The evolution of a garden

My wonderful wife has been wanting a garden to plant flowers and vegetables in since we moved in. We weren't sure where we wanted to put the garden though and it took our green thumb neighbor to come over and offer some advice and design tips on where it should go.

I created a plan in Google's SketchUp (that went through several iterations with the design approval committee). We started last year with a small inner square that was functional but wasn't the final look that we were going for. . .
Step #1 - Kill grass - Somewhat ironic after all the trouble we went through to actually get grass here.
By July of 2010, we had veggies and flowers. . .


This year, we enlarged the garden from 16' x 16' to 27' x 27'.
Purchase five tons of crushed Pennsylvania redstone, 300' of edging material, and add labor. Keeping the edging in place before the stone and dirt were added took over a hundred wood stakes.

How things are currently looking as of this rainy morning.

Front Landscaping

It's been a busy year for me professionally. I received a promotion in the summer of '09 which greatly increased the number of hours I work and consequently put a damper on projects around the house (as well as my blogging).
One of the things at the top of the list this year was to landscape the front of the house. I knew that I wouldn't have the time to do this job myself, consequently we wound up hiring a contractor to put in a walkway and retaining wall.
I gave the contractor some artistic license to define the shape of the walk, which is about 70' long. We gave him less license on the shape of the retaining wall, but he took some there too. . .
Once the hardscaping was done, we took over to create the flower beds. A portion of our septic system is right in the front yard, therefore the flower beds were designed to cover up all but one of system's various covers.
We then hit the nursery sales and got some great deals on plants and shrubs due to the fall closeout sales. With the plants in, mulching was next. Due to 20 cubic yards of mulch required, I rented a Bob-cat to spread the mulch around. My back was happy I did.

The landscape supply house had some great straw netting which is really helping our grass get established.

End of Summer - sigh. . .

Well, it's been a busy summer. I received a temporary promotion about the same time as I installed the kitchen faucet. Shortly after my temporary stint ended, I received a permanent promotion. Consequently, the amount of free time has drastically been reduced. But the summer has not been without it's projects.

The grass growing project went well. We didn't lose any topsoil thanks to the mesh/straw material we purchased at Lowes. I still have some work to do this fall to overseed some small bare areas.
I also finished off the dining room moulding project. It turned into more work than I was anticipating and it didn't help that after painting the walls high gloss, I painted the trim with flat. Grabbed the wrong can of paint and wound up finishing the repainting 15 minutes before company stopped by. Still want to install some crown moulding.

We also just painted my youngest's bedroom. Very girly pink. We're still trying to figure out what to put above the bed.
In addition, she repainted her desk with a slightly pink white. New desk hardware.
This swag light, which was a gift to my daughter from my sister, meant running new wiring through the attic.

More to follow. . .

Our summer vacation

Simply put, our vacation in the Adirondacks was one of the best vacations we've had. The house we rented was beautiful. Three boats on a lake, gourmet kitchen, hiking, fishing. . . It was a very restful time and was the opposite of our on-the-go Disney vacation.

Sometimes it's the little things. . .

My wife had been asking for a new kitchen sink faucet. The faucet that the builder installed, while fine, lacked a sprayer. So for her birthday, I surprised her with a new faucet. Saturday was the day to install it. Removing the old model was simple enough. However I realized that the connections on the new faucet were not in the same location as the old faucet, which meant that I would have to modify the plumbing. Our house has PEX tubing and initially I thought I would have to get an expensive crimping tool. Fortunately Home Depot had special connectors for PEX tubing which doesn't require any special tools.

It's great when a job goes smoothly and quickly.

Yesterday's other task was to reprogram the ceiling fan in the family room. The fan and it's remote control both have several jumpers that can be removed to make them unique to other fans in the area. When I had installed the fan, I had thought that changing the jumpers was unnecessary since our neighbors were far enough away. Unfortunately, the fan started turning itself on by itself. I had to unhang the fan to get to the control module in the ceiling which was a heavy task. Fortunately the fan hasn't started on it's own since then. Woo hoo!

Haulin' some dirt

We had a neighbor in the landscaping business deliver six cubic yards of dirt several weeks ago. Unfortunately, it's been raining regularly here which has been hampering outside work. About half of the dirt was put in the front yard and the other half went in the back.

I have a small utility trailer for my riding mower which works out great to move the dirt. Unfortunately the dirt delivery guy dumped the dirt in the wrong spot which meant that not only did we have to move it further but it wound up on the an area that actually had grass. Oh well.
My wife and I both feel that we could get sixty yards of dirt and cover the whole front yard and still not be done. Our soil has a lot of clay which gets really hard during the summer months. I have no plans to get more dirt this year though. Our main goal is to get grass growing in the major erosion areas and work the small sections later. If I can eliminate some of the clover and thistle in the yard, that will be a plus.

After we spread the soil around, we rolled out erosion control mats over the new soil and seed. The mats come in 4' x 50' rolls and have straw wound in with the netting. We wound up needing twelve rolls for the front and back.

Some of the first sections we did are showing signs of grass growing which is good to see. Both my wife and I have black thumbs, so anything green is a blessing.

For the sake of free flowers

One of our neighbors gave us some day lilies. The only problem is that we don't have any flower beds right now. My wife thought it would be nice to create a small bed around the mailbox. What turned into a simple job turned into a headache when I started to turn the soil over. Two inches below the soil was a foot of crushed rock for the road. Back to Lowes for more bags of soil. What was going to be a quick project turned into a half day affair.

The first major project for this year is establishing a lawn in the front. Our developer last year graded and seeded on May 27th. Twelve hours after they did this, a major thunderstorm rolled through and washed most of the seed and a good portion of the topsoil. We've got large ruts that have exposed rocks and hard soil that won't take seed. While we spread soil and reseeded last fall, it didn't take. Six cubic yards of soil are coming to fill in the washed out areas in the front and back later this week. I'm also going to use a large roll of landscape fabric to try to limit the amount of washout.

To get an idea of just how much water flows through our yard during a rainstorm, watch this video.

I recently received a temporary promotion at work. Just after getting done with long hours there due to a special project, I'm back at it again. While I'm excited about this new position, the longer hours it brings is going to severely limit the amount of stuff I can get done during the weekday evenings.