Though as we plan to paint the cabinets white again, we can probably just lightly sand the outside of the doors and cabinets and then repaint (still stripping the inside because there are so many layers).

Also, while I was using the heat gun earlier in the day, I was quite close to the paint on the outside of the house so I got a little curious and aimed the gun at it for half a minute. When it started to get all bubbly I scraped a bit off and found out that the pink isn't original. It seems our house used to be a very nice canary yellow. I would have much preferred that. Not that I've changed my mind - I still want blue in the future.

In the House

2010-08-06T09:10:00.000-07:00

So there's been a bit of a break since I last wrote but with good reason. I don't know where my camera is and I hate that I can't put up pictures to show what I'm talking about. But more than that, this weekend we finally moved into the house. The work was right to the wire. We were packing the van with help from two of Patrick's friends in the morning and in the afternoon had all but about three boxes worth of stuff in the house. But come evening, late evening, we still had carpenters and a plumber at the house.

There were quite a few repairs and updates that we were trying to squeeze in before we moved in - mostly for convenience and safety sake. We got the floors refinished - and here is were I'm loathe to describe it because it's nothing without pictures. I saw the finished product on moving day, just finished the night before, and it is gorgeous. A wonderful light mocha brown with a great variety of dark brown grains. It really does assure me of how beautiful the place will be.

So luckily, as we had a lot of boxes and furniture to move, the floor was nice and dry on Saturday. The reason that the carpenters were there was the back door. We didn't have one until Saturday. We arranged when work was started for a little reconfiguring on the backside of the house. I've already mentioned that the three small rooms were combined into one big kitchen and that was part of the original bid but then there was the problem of the laundry area and water heater. The three pieces had originally been hooked up to plumbing in the wall in the middle of what is now the kitchen so they had to be reinstalled and we decided to spend a little extra to make the area really work. We arranged with Abel to have the back door, on the extreme left of the back wall, moved over about 3 feet to accommodate a closet for the water heater that would be accessible from the outside. Next to that in the nook created by the closet and the original kitchen built-ins, the washer and dryer would sit. Well, the washer, because, I forget if I mentioned but the dryer was stolen (I still believe it was the brother who didn't want to sell the house). Anyway, the majority of the work for that project was finished well before Saturday but the back door still needed to be hung and a new functioning security door needed to be installed (the old one didn't function very well, bent in the robbery).

So that's the reason why the carpenters were there but the plumber had even more work to do. He was at the house working until nearly 10PM and the amazing thing to me is that he was still talking that late. He really likes to chat. All I was thinking was God, I want to go inside and fall onto the bed and he wouldn't stop talking. Then, I didn't want to be rude because he'd worked so long that day. Anyway, he had the most work to do. Saturday morning, he still had to install the vanity, the toilet, the washer, and the water heater. Fortunately, he'd already done all the below floor and in wall prep work for those things so it was just the final installation to be done. So he was working all day, right up to 10pm and we ended up with a functioning and hot water for a nice bath in the clawfoot tub.

Next, I'll find my camera and get some pictures in here to illustrate everything.

First Shovelfuls

2010-07-25T19:42:00.000-07:00

Last week on Sunday evening, we took out the hose to soak the ground at the back of the yard, preparing for our first transplant.

Patrick has started demolishing the small retaining wall and will soon be knocking rocks and concrete onto the old roses there, so we're moving them for their own safety. We started with preparing the new spot for it - digging into the soil for the first time, we were very happy with what we saw. After watering the area and preparing to dig a very difficult hole, I stood on our shovel for the first time and experienced something I've never experienced at my parents' house in Antioch. As I half-jumped on the shovel, I sunk nearly a foot down into the ground. Now, this area of California is prone to highly clay soil and our yard is no different. Over the past year I have been digging holes out in Antioch but I've just found out that the clay there and the clay here is very very different. Antioch being quite a bit inland compared to our new house, the clay is extremely compact and dense. But in our yard, it literally took only five minutes to dig a 2'x2'x1' hole for my mature rose (and that because I'm weak). The soil here must be well mixed with sand from the coast (maybe 2 miles away), because while it is still very much clay, it is infinitely softer than the stuff in Antioch.

The hole ready, we carefully tied the long gangly branches of the middle rose, an orange red one, and pried it up out of the ground. Not too difficult, I think we got most of the roots. Then, Patrick grabbed the base and carried it over to the hole and we firmly planted our first plant.

The next night, of course, I went over to the house and see that the rose is horribly wilted. So I soaked and soaked and soaked it again and will be back to check on it tonight. It hasn't been particularly hot so I hope it will perk up in the next couple days.

I also planted my first home grown plants. I started a lot of seeds in our condo this past winter and now, the ones that survived, are mostly trying to break out of their pots. My first selection was my Coreopsis. This winter was the first time I ever started seeds and these Coreopsis were my very first flowers from seed. Here are some pictures of my darlings slowly growing up.

And here they are in their new home.

