Backyard Bliss - Progress

Friends, I would like to take a moment to recognize Mr. Gardener.

Not only is he a steller husband. (And in my opinion, hot like a muffin straight out of the oven - you need not feel inclined to agree with me there. ;) He is spoken for, after all.)

But he has spent a good deal (several Saturdays, most of the Fourth, he had the 5th of July off, etc.) of time working on our backyard (as I mentioned previously).

He tore out the posts from the old, hazard-to-humanity deck, including the concrete. 

He pulled up all the pavers. (These just don't work with our lovely, heavily rooted cherry tree.) They are going to live at my parent's house.

He took out the little dogwood tree. Let me explain. We are not tree killers. I am a Virginian, so I do appreciate my dogwood. But the previous owners planted it pretty much underneath the gargantuan cherry tree. And it was just struggling there. It couldn't get the light it needed, nor the space, so it had started growing in a crazy configuration and it just wasn't going to thrive there.

So here's some of the before (above).

And the after (below - 2 pictures).

It looks similar, but look at the gone pavers. The gone weird built-in bed thing they had going on (lower right hand corner). Random trash they left behind (under the hazardous deck) gone.

He also repaired, powerwashed, and stained the fence.

Gold star, Mr. Gardener!

Lots of hours of manpower in the heat and numerous-I-lost-count trips to Lowe's later, we're getting closer to Backyard Bliss.

The deck people start on our deck today, too!

Wood for the deck. They delivered on Friday. Fortunately, our neighbor is nice and let us use her extra parking spot in the meantime.

For additional perspective, I will show you a bit of what our front yard used to look like:

Yeah...tree stump.

Weeds.

Oh and a mess of mint in our yard.

I love mint. 

But, let me tell you, for you aspiring gardeners out there. Mint is supremely aggressive. And invasive. It grows and grows and grows, like nobody's business.

It's great if you can't grow anything else. I can almost guarantee, you, too, can grow mint. 

However, that being said, grow it in a pot. And don't let the growth touch the ground or it will root there and spread like wildfire and kill off anything in its way. Grass included. And your neighbor's grass.

So, just don't do it. Don't plant it in your yard. Contain it. 

(That goes for bamboo, too. Fair warning.)

So...old yard (and a local bunny - fewer of those around now - the fox population has increased. Circle of life, people.)

New yard. 

I think it looks leaps and bounds better.

Grass is a little brown because the "nurse" grass (seasonal and intended to help the perennial grass get started) is starting to grow.

Mr. Gardener LOVES his grass. It is like his child. I could write a whole post just describing his love for the grass.

Hence part of the reason I started calling him Mr. Gardener here. ;)

Finish It Up Friday 2

Okay, so today's finish isn't super exciting.

I mean I definitely did not finish my baby quilt. I've been working too late this week. Hopefully I'll make some progress this weekend.

So I had this rug for my kitchen. Clearly it had seen better days.

Mr. Gardener had a pair of jeans that had also seen better days.

I'm all about a comfy pair of holy jeans for the weekend and the garden and just hanging around.

But sometimes they get too holy, you know?

Most people don't want to see that much of Mr. Gardener.

And well those that do...

Well, I don't want them to see that much of him, either. :)

So I cut them up!

Grabbed some scrap fabric leftover from making the valences in my kitchen and got to work.

I didn't have big enough pieces for the sides, so I just sewed scraps together until I had pieces that were big enough.

And got this!

I used this tutorial for the wonky star for the center of the rug.

Quilted with straight lines. Because that's all I do so far.

I used some fabric that really isn't my cup of tea for the back. My lovely MIL decided to get into quilting for hot second and then decided it really wasn't her thing. So, she sent me a lot of fabric and a ton of tools. Very sweet of her.

Some of the fabric I can make into something that's a little more me and some is good for rug backs. :) 

Waste not, want not, right?

Plus, I'm going to smear puffy paint all over the back to see if that helps with slippage. I have so much puffy paint leftover from sorority days in college.

I still love my letters, but I don't rock the puffy painted ones so much anymore.

