Project: Rose Containment

No, not that Rose:

Rose

This rose:

rose: in need of containment

 Or perhaps more generally, these roses:

Roses, in need of containment

They're growing over the fence and blocking the sidewalk and touching the ground.  Crazy.

They are out of control.  We got ourselves an archway trellis and after a few thorny scratches, some rope and zip ties, we're feeling much better:

Here's the view from the front:

We've been having good summer fun times lately, with more in store.  Last weekend we were at a fabulous Birthday party for Henry & Audrey, where there were a dozen children wielding water balloons and squirt guns.  Total mayhem.  After the party, I had this conversation with Lucy:

Me: OK Lucy, time to get ready for bed.
Lucy: I don't have to have a bath, do I?
Me: Hrm.  Let's see.  You were hit with several water balloons and numerous squirt guns, right?  I think that pretty much equals a bath.
Lucy: Yeah!

Mark that down as another Great Moment in Parenting, folks.

Our next door neighbor (who will be watching Norbert, the fish, while we're away) just stopped by to show us what she found:

He was in the middle of the road, with a lot of traffic flying by, so she picked him up.  Now he's in the pond in her backyard.  The girls are really excited:

I think it's a painted turtle.

Projects, Garden Update

You may recall from a previous post that we had a few bad pickets in the gate, which we've replaced with new ones finally:

The new neighbors across the street also had a bigger project done: they cut down a big tree. We're sad about this, as it was a lovely lovely lovely old tree. But apparently its roots was growing into their house and had collapsed one of their foundation walls. Yikes!
In (much) smaller projects, I did a bit of sewing this week, too. Last weekend, when we went to the artist studios, I was itching to do some crafting, so I took a bit of time to make this little bag:


The pocket there I made from a wool felt kit that Rose gave me (thanks, Rose!). The fabric is actually a (clean) canvas drop cloth (from the hardware store) that I had bought for some other long-ago and forgotten project. There's lots more of the canvas, so I might need to make some more bags.

Things in the garden get better every day. We've gone from this:

To this:
Lucy will have to go pick the ripe ones today.

The blueberries should be ready soon, too:
Last year's blueberries were a big hit with Lucy, so it's exciting to see the bountiful crop forming already. We're also hoping to get some raspberry bushes to plant in the backyard.

That's all for today. We're hoping to go to Lowell Riverfest for a bit tomorrow, if the weather holds out.

Jake has headed out for the weekend to do the Green Mountain Double Century. Here's the blurb the race organizer has put out:

205 miles, 80% dirt, 25,000 feet of climbing.

Yup. He's crazy.

Welcome Back, Clematis!

Our clematis has finally bloomed! We thought we had killed it, but then we noticed one long shoot wrapping itself around the yellow rose bush, and then....finally....this lovely flower appeared. Hooray!

We're at the beach at the moment (the photo above is a few days old). Lucy is having some ups and downs. We were down by the ocean today, but didn't last long because Lucy is 2, and 2-year-olds, well, they have strong opinions about what they want to do and when they want to do it. On the walk back to the bike (to return home) we had this conversation:

Lucy: There's sand in my shoes.

Jake: Yeah, well, that's OK.

Lucy: That's why they're called sandals.

Wow. I wish I had thought of that line.

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.

Painting and Crafting

Today I painted the deck. This is a project that has been on the house to-do list since the day we moved in. Maybe even BEFORE we moved in. It feels good to finally cross it off the list. It also felt good to just make this part of the house look so much better. Here are a couple of before shots of the steps and the deck:


And here it is, after. Actually, this is technically in the middle, since I haven't been able to reach the very top parts. Jake will finish this off on Friday.