I figure we'll start with a planting bed here in the back of the yard, slowly widening the non-crab grass and weed-free patches. I know that I should actually remove the grass and weed areas even farther from the plants than above but ugh, it's tiring getting that shovel through the weedy root zone and into the clay below. With each shovelful, we pretty much rip three inches off the top of the soil and throw it to the side to get rid of the weeds and roots. We're making a fair pile of castaways. I think we'll make a mound out of them in the back of the bed and eventually plant a shrub on top of it. Maybe a Ceanothus or a Redbud.

Lemons, Blackberries, and Roses

2010-07-15T13:40:00.000-07:00

Popping by the house last night, I was finally able to remember to take some pictures (after going back to the car for the camera). Like I wrote last week, I decided to let Patrick take off some limbs on the lemon tree. I did the supervising as he would have just cut off too much if he was in charge and we didn't cut far enough down on the major limbs because we don't have a small enough saw. But there's still a noticeable difference.

First

Second

Third

So... the tree has shrunk quite a bit... In fact, it looks just plain odd in person but it's better off for it. Now, you might say that from these pictures, we've butchered the tree but it has been so badly pruned so many times that those big side branches were corkscrewing their way into the canopy and completely tangled with all the other branches. We'd actually like to take off the one remaining side branch as well but that's probably half the remaining canopy. It will fill in more in the next year if we take care of it and prune a bit more the badly crossing branches but I don't know if we will. Patrick is more than ready to just chop it down. But I've decided that we have to plant some other trees before we can remove the lemon. I think we'll start with three trees - one near the back left corner, one nearly centered on the back fence and one a bit in front of the roses on the left side (moving the roses eventually as well as the wall).

Something else we'll be removing eventually are the blackberry brambles. We've cut away all the little start ups around the main stand already but I'm telling Patrick again to leave the bush for a bit longer. There are hundreds of little red and green berries on it, ripening up and as they look so nice, I say we have to wait until their all ripe and picked before we cut it down.

Personally, I've never really eaten many blackberries, but I could see keeping a few of the young canes for more berries next year. It really just depends on what we find when we cut into the bushes later this fall. If I can find a few tall, straight first year canes inside there, and if I can successfully transplant them, I'll make sure the fruit is really nice next year. But as is, they are just where I would like to put a couple of bushes and one really big tree eventually.

Lastly, the roses. You can see the bushes thinning out in the pictures above, but I'd like to give you a bit of proper before and after shots because that was quite a job.

And now for the after shots (Also you can see what I was saying about the wall yesterday)

Having not been pruned in a couple years probably, the bushes are now looking a bit thin. I took out all the weeds and dead branches and then some of the healthy growth that was in the completely wrong place but tried to leave as many leaves as possible. So now they are a bit taller than I would like, but once winter comes round, I will cut them all down and hopefully, they be more beautiful than ever next year.

Now to end this entry, I'll give you a couple of rose close-ups.

Thirsty Plants

2010-07-14T10:45:00.000-07:00

The plumbing was officially finished this last Saturday! If only we had a hose that I could have used right away, I know all the plants were dying of thirst but I started looking around for the old red hose we saw laying on the patio some time ago and found it was gone. Probably taken by the previous owner just like all the knobs from our built-in cabinets (lucky for us though he left us plenty of trash to compensate). So on Sunday, I forced Patrick out to Home Depot and we bought a hose, a hose reel and a longer shovel. The shovel because my coworker came to the house early Saturday to adopt some of the plants I don't like and found that we only had a useless half-size shovel. Also, there was just the one so I got to watch her digging in the dry dry clay for quite a while to get at the plants she wanted. She took away the Purple sea Lavender,the succulents by the garage, and a couple of Irises. Not that I dislike Irises, the ones we've inherited just need to be divided and replanted quite badly. I think they'll bloom big and blue next year from what my neighbor has told me.

When we got back to the house, we spread out the very kinky hose and turned on the water. Sadly, we found that the hose bib leaks quite badly in the on position. We put a bucket under it for the time being but will ask our contractor if he can fix it. Next, we found out that the nozzles we bought for the hose were rubbish. The water should naturally not flow when one isn't pulling on the trigger but the manufacturer apparently doesn't agree. So we had a small stream of water following us to each of the plants we watered. The poor roses who I've been so cruel to, pruning quite a lot off of them in the middle of summer with no drink afterwards - they finally got a good soaking. We continuously watered around everything for a good thirty minutes, then set to work at clearing weed grass. But I swear the ground was already dry again, everywhere. At my parent's house if I water one of the beds, I see run off almost straight away because of the bad clay but our ground was so dry it just soaked up gallons upon gallons without one little trickle running away.

While this picture is from before we watered that yard, it shows from a wider angle all the progress we've made. Sadly, you can see the construction debris still there, but Abel assures me it will be gone this week.

Also, a very nice discovery concerning our strange little retaining wall.

