Sweet Cool Evening

Today, I decided to make my balcony safe for our dog, Keeley. The slats in the balcony railing are too far apart and I worry he will fall through. There isn't the budget yet for new railings, so I decided to screw plexiglass panels to the front, so Keeley can still look out, but safely. The evening sky is beautiful, isn't it?

Here's Keeley enjoying the balcony.

Fireworks!

This summer, we haven't done much to the inside of the house, but we are sure enjoying the outdoors. Erin took some pictures of some of her flowers, and I thought they looked like fireworks. Hence, the name of this post. See what I mean?

Summer 2008: Garden

New Porch Stairs!

We have been having wet weather here for the past couple of weeks, with flooding and tornados and torrential downpours. We caught a break today with clear skies, so today was the day we replaced the front porch stairs, which were bad to begin with but were certainly not helped by all of the rain. We had to resort to roping them off so no one would fall through. Remember?

Kudos to Dan, our neighbor's carpenter friend, who did the bulk of the work. Dan took the time and care to make sure the steps would be really solid for years to come.
He shored up the header, put down cement pavers where the stringers would meet the ground (the old stairs completely rotted out), and cut new stringers. We had mistakenly thought we could use the pre-cut stringers that we got from Lowe's, but Dan determined they would not work for our install, so he cut new ones.

Wouldn't you know it? The clear skies gave way to threatening clouds from the west, and by the time we were installing the risers, it had started to blow and rain. A quick check on Weather.com revealed a thunderstorm warning, but at least no tornado. Billy and Chu (our neighbors) helped get the risers in before we had to call it a day.


We were all a little soggy, but happy with our progress.

We will finish up with the front toekicks in a few weeks. For now, it is great to just have working steps again.

June 2008 Project Start: Secret Garden

Earlier this year we discovered a woodchuck had burrowed underneath our garage. For Keeley's safety we decided that we needed to get rid of it. First we removed all the junk that had been being stored behind the garage. This exposed the entrance to it's den which we plugged up with some rocks. A week later, we borrowed a trap to use to catch it but never ended up actually using since by then we were pretty sure it had already moved on to find a different home.

We were wondering what we could do with this space to avoid any further destructive animal activity. I've always wanted a shade garden but up until now, all I ever had was full sun. This seemed like a great opportunity to gain some more garden space.

So far I've done some planting and embedded about a third of the stone pathway. I've still got the other two thirds to go. Plus I'd like to add a few more plants still this year and mulch. I'm very happy about how it's turning out so far.

We're calling it our secret garden since you'd never guess that it was there.

Paving Project

Our driveway is so narrow because it is in between our house and our neighbor's. The strip of land between our concrete driveway and our neighbor's house was nothing more than mud and weeds when we first moved in almost three years ago. In September 2007, when we sodded the backyard, we used the leftover sod on that strip of land. That worked well all last year, but this winter was too hard on it, partly because there is something wrong with our neighbor's gutter on that side of the house. Every time the snow on their roof melted, a steady stream of water came pouring down on the grass. I assume the gutter is clogged, preventing the water from going down the downspout, so it just pours over the roof. At any rate, this Spring, it was clear that the grass wasn't coming back. It was just a muddy mess. We decided to put paver bricks all along that side of the driveway so that we would at least avoid the mud problem. I spent two days digging up the dirt, laying down a weed barrier, putting down a layer of pea gravel and sand and then the pavers, but it looks nice. Here are some pictures. This one looking down the driveway.

And this showing the top of the driveway where Erin has her container garden.

And here are some more pictures showing the garden in the back.



Keeley in his yard.

The garden in the front of the house.


My Japanese Maple:

Our next project: replacing the front porch stairs. Here's why.

New Collection: Irish Terrier Images

I've begun collecting images of Irish Terriers to eventually be hung in my kitchen. I've only got 3 so far but its still going to be a few years before I can get my kitchen together the way I want it to be anyhow. I figure that I'll just collect a few each year and then by the time I get the kitchen together, I'll have a really nice collection.