The list

In January I made a list of new years resolutions for the house. Let's take a look at how I'm doing.

1.  Sew new curtains for the bedroom.

Okay, I just bought some from Ikea. Path of least resistance. We're gonna call that a CHECK!

2.  Finally paint the living room.

CHECK!

3.  Replace the mortise box on the front door so we could actually use it. 

Greg and I actually tried to take the mortise box apart, only to find out that we're going to need to have someone pick the lock to even get the stupid thing removed.

4.  Replace the back porch steps.

That's gonna happen this summer.

5.  Replace the side fence.

CHECK!

6.  Paint the patio slab.

We're gonna call this a CHECK! We didn't paint it so much as eliminate it.

7.  Draw up a master plan for landscaping the front yard.

I'm working on this. Or I'm going to be working on this.

8.  Remove the rhododendrons and azalea from the front yard.

I removed one! Er . . . I chopped down one.

9.  Paint the exterior of the house.  Quit laughing.

Okay, so this isn't going to happen. I'm hoping to be able to afford to have it done professionally next summer.


10.  Put in baseboard and window trim in the basement.

This is a good fall/winter project, yes?

Taking housepainting off the list makes me feel like the rest of this is doable. Though we may end up building a deck in the backyard which makes me think I could remove something else from the list and still feel good about the year. And then my goal for 2012 will be to chill the hell out on home improvement so Greg doesn't move out in protest.

Some random updates from the garden

I really want the entrance to the yard, as you go past the ferns and bleeding hearts, to envelop you in green.

Ultimately I want to put an arbor here with an evergreen vine on it but for now I decided to use my victory wine barrel planter to plant fennel. Fennel gets tall and bushy pretty fast, so it should fill in quickly. Fennel also gets thuggish, so I wanted to keep it confined to a container. Putting the barrel at the entrance to the yard will remind Greg, every single time, that I am stubborn. Because he wouldn't remember otherwise.

The fennel is small so I filled out the planter with astilbe and petunias. Go, old lady annuals, go!

I bought this stool at a thrift shop two summers ago and it sat in my garage, unused. I threw some Autumn Joy sedums in a pot (they will get way too big for it but I can transplant later) and it's nice to have some height in this area. I want to transplant my clematis to this area so it can climb the fence and not have to compete with the hops.

Sedum telephium

I planted a purple sedum that I'm in LOVE with, sedum ‘Bertram Anderson.' I think the purple is going to look awesome with the Oregon stonecrop (the seafoam colored one on the bottom).

Sedum ‘Bertram Anderson’

Bleeding heart is beginning to grow up through the hosta and I love it.

So once the fennel grows in and I get the rain garden in there should be a corridor of green that draws you into the yard.

BEHOLD, MY MS PAINT SKILLS!

So there will be fragrant mock orange and daphne on the left and fragrant sarcocca on the right (can you see its tiny form next to the wheelbarrow?) and a lush rain garden with grasses and sedges that draws you in and points you toward our awesome deck (which is coming soon).

 

We pretended to have dinner on the deck the other night (before I replaced the fence). It was lovely.

Summer in Oregon, I'm gonna marry you and have a million of your babies.

Crossing things off the list

I have some time off before I start my new job so I decided to finally tackle the dilapidated fence on the west side of the yard. I've also watched an inadvisable amount of Real Housewives of New York. That show makes me feel dirty.

The fence didn't provide a shred of privacy.

Also, the cedar (it's a cedar! not a hemlock!) was planted too close to the fence and, as it grew, it pushed the fence out.

So I had to build the fence around the tree. But first I made sure to NOT measure the existing posts (which I was reusing) before I went to buy wood. I just assumed they'd be six feet apart but, no, these posts were sunk by a drunk toddler, so some of the spans are 93 inches, some are 70, some are 82! It's fun because it requires custom cuts for every single stringer AND now the fence isn't up to code. But I digress.

 

Ignore the horizontal board, it was just to help me keep the board height level.

We still have some special cuts to do around the cedar but I figure I should let the enginerd help with that. This weekend I had a hot shirtless Greg mowing my lawn in my newly private yard that I love and I felt so, so lucky.

I win.

We were driving to Home Depot to get a replacement blade for the lawnmower and I mentioned that I wanted to get one of those wine barrel planters. Greg was like, "Let's get it next time."

"Why?"
"We'll get it next time."
"I'm getting it."
"Just get it next time."
"Do you know me at all? Now I'm getting two."
"It's not going to fit in your Honda. Let's just come back with the truck."
"I CAN FIT THREE IN MY HONDA. NOW I'M BUYING THREE, ARE YOU HAPPY?"

Anything can be a competition if you try hard enough!

A hail mary from the mystery willow!

I decided the mystery willow is gone. The neighbors behind it moved down the street and rented out the house to their nephews who smoke constantly, play loud bad music, and generally make me feel 80 years old, and why can't they just keep it down so I can putter in my yard, for pete's sake?

So I want to chop it down and plant something fast growing, evergreen, and DENSE. I succumbed to the Backyard Habitat rep's suggestion of a California wax myrtle. It grows really fast, it's evergreen, and it forms a nice privacy hedge.

But the mystery willow said a hail mary! It produced fruit.

The mystery willow is a pear tree! Goddamn it.

I'm still going to chop it down. My inner 80 year old demands it.

Candy apple red, baby

The lawnmower I bought for $10 off of craigslist fell down and went boom. Or Greg ran over the sewer clean-out with it and bent the shaft. So we searched Consumer Reports and got this beauty. It's so red and shiny! I love.

It belched white smoke when we started it, so badly that we ran and got the fire extinguisher, just in case. It stopped after a couple of minutes, so I guess it was just being dramatic. For its next trick doves will fly out of the bag catch!

Let's move rock!

There's been no movement on the doug fir saga. My next door neighbor E asked (through another neighbor) if we could hold off on meeting. It's starting to sound like E is having signs of diminishing mental faculties. A landscaper was hired to clear the shared area under our roses and he told me she said I was "trying to take over her yard."

The neighbor who is trying to help us figure this out says that E is paranoid and convinced I reported her, and there's no reasoning with her. I'm still hoping we'll have a sit-down, but I'm not convinced it will change anything. I'm trying to just let it go, since I never did anything in the first place, and you can't rationalize with dementia.

The city forester called me back and said that she can't see anything on file and she doesn't know of any way that someone could force the removal of a healthy tree. The forester said the only thing she could speculate would be a letter from a neighbor, for insurance purposes. Apparently, if someone was concerned about the tree, they could send a certified letter to the owner and state that they are concerned about the tree. Then, if the tree fell down on their house, the neighbor who owned the tree would have to pay for repairs.

So maybe someone sent her a letter? Or maybe they didn't? I may never know because she won't talk to me directly. *Sigh*

Instead of thinking about this I've been working on the backyard. I decided I wanted to continue the retaining stones around the area where the cement slab had been.

The cedar bark wasn't staying where it should.

Et voila!

And now I would like to never haul cement or stone or rock ever again.