We originally thought, with the grass tall on both sides of the wall, that the wall was made of poured concrete and then topped with some landscape rocks but now that the weeds are mostly gone, we can see that it is actually made of a lot of very nice landscape stones. Whoever put it up must have laid a line of stones then with a form around it, poured a bit of concrete on top, then did three or four more layers of rock and concrete. It's still a horrible sight but now we figure, as the concrete is from a very bad mix, we can buy some hand chisels and get the stones out to use for our dry creek bed.

Clearing the Garden

2010-07-07T14:33:00.000-07:00

While the contractor set to work this last week, we also set to work on the garden area. Mostly working in the backyard, as there is nothing up front but weeds and grass. Well, except for one small street tree - a crape myrtle - and a bush next to our chimney. I weeded all around the curb and cut out the oversized bush completely. Then, I found a water spout hidden inside it! No wonder is was growing fast.

But, other than that, it's been the backyard. It turns out that Patrick does like working in the garden though in a predictable man-way. He likes using his power tools - mower and string trimmer - and using the big loppers. He would quite like to clear everything to the ground so I have banned him from the rose bushes and the magnolia tree (it may look sickly but we might be able to save it). After a couple of nights, the yard, excepting the rubbish pile, was looking quite a bit better.

From this:

To this:

By the way, look at the base of the Magnolia tree above, and you might be able to tell that there isn't a rotten branch coming out towards the camera anymore. There was one, to be sure, but as I was talking to Patrick about the magnolia tree, I hit the branch saying that it needed to be taken off and it fell right off! I'm not sure what that makes me think about bringing the tree back to health.

Anyway, we've gathered all the trimmings into our own rubbish heap just behind the garage.

While you're looking at the picture above, look at the strange shape of our lemon tree. It's a very nice tree, in that it has great lemons and seems disease free, but it has the strangest shape. We've cut quite a few lower branches off already to get to this point and there are definitely more coming off but we're quite sure now that we won't be able to make this look like a nice tree. It looks kind of nice in the picture above, but try another angle:

Actually, I'm getting tired of looking at the tree and wondering what it will look like with a few more cuts so maybe I'll focus on the tree when we go to the house tonight. I know Patrick will enjoy taking off the big branches hehe. At the least we can work at getting those two lower limbs off.

Starting Work

2010-07-05T19:29:00.000-07:00

Well, we closed just over five days ago and already our contractor, Abel Diaz of A&D Construction and his crew have put in four days of work (although I only have pictures of three). On the day we closed, Wednesday, when I got home, even though Patrick was on the couch with a headache and some bug he caught over the weekend, he wanted to go with me to the house (probably because he knew I was dieing to get started). So we went out, grabbed some pizza and went off to the house. We met Abel when we got there and had a short walk-through and gave him the keys so his crew could get in the next morning. So he left and we were again locked out of our house. But we weren't going to do anything in the house anyway.

We went out to the back and started hacking at the weeds. Patrick quickly decided it was useless not having a weedwacker and I agreed. So we did what we could and the next day came back with one.

However...

This is a picture of the result of the work that was done Thursday which made me quite happy and anxious to see the bare inside. Patrick may be looking a little cross but it's not at the mess. It's kinda because we couldn't go inside to see what had gone on... The crew started early at 7am and probably went home around 5, but we didn't manage to get there until 6:30 with our trip to Home Depot. So no one was there and we'd given our keys to Abel. Actually, even if we had an extra copy of the keys, we'd given them some new lock sets to install and forgot to open them first and get out the extra keys so we were locked out. I'd have called Abel, but I'd also forgot my phone... that's probably what's made Patrick look frustrated! hehe. So we simply went back home because all our garden tools were locked up and Patrick didn't want to weed whack without gloves and a mask (allergies) and these were locked up too.

But we could see that Abel and the crew had gotten a ton done (the dumpster will be there later this week). They'd already started demolishing the porch.

Then by the end of Friday, they'd finished the job.

As you can see, there's a small access problem at the moment but we don't have to worry about rain, as the roof is still on! It was about the only stable part of the old porch. They'll be rebuilding top to bottom I guess.

The other bit of progress is in the kitchen, see my semi-panorama, left to right:

They've yet to knock down the middle wall dividing the back of the room but they have removed the the bits perpendicular to it which made the doorways to the smaller rooms. The place already looks much bigger and brighter. You can see in the left picture where our washer, dryer, and water heater (in a cabinet) will be, next to the original cabinets we will refinish later. And here's a better picture of them since I didn't have one earlier.

Of course, I haven't actually taken a picture of the full cabinets... Silly me, there are two more panels to the left without a gap in the middle.

They also managed to gut the bathroom in the two days before the weekend - normally they work Saturdays, but they took this one off for the 4th. So your first pictures of our bathroom are just of the the bare floor boards and the toilet the previous owners must have had for two decades before selling.

There used to be a horrendous one piece shower stall connected to the protruding pipes behind which the toilet hid, nearly invisible. But gladly, that is now in pieces in our back yard rubbish heap.

Now, that's about it, no rebuilding happening as of the 4th, but they've been working all done today and as we're (reluctantly myself) taking a night off from gardening so we'll have to see what's been going on tomorrow. But as I have a few better pictures of other areas of the house, here they are:

The doorway to the bath and two bedrooms which they're widening for us.

