Thanks
Dan! (I got a NEW YARD!)
Look
carefully and you can see the wild grass growing along that back
gate.
It's
gone now. Although the pool's still there, but..... one step at a time.
Tina (behind us, who cut all the ivy) got that new wood wall on the left
which I hope she puts up all the way across.
This
is the new house across the street. The flat dirt is where the
old house stood until the day of my
party last month.
Check
out the cedar in the flower beds!
Jon Turner and I spent last summer setting these flower beds on
fire with a lighter and WD-40 (another one of the many uses of
WD-40!) just trying to get rid of the weeds*.
That's how bad it was.
*Sing with me: But the weeds came back,
the very next dayyy...
The
guys working on the yard must have found this piece of gutter
somewhere and shoved it into the drain upside-down. Now, I'm not
an engineer but I see some flaws here. Maybe they were in a hurry.
I left it that way. I kinda like the meaning.
Those
of you who know my yard know that there was a pile of junk to
be taken to the dump for an eternity (by that wall on the top
right). It's gone now. Also check out George's killer treehouse
for Ross & Elanor! (top left)
My
house. Note the apple tree is now shorter than the house! You
can also see George & Sylvia's house here (on the right).
This
is my super happy spider plant that's in the process of making
about 20 baby plants. I was talking to Jon's mom last month to
figure out what to do with all the babies.... Guess what you're
all getting for Christmas?!
This
was cool to me because I have this weird fetish with rocks. Just
rocks. Not even gemstones or anything. These guys must have sensed
this, because throughout the flowerbeds are piles of the rocks
I had lining the edges. Some rocks are painted with housepaint.
They must have pegged me for a total freak.
THIS
is THE famous back yard. This is where we want to screen in and put up
screen doors and create the cat paradise. We keep having setbacks. Note
the screen on top! It's a start! This is where EVERYTHING was covered
with ivy until a month ago.
(Update - this is now our screened in patio)
(Update - this is now our screened in patio)
So there are a few problems with my newly sheared yard. For one, the spiders got totally confused and hauled ass into our house and my car which is sucky. And if you see the porch page (link above) you can just imagine how many spiders and other critters we had living in our back yard. Also, the back concrete wall is glaringly bright in the morning. I never knew concrete to be so reflective. It's kinda weird looking out the windows and seeing the street instead of foliage. The street lights shine into the bedrooms.
Ah well, I figure by next spring everything will be properly adjusted.
I'm thinking of planting a bunch of ferns in our newly flattened back yard. They grow like weeds out here. I also started a jasmine vine and honeysuckle vine to see how they do here (In Vegas, Greg's parents have mondo honeysuckle and my Dad's house had a perfect arch of jasmine at his front door. I am testing my luck with both of these plants in Seattle. It's worth it for the flashbacks alone).