The Side Yard is done

Yesterday at about noon, I proudly announced to Bug that I was done digging. I heard a giggle behind me - the neighbor (who was working on his own home project) had heard me. The rest of the day was spent leveling/regrading, hauling dirt to level/grade some more, and digging out the end of the driveway, which we are expanding, so that when a truck delivers our sub-base this week we have somewhere to put it.

Once the dirt was in a state that we deemed acceptable, we hit it with some bug killer (we've been trying the Eco Sense, kid and pet friendly, organic stuff) and then the seed mix that I posted about last week - it has the seed, mulch, and fertilizer all in one. I think it cost ~$35 at Costco. One bucket was just about exactly the amount we needed for this project. We have a bag of just seed, too, that we'll use once this starts growing and we can see how thick it'll grow in.

A view from our driveway, looking back at the jungle (our house is on the right hand side).


View from our sidewalk looking towards the neighbors' house.


The kitchen is next up.

Rain, rain, go away...

Victory is so close with the side yard, but the forecast is not promising for getting it done until at least Saturday, probably more like Sunday or later. Stupid rain.

My scanner doesn't want to work right now, or else I'd post a schematic of what we have done/are doing over there. Basically, if you look at our house from the street, it is roughly a square, sitting back about 20 feet or so from the road. To the immediate left of the house, starting at the back end of the front porch (so, the front wall of the house) and extending straight to the road, is the driveway, wide enough for two cars (barely). Immediately to the left of the driveway is our neighbors' walkway, and their house sits right behind that. We also have a walkway that runs the length of the left side of the house, leading to the back yard.

So that rectangle that is bordered by our driveway, the neighbors' house, our side walkway, and the back "jungle" hill that drops to our backyard, is the "side yard" that I'm talking about.

Last year, that rectangle was bordered on three sides (all but the jungle, which is its own border) by overgrown Siberian Irises, some hasta, and other miscellaneous flora whose name I haven't a clue. I like Siberian Irises; I don't mind hasta. Each of the plants in that bed is nice and I have no particular gripe with any of them. Until they get overgrown, look like crap, and impede my travel down the sidewalk. Siberian irises spread like the plague. And unlike hasta, when they're done for the year, their seed pods don't drop off by themselves. They can actually stay somewhat rooted and require some heft to pull them out, especially if you don't want to break the stems. Their roots go for miles, and if you don't get every single piece out, they'll resprout on you.

So I nuked the bed. I dug down 12 inches or so to try to get as much of the roots as possible. It took a good month plus to get it all out, especially with ~D moving on to another section while I was still working on the previous one. I finally got it all dug out, leveled, and started to put in a stone "wall" to demarcate flower bed from grass. It came out looking fantastic. It gently curves, making a nice asymmetric space. I put in some spring and summer bulbs, gladioli, Dutch wind flowers, Mexican shellflower, and Persian buttercups, and have also put in a few annuals that I picked up at the farmer's market a couple of weeks ago: daisies, million bells, and some greenery. There's now some red mulch in there. It's starting to look lovely!

The last phase of this project is to get rid of all of the grass (more importantly, the weeds) in the middle of the rectangle. We started a month or so ago, but due to travel, weddings, and other obligations, have not been able to get it all dug up yet. It really goes fast when we have the opportunity to work on it. I hoped to get it all done, leveled, and seeded this week, but we're now on day two of unceasing rain, and it's supposed to carry on tomorrow, as well. Fortunately, we only have a few more hours of digging left. It just needs to stop raining.

As an FYI: We bought a big tub (from Costco) of Scott's seed, fertilizer, and mulch combo. Supposedly if the mulch is light brown, it needs water, and if it's dark brown, it's all set. We'll see how well it does.

Catching up

I know, it's been more than a year. If anyone is out there...

So what's happened in the past 15 months at my house? We got the craft room done!

Here's the before picture:


And here's how it looks now:





That's been about it for inside work that's been finished.

We've just started the process to paint our kitchen. We can't do a full kitchen remodel just yet, but we figure a new coat of paint, getting rid of the wainscoting, and maybe some peel-and-stick vinyl tile will help the kitchen look better. We're slowly peeling down the wallpaper as we walk past it. After we've recovered from our recent trip to CA for my sister's wedding (congratulations J & C!) and our best friends' wedding this weekend (hooray, S & Tica!), and things settle a bit from the busy spring we've had, we'll start in earnest. We picked up paint yesterday. So olive green for the walls, and off-white with a yellow-antiquing technique for the cabinets.

As for the antiquing - the people at Lowe's weren't terribly helpful yesterday. I hope I ended up with the right kind of glaze. We'll have to see. I got a small sample-sized jug of latex paint in the color we want, and a jug of clear mixing glaze. My plan is to brush it on, let it sit 15-20 minutes, then wipe it off. If all goes well, it'll stick to the crevices, giving it an antiqued look. The people at the store kept looking at an ugly pewter-colored "antique glaze", which looked like it was meant more for metallics than the effect I'm looking for.

We had tried a crackle glaze (testing on the wainscoting) and didn't like the effect. So we'll see how this one turns out.

Other than that, our spring was filled with nuking the side flower bed. By way of description - our driveway sits to the side of our house, with a small yard (our "side yard") at the end of it, directly beside the house. That yard was filled with horribly overgrown siberian iris and hasta, among others. While trying to clean it out, I grumbled to ~D about how I hate the irises (pretty, but I'm sick of them!). His brilliance came through when he said "so get rid of them." Thus began a 2-month or so long project to eradicate the irises. I'm still pulling them up on occasion, but the entire thing got nuked, reshaped, and replanted with other things.

I'll describe it a bit better later - my day at work here is done and I need go pick up my Bug from daycare.

I promise I'll try to be better at posting (if anyone is interested - feel free to comment if you are!)