View into the living room from the dining room.

And our now superfluous front door.

Next, I'll show you the progress we've made from going every night to the garden since last Wednesday.

It's Ours

2010-06-30T13:18:00.000-07:00

I got an text message from my Realtor at 12:16 and it's officially ours! We're now the owners of record.

Wow, I've been looking at houses for over a year now, how the hell am I going to fill my time now, hah

The Plans - The Garden

2010-06-27T21:00:00.000-07:00

Oh, there are so many things to be done in the garden, it's hard to know where to start. Once we close escrow (updated expectations are this Tuesday), we'll attack the weeds and overgrown... everything. As we'll need to get a cashier's check and go into title to sign the papers on Tuesday, I'm planning on taking the day off and going to the house straight after to finally attack the weeds that I've just had to look at each time I've visited the house in these past three and a half months. As for the new design, I've already drawn probably a dozen overhead views trying to figure out what to do and have a pretty good idea for it but we won't really know how plausible it is until we start the work. But whatever the end layout ends up being I know the elements I'll want to put in. So what I'll do is tell you those and that will give you a good idea of what we're hoping for in the end.

1. Lots of Trees - I want proper shade in the end for our hot midsummer days. I hate flat expanses, with no chance for cover. I want to have one tree that will become very large with age for the middle, slightly rear area of the garden, probably where the lemon is now. Yes, the lemon will go. I like it very much but the tree is a very strange shape because it's been badly pruned numerous times - I'll take pictures of it some time later. For that big tree, I'm thinking a black oak right now.

Beautiful leaves and branching structure, Great fall color and a good source of food for all the little animals I'd like to attract. After the oak, I'd like some fruit trees - a new lemon, a cherry and a nectarine for Patrick. Then one or two beech trees for near the house. (And I won't go into shrubs and things smaller than that just now)

2. Dry Creek Bed - Running through the whole backyard from the upper right to the lower left. It'll help with drainage during the rainy season and also help the soil retain more of the run off as it changes the direction of the flow and slows it down (at least this is what I've heard - and it will look cool! hehe).

3. Pergola - In the rear left corner of the yard for our instant shade, draped in wisteria. Although I'm not sure how well that will work now that I've discovered grape vines coming over from the neighbors yard in that corner. I guess if they grab onto the pergola and intertwine with the wisteria that won't be a problem, it's probably more likely that the wisteria will get out of control I guess. I'll try planting it next to the farthest post from the grapes. I'll also want to hang a swinging wooden bench from the pergola, I've always liked the idea of having a nice wide and deep bench swing. We could even put in cushions.

4. Sitting Area around a Fire Pit - Just in front of the pergola I'm thinking. With flagstones or decomposed granite and Adirondack chairs and a round cauldron like fire pit.

5. Stone Retaining Wall - This will be our first construction project probably. A proper retaining wall just in front of the dinky one already there. We'll build it with cinder blocks and eventually, if not immediately, face it with stone veneer. Proper veneer though - not the slabs that are made to look like six small pieces of stone but individual pieces with no grout showing between them. Since the cinder block wall will be cheap and effective, we can build that and then add on the cosmetic facing later if it turns out to be expensive. We'll dig a small trench to start the wall and then regrade the sloping bottom half, dumping the excess behind the wall to build up the higher level. To get rid of the old one foot wall made of various bricks and cement (...yeah, I don't know why), we will get a jackhammer from the Oakland Tool Lending library and then bury the bits behind the new wall! hehe (I like the wall part of the picture below, not the steps)

6. Lawn - Well, we've got to have a small bit of turf, Patrick wants to have it besides it's traditional. On the lower level, we'll have a brick patio extending along the right side to the stairs in the retaining wall, then next to that the dry creek, and on the left a small circle of turf accessible by a flat wooden bridge we'll make ourselves.

Prospect Mortgage 2

2010-06-23T09:09:00.000-07:00

Sorry to bring another escrow post but I was looking through the last one all night, trying to find reason in what has happened. Of course, I still don't see it anywhere but I did think this morning to look back a bit farther and find out when exactly XXXX received my file again... Now, XXXX wasn't actually the first man from Prospect that I worked with, I originally got my pre-approval from ZZZZ but then ZZZZ quit, suddenly, after a week of very strange communications with my Realtor and me. We were certainly getting frustrated with him as he wasn't responding to calls or e-mails and was pretty much giving us a good idea of things to come, although at the time, we thought this was just him...

So XXXX first received my file, according to the e-mail pass-off I received from ZZZZ on or slightly before May 7th Chyeah! (excuse the abnormal English but there is no other way to express it.) He received what was supposed to be a complete file from ZZZZ, except for appraisal information because that hadn't taken place yet, on May 7th. On that day came the first documentation update:

May 7 - They request a new copy of my bank statement and our latest paystubs. That makes sense, I last submitted them over a month ago so new ones should be available. I forward them the same day.

