Scene of the Accident

Jake had a little accident last weekend, and before I tell you all the details, I will first tell you that he is fine and everything turned out OK. How's that for suspense?

Here is the scene of the accident:
Yes, those are our new steps and new stone wall. At approximately 10 pm on July 3rd, Jake and I were about to commence the toasting of marshmallows over the grill for the purpose of making smores. I was down by the grill with the stick Jake had whittled for me, and he was coming down to join me. I was holding a long pointy stick. Jake was carrying an open pen-knife. The grill was hot. I suppose we should consider ourselves lucky that no one was burned or impaled or stabbed.

Sadly (or perhaps luckily, given the other alternatives), Jake stepped off the steps and into the uneven terrain of the patio area; he sprained his ankle. It hurt. A lot. I got him sitting down on the steps and ran in to get some ice. I came back out and started to apply the ice to the ankle, when Jake sorta started to shift towards me. I wasn't sure what he was doing, when I realized that he didn't know what he was doing, either: he was passing out. I sort of broke his fall, but he ended up lying on the ground with his head on a rock. I yelled to our next door neighbors (who were working outside, in sight of where we were) and they went to call 911, seeing as how Jake was unconscious. Yikes! Jake suddenly says "I just sprained my ankle. There's no need to call an ambulance......why am I on the ground?" He didn't know he had passed out.

I was a bit unsure of whether he had actually hit his head, perhaps even on the first fall, but we decided quickly that he was OK enough to just go to the E.R. via car. Anna (the grandmother next door) very kindly offered to stay at our house so Lucy could keep sleeping, and Liza (the mom next door) had a pair of crutches we used to get Jake to the car. We are tremendously grateful to have such kind neighbors!

We spent almost three hours hanging out at the E.R. Jake was feeling better by the time he saw the doctor. It was, as far as she could tell, just a sprain, so he got an air cast, and we were sent home. This was a relief.

Upon walking (limping, in Jake's case) through our front door, we heard an unexpected sound: "Hey! That's my parents! I hear my parents!" Yes, it was Lucy. Awake. At 1:30 in the morning. Apparently she had woken up about half an hour after we left, and since then had been talking non-stop to Anna. Carter had even gone upstairs (we don't let him upstairs) to check out the excitement. Wow! All our creatures took full advantage of our absence.

A week later, Jake is feeling much better. He hasn't been on a bike yet, but we're hoping he will be very soon. He's going to do some physical therapy, too, to strengthen the ankle (this isn't his first sprain).

Next project: install railing on the front wall steps.

Tree Killers

Today Jake and I spent the morning in the jungle of our backyard, attempting to reclaim some of the ground that we had previously (like two years ago) given up to the powers of re-forestation. Here are some shots of what we were dealing with:

Here's Carter, enjoying the ability to hide amongst the vegetation.



He stalked the next door neighbors cat, and the two of them chased each other for a while. Both of them (at different times) actually got caught in the overgrowth of various vines and weeds. Although I know Carter will miss this haunt, we really are making it safer for humans and (some) animals.



To begin the project, Jake stopped off at our favorite local hardware store to pick up paper yard waste bags, and of course, folding Adirondack chairs. Here's all the stuff strapped onto the Extra-Cycle. [By the way, that's not Lucy, just her helmet -- he dropped her off at school first, then did the hardware store run.]









Here is a sample of one of the (MANY!) trees we uprooted:

It was actually pretty satisfying to pull these up. Some of these trees were taller than me [insert hilarious joke about Bridget's height here. Wait for snort of laughter. Continue reading]. We harbor no ill-will for the trees, but these were ones that had sprouted randomly from seeds dropped from the trees behind us, and a couple of them are from invasive species, so we did the right thing.



Here is the before:

And here is after:





What amazes me is how much better is looks now, and yet, how awful it still looks! We still have a lot of work ahead of us, but at least we've made a bit of headway. Here's that bottom right corner of the yard after (the very first picture at the top of this post is a before shot of roughly the same area):

And now, what you've all really been waiting for, some photos of the awesome new retaining wall, all complete & fabulous:

Walls! Done! Hooray!

For this post, I only have pictures of the front garden wall, but both the front and back walls are indeed complete! Hooray. I'll try to get shots of the backyard wall to post tomorrow. We're hoping to get out there and work on the weeding and cleaning up of the yard then.

Lucy checks out the new steps:



That last step is very tall; we're going to add in some tall pavers at the bottom to bring that height up to the right level.
We need to do some weeding and general clean-up here. Also, Jake needs to re-install the pavers for the area where the grill goes. Actually, it has been suggested that we maybe expand this little patio area here. Hmmmmm.

The rhubarb and tomato plants were preserved. A lot of strawberry plants and all of the jerusalem artichokes bit the dust. Most of the herb area is in tact, which is nice.

OK, more tomorrow! It's HOT here!

