It's more than a house. It's an adventure.

Sunday, September 09, 2007

Small changes

We got out into the backyard again last night before dinner. Only put in about 45 minutes but we cleared about 200 square feet in a triangle shape near our west neighbors' garage. We relocated the Lenton Rose to the front of the house, but everything else (mostly peonies) was removed permanently. Also pulled out a tree, hopefully I got enough of the roots that nothing will come back.

Didn't put any seed down yet because the ground is very uneven - just not ready for it yet. I'll get that fixed soon. If the rain lets up. Rained all day today. Hopefully this will get the other seed we'd planted out back growing. The seed we put in a couple weeks ago between the kitchen and bedroom has really sprouted. Another week or two and it'll be ready to get cut. Again, if the rain stops and things have a chance to dry out. Other areas of the lawn desperately need to be mowed now with all the water they're getting, but I just can't do it now.

Monday, September 03, 2007

Major yard work

A break in the weather today and someone to help take care of the little one and we were able to make some huge progress in the backyard. We managed to:

  • Clear out the area on the side of the shed, put in edging, and transplant a few hostas and other plants. Then the requisite mulch. There was a large cluster of peonies in that space, but we just dug them up and threw them out. We also made this area smaller than originally planned. It works better though.

  • We cleared more area for grass in the main part of the backyard. Unfortunately I forgot to snap a picture of this. We're now clear about 2/3 of the way across, in a straight line even with the back of our neighbor's garage. I also found some high spots to take down and use as fill for some holes. Lime, grass seed & fertilizer applied.
  • The area behind the bedroom (actually outside the closet wall) was a total mess, very overgrown with grass and a few plants we couldn't identify.Cleared all that out, put some more edging down to get some good definition of the flowerbed, and transplanted several "elephant ear" hostas from the area by the fence against the house wall. We laid out the last bag of mulch that we had, but came up well short.

Overall, a tremendously productive day. We may even find ourselves getting more done in the backyard for the year than we'd anticipated. That'd be a first for any of our projects!

Work pretty much stopped

No updates the last couple months because there's not been much to post about. Between weather and parenthood, we haven't been able to get much done on the house. We did manage to move into the family room a couple months ago, which has been very nice. In the process, I learned a very important lesson about RG59 vs. RG6 coaxial cable. We have a few small projects left in the room, but it's habitable at least.

I did manage to finally get onto the roof and put some screening on the defunct chimney, in hopes of keeping squirrels out. I heard noises in the family room ceiling last night, however. Hopefully it's just that they gnawed through already.