May 12 - They request the final signed contract from our contractor, we thought this was finished earlier with documents we submitted in April but XXXX told us that those weren't the correct forms. We got this finished within the day, even though it involved going back and forth with our contractor, and in the meantime found another document that needed signing and forwarded that to XXXX.

May 14 - Our appraisal inspection is scheduled for May 17th! Celebrating all round (as it's finally been done - yes, there were plenty of delays on that front too)

May 17 - Over the weekend, we received a big bundle of papers from prospect and weren't sure if we needed to send them back with our signatures or not - we hadn't received any notice or explanation at all. So I write to him Monday saying I think that these must be our copies but I'm not sure.

No response for two days...

May 19 - XXXX emails us saying sign them and fax or email them back to him. Short email, just like that... Then I have to scramble to get those 50 pages signed and scanned. I'm able to get them to him on the next day.

By the way, at this point it's been a week since the appraisal took place and we've had no word about it, even though we specifically asked if it went well. Our emails were just ignored.

May 21 - Tom asks for a letter signed by Patrick and Me explaining our employment history for the past 2 years... Well, this wasn't a problem since I'd already made this for ZZZZ! I forward it to him, sadly, not until Monday (my one long response).

May 22 - Now here's a big one that may explain why I'm writing another entry about this. My Realtor had emailed XXXX asking about the timeline, if we'd be able to make it, etc. He wrote this back:

I expect this file will be out of underwriting by Friday of next week. Have a great weekend!

Best,
XXXX
Senior Loan Officer,

And OMG, I had a great weekend, planning my garden and all the gardening I would be doing on the weekend of May 29-30!!

Then as the weekend is approaching, we're not getting any emails....

May 28 - Then he responds to my email (again his words exactly):

Hi XXXX,
Just want to ask what the status of the loan is, will underwriting be finished today?

Thank you,
Jennifer

------------------------

Given end of month and holiday. Tuesday is the when expect to have your file back from underwriting.

Best,
XXXX

And after that, we were still cautiously optimistic, it's been nearly a month but hey, it's a house, and we do have difficult histories. However, as you know if you saw yesterday's post, our next communication is on June 1st and we were nowhere near finished. ::sigh::

Prospect Mortgage

2010-06-22T16:06:00.000-07:00

Yet again... I don't know how they can possibly find ways to delay our escrow more every day, but somehow they do. I want to make it clear right off that if you ever come across Prospect Mortgage, do not work with them! I began the process of pre-approval for an FHA 203k loan with one of their lending agents in early February this year... February... We were pre-approved fast enough to put an offer on the house this blog is about on March 9th.... March 9th and now we find ourselves here on my birthday, June 22nd, still not closed.

I will admit, we may have been closed by now if we were buying a different house - Our Fairfax house is owned by two feuding brothers, who won't talk to each other except through lawyers. Both brothers accepted our offer originally but when we came back after inspections with a significantly lower number (the highest we could offer with our loan! Not trying to swindle two old men here) the second brother no longer agreed. But we didn't know this until three weeks after we submitted our contingency papers... Because the second brother, probably to spite the other one, went on a two week cruise the day before our papers were due... without telling anyone. Oh god, this seems funny now, compared to this ordeal with Prospect Mortgage. So, at the last minute, when I was past heartbroken and completely giving up (about to try for another house I'd found in a worse neighborhood) the 2nd brother came back and signed the papers. Apparently, his son questioned his reasoning and convinced him not to waste this chance just to spite his brother.

Now, though, after overcoming all the problems with the brothers, I have had to deal with these guys. Luckily, being 3 weeks past contract day doesn't matter much to the brothers - this is the weirdest purchase ever... Anyway, our loan officer turned in our papers to underwriting on June 1st (I have e-mails confirming this too... so sad) and on June 2nd, they gave us a long list of conditions to complete and send in. I did that in 2 days flat! Was very proud of myself and thinking that finally we'll be able to close. But more was to come... I think I'll change formats now to a list.

June 7: Two more conditions for Underwriting. One, I needed to give them my landlord's contact information... for about the third time. Two, they needed Patrick's 2007 and 2008 US Tax Returns............ PATRICK IS NOT A US CITIZEN AND ONLY CAME HERE IN 2009!!!!! OMG that one really pissed us off. Regardless, we cleared that up by repeating the information we'd already given prospect 3 times.

June 7 - Same day, I needed to get them a copy of my 2008 returns because, they guessed, I had spelled something wrong in the transcript request form I gave them - easily managed, I sent them the original copies that I sent to the IRS.

No word for two days.

June 9 - They needed a copy of my contractor's builder's license and proof of insurance - within the same day, I got those papers to them.

June 10 - They send us a link to an absolutely asinine online quiz for new homeowners. They wanted us to pass it and send them the certification I received at the end. You should take a look. Of course, that was finished in 4 minutes.

