Digging Dinosaurs

Poor little... whatever type of dinosaur this is. He's put up with a lot, including losing his companion to alien abduction. Now he's up to his neck in displaced dirt. That's one of the few places we could pile it without getting in our own way. We left his head out, though. There's only so much indignity a plaster dinosaur can tolerate.

Trench Warfare II

New project: Let's build a stone retaining wall in the backyard! How hard can it be?

In terms of engineering, it's pretty straightforward. But the labor involved? That's another matter.

We decided that the best way to deal with our sloping backyard was to terrace it. The neighbor's soil is at least a foot higher than ours, putting pressure on the fence. And the whole yard slopes, making it hard to walk on or enjoy. So we decided to push some of the dirt back toward the fence, and pull some of it forward. The result, we hope, will be two more-or-less flat areas with a retaining wall between them.

We started by laying out the now-familiar pile of bricks where we wanted the wall to go. You can see them here. The idea is to run part of the new wall straight, then transition into a semicircular curved section on the left side. That way we get a bit more "high" area to stash the excess dirt.

Then we used some boards to mark out the straight portions and to hold back the dirt once we started digging. And there's going to be a lot of digging.

We figure the retaining wall only needs to be about 2 feet high, but that's just the part you can see. We also need to bury part of the wall, for strength, making the whole thing about 32 inches from top to bottom.

Best of all, most of that 32 inches is going to be underground. The whole idea is to lower our average ground level, so we're going to have to dig out... well, pretty much the entire backyard. Question: Where do you put a backyard's-worth of dirt when you're digging up the backyard? Where does it all go?

In big stinkin' piles, that's where. We had to get clever about piling the dirt someplace where we wouldn't have to immediately turn around and move it again. (This strategy was not 100% successful.) The short-term plan was to shovel dirt from the high parts and throw it into the low parts, knowing full well that we'd have to shovel it back in a few days. but where else can it go? We don't have that much room to work with.

It's a bit like one of those puzzles with 15 tiles that you move around, trying to get them all in order. Except the tiles are big mounds of dirt, and it's hot outside.

Eventually, we did manage to dig a straight(-ish) trench to start the wall. We took the opportunity to bury sprinkler pipe, too, although that was almost more trouble than it was worth. Laying the pipe and putting in risers means keeping certain areas clear (no dirt piles) and it creates trip hazards all over the yard. Just adds to the excitement.

Game of Thorns

It's springtime, so Kathy and I have started hitting the garden centers.

We started with the sprinkler system... a year ago. Our old drip sprinklers leaked, and we got hit with big water bills every time we turned it on. So we ripped out that old system and dug trenches to install new 3/4-inch PVC sprinkler pipe. Like most projects, we made some progress, stopped for a while, made some more progress, etc.

So far, three sides of the house have new sprinklers. We just need to finish the backyard. That's enough irrigation that we felt safe planting new plants. So, out with the old, in with the new.

We planted purple campanula along the front, hoping that it will drape itself over the front retaining wall. They're kind of small and straggly now, but they should spread out and cover the front planting area before long.

Next to the house we put in a half-dozen gardenias, artfully surrounded by bark dust. Next to them there's one lone begonia, mostly just because I liked it.

Along the side we put in two small hydrangeas and two privets. Our hope is that they'll all grow big and tall and create a barrier between our yard and our neighbor's. Guests staying next door at the B&B have a bad habit of stepping across into our yard, apparently believing we're part of the inn (or because they just don't care). A flower barrier should fix that problem without erecting a big fence.

Finally, we planted two pink jasmine vines on the trellis over our newly built gate. Within a year or so they should grow to cover the entire trellis. We'd thought about climbing roses there, but thorns on a gateway seemed like a bad idea.

It took a good three days before the deer came and ate our flowers. One of the hydrangeas was decapitated, and the orange begonia is missing a lot of its flowers, too. At the same time we bought the flowers we also got a big ol' jug of deer repellant, but of course, we haven't spread it around yet. Good thing we didn't buy bigger plants.

All In All, You're Just Another...

If you've been following our progress at all, you know that Kathy and I love to move bricks back and forth. It's what we do. There's nothing like spending a sunny Sunday afternoon picking up a pair of bricks and moving them 20 feet, before going back for another pair, over and over. We can while away many a happy hour transporting bricks, and often have.

After a few years(!) of this we decided we'd had enough of rearranging piles of bricks and decided to finally build (technically, rebuild) a brick patio out of them. Here it is.

We didn't do it the professional way, of course, but instead worked on it piecemeal as we found time. Once we were certain that all the major plumbing underneath the backyard was solid and reliable, we could start to smooth out the soil and get it level. We eyeballed the dimensions we wanted and made a rough count of the bricks (no problem there). Then we started at one corner, leveling the soil, planting a few bricks, checking with a level, and moving on.

After a few weeks of this we had ourselves a brick patio. The bricks are all dry-set; there's nothing holding them in place except gravity. So we mixed up small batches of concrete and cemented just the outside row of bricks to create a kind of hard ring around the patio that holds everything together.

We're on a bit of a hill, so the backyard slopes a little. That meant we had to design-in some steps, or else slope all the walkways. We chose to put a step into the front (downhill side) of the patio, and we'll probably put a few more steps along the pathways, when we get around to it.