We used Sikkens Cetol SRD in "Dark Oak." It got good ratings on Consumer Reports, and, perhaps more importantly, only required one coat. It's also supposed to be a good option for decks such as ours that may (or may not) contain arsenic. We don't know the details of when our deck was built, but apparently this sort of wood, if made before 2004, was probably treated with arsenic. And if that's the case, we don't really want to be sanding it, what with all that arsenic then being freed into our air and lungs. So we just did a very thorough washing with a homemade recipe of Oxy-Clean and Borax a couple days ago. Applying the stain took about 4 hours and used almost a gallon of the SRD. Since it's a stain, it won't peel like paint would, which means that the next time we have to treat it, we won't have to sand then, either. Oh, also in the "note to self" category, we only needed one gallon, not the two that I bought. We can return the un-opened can; I figured it was better to have extra than to have to run out halfway through the job (a regular occurrence during most of our home-improvement projects).

I got the stain at Harmon's Paint & Wallpaper, a very friendly place downtown. After I bought the deck stain, I asked if they had any discontinued wallpaper books they were looking to get rid of. A very kind lady took me to the back room and showed me just what I wanted -- a terrific book of children's wallpaper samples (happens to be Ralph Lauren). I know, you're wondering, what exactly am I planning to do with a book of wallpaper samples? Redecorating a room in 18X15-inch squares? (Actually, that might look pretty cool.) Nope, I'm doing some paper crafts, and I read a suggestion for recycling wallpaper scraps, so I figured a sample book would be perfect. And it is!

Last night I was playing with fabric, and staring at the new chicken print fabric I bought a while ago. I was compelled to make a stuffed chicken.

In the background there, you can see my first wallpaper project: I covered one of Lucy's formula cans, since the first one has been such a hit.

In other news updates, Lucy is officially crawling. I put her down in the pink room while I went to get her dinner ready, and by the time I came back, she had crawled over to Carter's box of toys. She can really move now. Time to invest in some baby-gates.

Spring at 83 Durant

Spring is in full effect here at 83 Durant! Check out our daffodils! Unfortunately, our dog can be rather rude, and has taken to sitting in the middle of the flower bed. Argh. What to do?

We had a busy and productive weekend here at 83 Durant. We took care of boring stuff like draining and re-filling the boiler today. We also had the pleasure of our excellent gardening friend, Jess, coming out to help us get our garden plot in order. We did a ton of raking (oh the leaves! You'd think we were busy with something last fall!) and general spiffying up of the yard. We didn't plant anything, but we did get all the "moo doo" into the garden plot, and made plans for where things should go. The strawberry plants are already running around their area, and some herbs (chives, some others) are already popping up! Nice! Thanks so much for your help, Jess! This year's garden will probably be less ambitious. We're hoping to start a rhubarb patch (any suggestions on where to get good plants welcome!) and probably some tomatoes. Maybe some pumpkins, but probably a lot of flowers, since we don't have as much time for gardening this year.


I put mulch around the rose bushes; it's amazing how much better those beds look with just the addition of mulch!


We also set up the bird bath, this time in the front garden plot rather than in the yard, where it got in the way of grilling. Plus, we will be able to see any visiting birds from the front windows. Nice!


The little apple tree is starting to bud! I wonder if we'll get any fruit this year. Carter surveys the work we've done -- not bad!



Jake has also been making final fixes to the kitchen storm door, adding the thingy that closes it, and painting around the edge of the trim.

Of course, after getting all that work done, we needed a place to relax -- good thing Jake set up the hammock!

The beautiful weather continues, so maybe we'll get more done this week! Happy Spring!

Improving Some Spots Outside

Today we planted our new trees and did some general cleaning up around the outdoors. We planted a lilac tree sort of near the kitchen window (well, at least, below the kitchen window). We put a butterfly bush in the terraced area under the bay window.

The plant itself is looking a little wilty, but hopefully it will feel better now that it's out of its crowded nursery pot.

And we put two holly trees (a male and a female) in the previously very messy area by the fence on the driveway side of the house. Here's some before and after action:






I also rebuilt some areas of landscaping wall that had fallen apart, as you can see here:





I also cleaned out the area under the deck, which had accumulated gardening junk from our work and from that of the previous owners. It looks MUCH better now:

Meanwhile, the hostas out in front of the house are blooming like mad! They seem to attract a lot of bees, which really upsets Carter. He chases them, which doesn't seem like a very smart thing to do.


Overall, we're happy with what we accomplished this morning in the yard.