June 10 - Late in the evening: They need contact information that they already have for my husband's previous employer in Japan - Easy, I copy and pasted the phone number. Next, they say they cannot get a copy of my 2008 Tax return, so ask me to call the IRS.... The IRS didn't have my 2008 on file....... Big freak-out here and so many questions. How did I get approved without my tax records? Are we going to lose the house because the IRS won't be able to process my return for a month or more? I called the lender and he told me I could turn in my return at a local office and received a stamp to prove it, so it's just a day's delay. Phew

June 11 - I went to the local IRS office and get my return stamped and turned in. Then, I forwarded the return to Prospect. All was finished...

June 11 - After my lunchtime trip - Prospect cannot dial international numbers so they need an e-mail for Patrick's previous employer... I gave them the e-mail but then pleaded with them to call via Skype or using the international dialing codes which I looked up for them... but then I realized that it was Saturday in Japan already... so we were delayed until Monday.

June 13 - I wasn't going to wait and see if the previous employer would reply to their email. I called her on Sunday - her Monday - and made sure she did. Sure enough, the email I had was her old one so she wouldn't have replied if I hadn't called.

June 14 - They needed our contractor to add an addendum to our contract for two more items... I do my best to get them to do it but it takes a whole day for me to get the addendum back to Prospect (due to their unclear instructions I may add).

Now this is getting hair pulling, lay down and cry frustrating for me but the loan officer wrote this to me on the 14th (his grammar mistakes):

Look good to me, I will ask u/w to clear your file for loan doc draw. I anticipate we should have docs to title by Friday.

No more word until the 17th when I write this to the loan officer:

Hi XXXX,

I haven't heard anything in the last two days - this is a good thing right? Have the docs been sent to title?

Thank you,
Jennifer

He replies and again, between my e-mail above and his above that, we didn't have any contact at all:

I expect final u/w sign off on Friday and docs by Tuesday next week.

Best,
XXXX
Senior Loan Officer

........As if the unexplained delay wasn't hard enough....

June 18 - They again request Patrick's 2008 US Tax Returns... This time Patrick calls them personally and writes a new explanation letter (we had written one before and sent it twice) and scans in his Alien Registration card and send both together. Oh BTW here's the e-mail we got announcing this new hiccup (And no, our last names are not stows):

I am learning with you on this. Please read chain below and get Payrick's stows 2008 returns. Seems as this is a Government loan we have to play it be the letter. Sorry.

June 21 - This is the vacation day I arranged a week and a half ago, so that I could have fun working in the garden of my new house.... We need further employment verification with the same company for Patrick because the manager they've corresponded with put the wrong dates in her responses. So I call her directly, make sure she responds to their e-mail, and she sends a copy to both of us, confirming the dates.

June 21 - One hour later - The underwriter only now! sends the manager and us a form to fill out to complete the verification (Is this intentional?? How can this be??) I call her again and apologize about ten times, asking her to respond to this new e-mail and she does.

June 22 - Today I am proactive. I send this e-mail and get these responses...

Hello XXXX,

Can you confirm for me that the underwriting is done on our file and that docs are being requested?

Thank you,
Jennifer

------------------------------

All I am waiting on is the VOE from Oakland Unified. Then I can take it to XXXX to sign off.

XXXX

------------------------------

Thanks for the answer. May I ask, when was the verification requested? This morning or last week? If it was last week I would just like to know who it was sent to because I don't mind doing some extra work to make them send it back faster. I also know that Oakland schools are now in summer recess so I worry about where this was sent.

Jennifer

------------------------------

They use a verification service I just found out….Patrick needs to call: Written/Verbal Employment Verification: (xxx) xxx-xxxx… they will provide him with a salary key that will allow me to verify his employment with them

Thanks,
XXXX

------------------------------

(BTW that number they sent was wrong. After an hours work figuring out what to do, Patrick gives them the information over the phone. Then, I wait half an hour...)

------------------------------

I believe that Patrick talked to the underwriter about half an hour ago, giving him the information needed to verify employment. As it is done through an automated system, I assume his employment has been verified now. Are docs now being requested on our file?

Thank you,
Jennifer

------------------------------

Underwriting confirmed that he was good and he moved the file to in line for docs.

Best,
XXXX
Senior Loan Officer

Now we wait and see...

The Plans - The House

2010-06-20T19:26:00.000-07:00

Sometime in college, I went to visit family in the mid-west and was bored to death by programs they were watching on TLC about fixing up homes and gardens and redecorating. But while I remember disliking the programs during that whole trip, they did somehow grow on me and there began my interest in buying a fixer-upper. Also, I already knew that I have very strong opinions on style and quickly realized that a fixer would always be my only real chance of having the right design throughout my home. Besides, I love the idea of getting what I love at a better price by doing it myself.

My interest in gardening didn't begin until I came back home after university. I had nothing to do for nearly three months before I went to my teaching job in Japan so I explored the bookstores and found out that you actually have to know a lot to garden well. I already knew my dad's garden was just hanging in there and decided to use the time to help it out. I was able to prune trees that had turned into bushes in the front yard and encourage a bit of redesign before I left. Now, almost four years later, it's quite a different sight (still could use a bit of work though).