Rock on

Progress on the front yard garden wall continues. Here are a few shots:





Work continues tomorrow. Updates as warranted.

Another rock in the wall!

The garden wall project continues, but we've hit some bad weather this afternoon, so there's a pause. But it's coming along nicely. Meanwhile, the backyard wall is nearly complete. There are a few spots that need more work, and the concrete has to dry, but it's almost done!

Here's the wall from above (taken from the back deck):
Here's a view w/ the steps (the back of the house is kind of a mess. That's the next phase of the project.)



Our wall is made of rocks. Heavy, heavy rocks. It's awesome.

More updates tomorrow, I hope!

The Wall...day, uh, something

OK, so I've lost track of the exact timeline of the wall project, but I thought I would post an update. The project has now grown in scope. Seeing as we had Roland here, and since he was clearly doing a bang-up job, we thought perhaps we should have him take a look at the OTHER rotting timber wall, this one in the front of the house. We've known for a while that it was rotting, and in fact, Jake had recently re-attached the steps that lead down from the deck because they had rotted out. It was a bad scene, with some serious dangerousness surrounding not only safe passage from the deck/kitchen down to the garden, but also, the wall was clearly host to various critters of the sort that like to eat wood. Given that they were having quite a feast on the rotting timber, it was only a matter of time until they started munching on far more important wood, like our house.

So we signed on to have Roland take out the rotting timber walls around the garden, and replace with a stone wall. He'll also put in new limestone steps. These will be much safer. There is one downside -- Carter will lose his wallow, the space under the wooden steps where he would sometimes hide on hot days. But we'll have to build him a doghouse replacement, because this is a better solution.

I haven't been able to get out to the back to update you on the backyard project, but here's the status of the garden wall (or, as you can see, lack thereof):


Wow, I always wanted to see a cross-section of the ground underneath our house! Yikes! (that's where the steps were)


The guys have promised that the plants above the wall (like the hydrangeas and lilies) will all be fine. They also know to protect the rhubarb and a couple of tomato plants, as well as the herb garden section. The strawberries, though, are taking a beating. Oh, and the Jerusalem artichokes were ripped out. But the thing is, they were becoming a bit of an infestation anyway, so we're not too worried about them.
The team should be back on Monday to put down gravel here, and also to finish up with the rock building out back. It's all very exciting. Stay tuned.

Men at Work

No, not like the 80's band; there are actually men at work in our backyard. I don't think we've blogged much about the backyard before, mostly because it is a sight of horror back there. OK, that's an exaggeration, but there is a retaining wall out there that has been crumbling and rotting since before we moved in, so it was always a bit treacherous. Last year sometime, Jake and some good friends of ours started digging to try to start to build a replacement wall, but never got much further than digging holes, which have since filled with water and plant life.

We finally talked to our neighbor, Roland, who owns his own masonry business. He builds retaining walls all the time for a living. He gave us an estimate, and we decided that we would have him do it later this summer. But then he stopped by on Friday to tell us that his job that was scheduled for this week fell through, and if we wanted to jump and have it done right away, he could take care of it this week, with an extra discount. Nice. Like, super-nice. So we decided to go ahead and get the darn thing done.

I know we had a few friends who had many times offered to come help us with this project. We decided that we would rather just have those friends over for a celebratory BBQ in our awesome backyard once it's all done. All around, a much better idea.

I'll post a few pictures this week as the wall develops. I'm very excited about the thought of reclaiming the backyard.

Roland told me this morning that the first thing he had to do was take out the poison ivy that was growing in the wall, and he also mentioned that there's poison sumac in the yard. UGH! So we'll be keeping out of there until it's free of poisonous plants.

Masonry Projects Complete!

Our mason did a terrific job fixing up the various problems at 83 Durant.

The main job was fixing the front wall in the basement, which has been the source of leakage over and over again. That area of the basement also had a bunch of weird built-in workbench type things. Why do I describe them as weird? Well, one of them was actually a door -- a cheap, hollow door -- made into a workbench top. It was kinda crazy, and we never used that area for anything, let alone as a workshop. So Jake's first job, before the mason could come to do his job, was to rip out all the junk. Here it is, most of the way broken down:


And now, here it is, all fixed up and water-tight!


We're now thinking that we should also have the side wall (where the window is) done later.

While we had him here, we also had him take care of a few masonry projects and repairs on the outside of the house.

This is a small area of the wall on the side of the house, towards the back. As you can see in the "before" picture, it looks like all the mortar has been chipped away.


The mason not only re-pointed, but decided that it would all be much stronger if he just coated the whole thing. So here it is, all nice and smooth and ready to paint (if we want to).





Here are the steps that lead out to the backyard from the basement:
They were once all cracked, and several bricks were missing. Now they're all better. (Sorry, I couldn't find a before picture.)

He also fixed up this little area of brick pointing:

So things are now nice and tight and hopefully water-proof and critter-proof! Hooray!