When all the bricks were done and the outside edge was cemented in, we poured polymeric sand into all the gaps. That's special sand mixed with water-activated epoxy. Once you work it into all the cracks, you lightly mist it with water and the sand sets up hard. That should prevent weeds from growing up between all the bricks, and it helps hold the bricks in place. It's not as tough as concrete, but it's more than enough to keep the bricks from shifting around. It's great stuff, but you only have a few minutes to get the water just right. Too little water and it's just dry sand. Too much water and you'll wash away the epoxy and get... dry sand. We went through six 40-lb. buckets of the stuff, so there's exactly 240 pounds of sand in the patio now. And a whole lot of bricks.

Details, Details...

Not every project requires five trips to the hardware store. Most, but not all...

A few weeks ago we finally got around to finishing off a little trim detail we'd been meaning to get to since, oh, about 2011. This post is near the second-floor landing and has some nice scroll work on it, especially near the top. The lower portion, however, is decorated with painted plaster, which was pretty common back in ye olden tymes. The downside is that plaster collects nicks and dings and isn't as durable as wood. The bottom few inches, in particular, had gotten pretty beat up by decades of vacuum cleaners.

So we trimmed out the very bottom, as you can see here. The trim is built up from various pieces of redwood stacked one atop the other, and then all stained and finished as one piece. It matches both the floor and the post pretty well, so it looks like it's always been there. (I considered banging it up a bit to give it a distressed look like everything else, but figured that will happen all on its own. No point in hurrying things.)

Ground O'Fence-Ive

Haven't you always wanted the house with the white picket fence around it? Well, we got close. Kind of.

We finally got tired of misguided people trespassing across our back yard. That, and we got a grand-dog. So we built a fence to keep them out and in, respectively.

Living next door to a popular bed & breakfast inn, we occasionally get people knocking on our front door, suitcases in hand, eagerly looking to check in. "Sorry, wrong house. You want the place next door. The yellow one. The one with the big sign that says 'Bed & Breakfast Inn' and 'Vacancy' right in the front yard." It gets old after a while.

One person even argued with me. "You should have a sign that says, 'private residence'" she huffed.

"First of all, I do. You walked right past it on your way here. Secondly, why should I? Do you have a sign on your house that says, 'this is not my neighbor's house?'"

Over the winter we installed a pair of security cameras to oversee the backyard and promptly caught a handful of confused tourists. It was the same scene every time: They'd confidently walk up our front or back steps; they'd get about halfway into the yard; then they'd stop, look around; realize they were in the wrong place ("this place is a dump!"), and then sheepishly creep out the way they came.

But of course, the cameras don't actually prevent anyone from walking around our house. They only provide entertainment when they do. So we tried discrete signs. That didn't work either because, as we all know, people don't read signs.

So we built the fence. At first, we wanted a white picket fence. Then we considered black wrought iron, which would look a bit more formal and also be more "period correct." We talked to a few companies that make wrought-iron fencing in the right style, but they're expensive! New car expensive. Major vacation expensive. So that idea was off the table.

Instead, we built our own fence out of redwood. We dug the post holes (easy in sandy soil), set the posts, and built the rails, stiles, and panels all from scratch. The only thing we bought were the little round balls that sit atop the fence posts. I would've had to buy a lathe to make them (not that there's anything wrong with that), so buying premade ones seemed a lot easier. We routed some grooves in the posts and rails to add a little bit of style. We made a matching gate, too, and put a little latch on it.

Voila! New fence. And it's dog-tested, so mission accomplished there. However, we didn't lock the new gate, so just a few days ago we got another pair of hopeful B&B guests traipsing up the steps, through the new gate, and into the backyard before they turned around the realized their mistake. So now the gate is locked. Stupid tourists.

Dove Story

It's springtime. Time when a young bird's thoughts turn to... other birds.

We had a pair of doves (okay,  pigeons) build a nest on our upstairs balcony. This is a first. As far as well can tell, birds have never nested there before. Our first tip-off was all the, uh, guano on our front porch. Looking up, we saw a pair of birds perched on the upstairs railing. Day after day, there they were.

They accumulated sticks and started building a nest on the balcony. They were right outside an upstairs window, so it was easy to watch them and follow their progress. It seemed like a messy, haphazard nest, but what do we know? Maybe it was their first time.

After awhile, one of the birds -- the female? -- seemed to get fatter. And then she wasn't again. And, lo, there was a tiny little white egg on our porch!

We kept our distance from the window to avoid disturbing our two lovebirds. We could hear them cooing outside the window, and they'd sometimes fly away for an hour or two, probably to find something to eat.

Then the egg wasn't there. The nest was all disturbed, and the birds were gone. It couldn't have hatched after only one or two days, could it? But what else could have happened?

I think we kind of hoped that maybe the birds had just upgraded to a condo across town with better schools, but the reality seemed much grimmer. Lots of other birds are carnivorous, and they need to eat, too.

Tho' Nature, red in tooth and claw
With ravine, shriek'd against his creed...

I stretch lame hands of faith, and grope,

And gather dust and chaff, and call

To what I feel is lord of all,

And faintly trust the larger hope.  -- Tennyson