So, luckily, Patrick doesn't think these two strong interests of mine are too crazy and agrees that this house we're buying now should end up quite a good investment. Right now, it's just about the worst house on a pretty nice block and in the end, when we grow out of the two bedroom house, we figure we can sell it for quite a profit.

So, onto the plans. First, we're buying this house using a FHA 203k loan which provides us with extra money up front for repairs - in our case, just under 60k. And, believe me, it needs every penny and a bit more actually. The pest report alone came back at 30k hehe. That interesting front porch is completely unsound... YAY! I can't stand that porch - with it's ugly columns, concrete flooring and side entrance. We're going to have our contractor, Abel, and his crew knock that down to the ground and rebuild it as a more classic front-entrance one. The front of our house will look something like this drawing I made up (except I just threw in plants - I don't have a final design for the front garden yet)

But as for the color, I'm quite sure that we've decided on this or something slightly more teal. Other changes to the front that we'll have to handle ourselves (no money for Abel to do this much) include: opening up the street planting bed in front of the house and far in the future redoing the driveway, probably with pavers but definitely with a green strip down the middle. They're not in this picture but we'd like to have a tall tree on each side of the street planter or front garden. I want to be able to look out the window and see through the leaves.

Next, to the inside of the house, here is a scale diagram of the floorplan as we eventually want it.

In the front room, you can see the sofa set and coffee table that we already have, I just wanted to see if they would fit or not. We'll probably put them this way at first and then replace the small sofa with two chairs eventually - one near the fireplace and one in the back corner. The colors are all undecided except perhaps the front room, we both like the idea of green. One of the first things we'll be doing ourselves inside are the built-ins and baseboards - we'll be refinishing it all and painting most of it white except possibly for the china-cabinet and the fireplace. We'll have to see if it's all in good quality under the current finish.

The kitchen is shown more like it will be when we're finished - it's much smaller currently with two small rooms at the back. We'll have Abel tear down the T-shaped wall at the back and open the room up to what will be 15' x 15 1/2'. Once open, I'd like to have large diamond patterned dark gray and nearly white tiles with white kitchen cabinets. I don't have a picture before but there are also built-in cabinets on the right side of the kitchen that we'll refinish and paint white.

The bathroom will have white wainscoting and the classic white and black hexagonal tile. We were going to do this ourselves but as Abel will be gutting the room (termite/dry rot damage) and we would have to do the tile before having the clawfoot tub we're buying installed, we probably wouldn't be able to arrange it in a timely manner. And of course, we won't be able to move in until the bathroom is done and we want to move in as soon as possible. Here are some good illustrations of the style we're planning on. The numerous differences, I'll go over later as it's happening.

The "Garden"

2010-06-19T21:59:00.000-07:00

It's a real pity that I can't show you pictures of the worst condition the garden has been in this year. Apparently, I hear from my realtor, Patty Hyun (Highly highly recommended!), that the neighbors complained to the city of Oakland to get them out to the house and fine the two brothers who own it as they'd let everything go far too much to seed. The grass was four feet high throughout the back and mercifully the front was only two and a half feet tall. There were huge thorny towers of weeds just as tall. I'm not terribly familiar with weed types although I'm sure I will be soon enough. Some of these giants I'm sure are the type you usually step on in the lawn, curse, then rip out at only an inch tall - but they were as high as my chest. After the city got onto them, one of the brothers apparently went out and used a strimmer on the majority of the grass and I'd, of course, forgotten to take pictures when I visited the week before. But I got ones of the aftermath which looks almost worse for being able to see more of the plants behind the grass.

So let's start the tour at the back of the house going toward the back of the yard.

Here you see our lovely red cement patio with it's decorative grass growing between the slabs. Also, you can see a small example of our patio furniture - it does seem that the debris there and much more will be coming with the house as it still hasn't been cleared out. Among the weeds, there is a rose bush, some kind of bulbous plant showing its broad leaves and two big Oleanders (only one having nearly pretty flowers).

A step further along and you can see the rest of our left-side neighbor's garage and quite a few more weeds. Strangely enough, though, there are quite a few interesting plants as well. The lemon is pretty obvious with some of its fruit hanging at the top - delicious, by the way, we've already absconded with about 10 lemons and made one batch of lemonade with more to come. There are at least four different rose bushes, all of them far overgrown but in great condition. When I was out this time, I had my clippers with me so I cut a bunch of long stem reddish orange roses for Patty and took a bunch of reddish pink ones for myself. There's also a hidden red pelargonium somewhere in the corner, I've seen its leaves poking through the rose bushes. Then, in the very middle is a Sea Lavender or Statice - not really my style plant. There's also a small clump of Aeonium or some such succulent behind it. I was thinking I'd just have to throw them out but found yesterday that a co-worker of mine would gladly take them both off my hands. Lastly, if you want to see those huge weeds, take a slightly closer look around those roses.

Now a small look back before continuing:

Also, as a small side note, you may be able to see that our garage is a bit lacking in, let's say, structural rigidity... but that's okay! We'll be knocking it down and getting a new one built. But more on that later.