If you looked closely, you would see this is a far scream from my best work. It's not squared up, the binding sewing is more than a little interesting. But this was more about making a rug that might be semi-durable (I mean it's jean, right?) and trying out the process.

I'm hoping it'll look kinda funky in my retro/Coca-Cola inspired kitchen. 

I'm not totally sold on the design itself, yet, but I do like the idea.

Excuse the finished photos. I finished at about 9:15 last night and there wasn't much (any) light and I have to head to work early today.

Enjoy your weekend!

Linking up with Finish it up Friday @ Crazy Mom Quilts.

Backyard Bliss...Well, We're Working on It

So, we've been in our house for two years now.  Time flies!!

And little by little, we've been working on making it ours. Adding decor, making improvements...discovering the previous owners' "fixes" and actually fixing them. You know the drill.

So, slowly, slowly, slowly, we've been working on the backyard.

Here's what I hope will soon be the "Before" picture. It looks terrible, I know.

First, Mr. Gardener worked on the drain. Previously the downspout fed pretty much right into our window well to our basement. Which is, basically, an invitation for flooding. Given that the first summer we lived in the house, it did pretty much nothing but rain and last year included the Derecho and some outlying rain from Sandy, we didn't think this was a very good thing.

We have gathered, based on many unusual things we've discovered in our house and on neighborhood commentary, that the previous owners were interesting people. Yeah so about that...

Last summer/fall, our friend, Matt, helped us tear down the deck.

Tear down the deck?, you say (you among other people).  Why would you do that?

Remember those interesting people?  

I'm pretty sure they hired kindergarteners to build that deck using scrap wood they found on the side of the road. It was a hazard to humanity. While tearing it down, Josh and Matt found many places where it wasn't attached to the house or itself. Because structural soundness is clearly more of a desirable feature than a necessary one.

Also, we live in a townhouse. Which, I might add, I love. But that leads to some inherent features, including small yards. This deck? It took up most of the yard making our not-so-big yard look itty bitty.

Remember that neighborhood commentary I mentioned?

Among the "It's so good to see people finally taking care of this house" comments we get while working in the yard, we also learned the "history" of our deck. 

Our house was flipped. So we didn't buy it from the people who lived here last. So there were a few (nice) modifications made. When they flipped the house, they actually removed part of the deck, so while it took up most of the yard before we tore it down, it actually used to take up the entire yard.

Now, I would like to show you a picture of our yard in its current state (changes coming, hopefully soon, it won't look this terrible forever). Do you see the air conditioning unit in the left hand corner? Do you also see how low our doors sit? 

Yeah, so this wasn't a tall deck.

Apparently the deck sat directly over the air conditioning unit and they had a little hatch that they opened on really hot days to allow air flow.

Because that sounds like a brilliant idea.

So, we're working on getting a new, patio-style deck. We've hired a contractor who is working on the design, filing permits, and working out the details with the HOA. Which, I must say, I'd far prefer for him to deal with the HOA than do it myself. :) Then we'll fill the rest with gravel or something similar and, of course, plants.

Cherries ripening on our cherry tree

Grass and a traditional patio isn't really feasible for our backyard because we have this really lovely cherry tree, which is well-rooted into the ground and will throw bricks or that type of material into upheaval shortly.

Our previous owners did not take good care of said tree. Due to improper pruning, they introduced a lot of potential for infection and disease. They also opened the door to infestations by ear wigs and carpenter ants. Mr. Gardener and my dad did a lot of work on the tree when we moved in and we're hoping that it will be healthy. It looks pretty good, but only time will tell.

 

The birds and I have to share the cherries. I leave them the top ones (my ladder doesn't reach that far) and I try to snap up the low ones before they can.

And naturally I needed a place for more tomatoes. Mr. Gardener built me what we call a "tomato gallows" to hang my topsy turvys on.

Three varieties - Super Sauce, Super Sweet 100, and Better Bush Boy.  I think Super Sauce is on the left, Super Sweet 100 in the middle, and Better Bush Boy to the right.

I hope to have an update to this here soon.

Then we'll be on our way to backyard bliss!