Moving on, behind the garage, I don't have picture of it but there's a nice green and yellow mat of Oxalis pes-caprae! It should be a fun adventure trying to root out all those tiny little pests. One good thing is that the area where they seem to be most prevalent is just behind the garage and we plan on pushing back the earth behind a retaining wall there.

In this picture, you can see our sprawling overgrown blackberry bushes. Silly me, I didn't know what these were until the other day, thinking they were some kind of weedy single white roses or something. But despite not being cared for at all for at least a couple years, these vines are setting fruit right now. I could see the half berries half flowers yesterday when I went by the house to steal lemons.

Notice the large number of plants in that small corner too. There are tons of blackberry vines now flowering and numerous little blackberry sprouts, as well as nasturtiums, oxalis, grass (of course), and two very deformed pear trees. One in the front obviously, though again very badly pruned, and one swallowed up by the vines in the corner (I just discovered it as I was uploading the picture actually!). And somewhere deep in there, one more rose with deep pink flowers.

Now, only two more turns and we're through. Next is the other back corner - a mass of tall weeds and grape vines coming over the fence from our rear neighbor.

But wait, when I went in the tangle yesterday to see if there was any fruit developing on the vines, I found that they were clinging to something growing on my side of the fence. Not sure yet what it is with all the vines and weeds in the way but I think it might be some new fruit to be identified.

Lastly, our pretty but battered looking Magnolia tree. I'm not sure yet what type of Magnolia it is but at least I know it's not the type I hate - I can't stand the ones with dark green and copper colored leaves. It had quite large saucer-type blossoms when we first went into escrow and now has very nicely soft light green leaves. Hopefully, I'll be able to prune, feed and water it and the other desirable plants in the garden to health.

Beginning

2010-06-19T15:49:00.000-07:00

To begin.... I guess I'll introduce the family. There's me, Jennifer, who will be making this blog; also, author of most of the plans that will be unfolding here, amateur photographer, gardener and landscape designer. Gardening is only a recent interest of mine but once I found it, the interest became somewhat of an obsession. I love gardening and would like to be doing it everyday... I would like to be gardening right now in fact... but the reason why I can't be doing that will come later!

Then, there's my husband, Patrick - Teacher, British expat, and all in all not very interested in the whole gardening thing (at least he hasn't shown me any sign of being so yet). We found each other while in Japan teaching English or rather, mostly performing English to people who very rarely got within speaking distance of a real live white person. Since then, we married and moved to America, near where I grew up in the bay area, California. It's now been just over three and a half years since we first went out.

Then there are the two little ones - Kiwi and the Stig - One old cat that used to be fat and isn't anymore, and one young cat that is steadily getting fatter. I think living in a condo isn't doing our Stiggy well because she's very energetic and as she has no outlet, she does tend to bully poor Kiwi. But Kiwi isn't loosing weight from depression! She just finally has a proper diet whereas at my parents house, she used to be able to eat dry food and wet food until she would be sick.

Then, there's our newest addition and the reason for this blog in the first place - Our Project Fairfax.

No... I didn't see my dream house when I first saw this place but I was won over eventually. Now it seems my dreams are full of nothing but this house and it's "garden" excepting all the stuff that doesn't ever make any sense.

Our new little home, where we will hopefully be moving mid-July is quite the fixer-upper as I'm sure you can imagine from the picture above alone. But I'll further prove it to you by giving you pictures that show the inside of the house to finish out this entry. More on the outside later - because I'll need a lot of entries to get through all the things we need to do, not to mention to tell you about how horrid this whole process has ended up being (as long as, we do actually close escrow this next week....)

Above is our front room, the major flaw here isn't apparent from the picture though: The floor, or rather the whole room is tilting just a smidgen towards the right corner of this picture. From that corner to the opposite one behind the camera there is probably about an inch difference in elevation. Seems like a small number, but it's noticeable walking around the room.

As we walk through the house, you next see the dining room and its nice bare splintering spot just behind the table in this picture. Potentially beautiful built-in cabinet there - it's currently covered very sloppily in an almost shellac finish and the drawers mostly have no bottoms. BUT not wanting to be too negative, we have wonderful plans for all of this, I'm just giving you the starting point now.

Behind the Dining room, you have the kitchen with funky 70s or 60s linoleum chuck full of asbestos. Here you can see the nice oven/stove we're getting though, and then what you can't see is the brand new washer dryer behind me. You should be able to see though the strange markings on the wall behind the stove - we believe those are glue marks from wood paneling that used to be there. I can't imagine how brown and ugly this kitchen must have been in it's heyday.

Last for today, here is the back bedroom. Yeah, the people before us really had no sense for paint colors. There's also a front bedroom, slightly bigger and a small bathroom - 7' x 7 1/2' - but I don't have pictures of those just now.

I hope this has been interesting, next I'll endeavor to explain what we'll be doing to all this or maybe I'll explain the garden - we'll see.