Critters In My Yard

Once again, I had the best of intentions to stay on top of back yard maintenance over the winter, and once again, I did not. As a result, I have a hideous oxalis problem. This stuff only grows int he rainy season, but if you turn your back on it, it will grow several feet tall before you know it. The worst part is that letting it grow helps it feed the bulbs that will produce next year's crop. Three winters of neglect have given this weed a hefty head start.

Two weekends ago I made a trip to the garden center after weeding the veggie bed area. I worked on it for a few hours and barely made a dent in the problem. I thought I might need to call in the big guns (read: chemicals) to tackle the rest of the yard. I don't like using chemicals, but clearly the pulling isn't working since the one area I've really worked on controlling over the past three spring seasons is still having problems.

The gal at Wegman's (I swear they are the BEST garden center around) told me that my best bet is to pull the weeds EVERY day and the earlier I catch them, the less chance they have to produce and feed more bulbs. Maybe after a few years the problem might be under control. My response was, "Um, I have a job. And a life. What are my other options?" Next in line is a technique called sheet mulching. this is where you mow it all down as short as your mower will go. Then you lay sheets of cardboard or lots of layers of newspaper down on the ground and make sure it is overlapping well so that there are no cracks through which this stuff can grow. Then you spread 1" of compost and another 1-2" of mulch. the idea is that it totally smothers the sprouts and if it can't grow leaves that can conduct photosynthesis, it can't produce and feed baby bulbs. After several months, you come back and roto-till the whole yard and--voila! perfectly fertile, weed free soil. The only catch is that in severe infestations it may need to be repeated.

I pondered this and thought that maybe I will pass on that effort this season and start the sheet mulching in the fall when this icky stuff would be starting to grow again. Meanwhile, I kept pulling the weeds. In so doing, I discovered that my yard is not only home to several types of salamanders (I have seen and identified Arboreal and California Slender), but to a toad/frog as well:
Since I had disrupted his home in the patch of oxalis, I built a little toad house out of flower pot (turned it on its side and stuffed a bunch of leaves and such into and over it). i hope he intends to stay and start a family.

I also noticed that I now have a healthy worm population. The past two seasons I've thought my worm population was deficient and contemplated adding some to my veggie bed to help improve the soil condition. Nice to know that is not needed this season.

In any event, these three data points reminded me that avoiding the widespread use of chemicals is the right choice. The herbicides might have an unintentional negative impact on the ecosystem supporting my beneficial creatures, so I'll stick to weed pulling for now. The jury is still out on whether or not to do the sheet mulching now, or wait until the fall.

Yard work

So, it's been a while since I last posted, and I've been really busy in that time.

I painted and laid a new vinyl tile floor in the laundry room but I don't seem to have any real photos of that. I know I took some with my phone, but they aren't blog quality, so you'll just have to wait.

The weekends of the past month have been focused on the yard (aside from the weekend I lost to a business trip). Namely, I was keen to get my veggie bed going so that I will have some chance of having something edible before the season ends. I spent a weekend pulling weeds and working the soil and then planted the following weekend.

I went a bit crazy at the garden center:
6 types of tomatoes
a 6-pack of corn
a 6-pack of basil
Parsley
1 Cucumber
1 Zucchini
1 Crooked neck squash
1 sugar snap pea
1 watermelon
a 6-pack of lettuce

I'm pleased to say that I made it all fit:


Also a few weeks ago, I discovered buds on scraggly rose that I had pruned in January 2008, but had largely ignored since then. This weekend I got a pretty trellis and tied it up to the end of the front porch:

Cute, non?

And to round out this yard-loving post, my CA wildflowers are late to bloom, and not as well synchronized as I had hoped, but pretty nonetheless (I had wanted an explosion of blue lupine and orange poppies together, but the lupine is almost finished and the poppies are just beginning to open):

Roses

While I may not be making rapid progress on the construction front, I'm experiencing great success with my roses. If you recall, back in January, I attended a rose pruning & care seminar hosted by my local garden center. I pruned the two out front and pretty much ignored the one on the chimney since I don't have a ladder.

The trailing white floribunda at the end of the driveway will need some more serious pruning next season, but here it is when it was covered with the first round of buds (click on image to get the full effect). Craziness:

It has very densely petaled blooms that are very fragrant. They don't last more than a day or two, but it's certainly prolific enough that you hardly notice.


And the "mystery rose" that had finished blooming by the time I first met The Dump turned out to be quite a pleasant surprise. Again, it will need more serious pruning next winter to coax it into a nicer shape, but it's been very rewarding this season. The blooms start as hot pink with orangey-peach centers and fade to pink and cream. I've been pinching off the side buds to force bigger, bolder blooms, and they are really nice for cutting.

Lastly, it seems that ignoring the climber on the chimney didn't deter it much. Here's what it looked like at the peak of the first wave of blooms (mid-April):

Since I haven't gotten up there to deadhhead at all, it's slowed down as the season has progressed, but it still has a few blooms a week. I'm really glad Pete (the architect) thinks it won't be too difficult to repair and preserve the chimney. I quite like the charm it and the rose add to The Dump.

Tree trimming extravaganza

Both brothers were in town this past weekend for the sad occasion of a memorial service for our aunt, but we managed to enjoy hanging out at home and maximized the rare event that we're all in the same town at the same time.

John listened to my dilemma about the magnolia tree and promptly went to work. I'm so glad I got such conflicting info from two different tree companies and took the "I cannot be bothered to sort this thing out right now" approach. That meant that my tree was an untouched canvas on which John could work some tree trimming magic.

As a reminder, here is what it looked like before:

And now, you can actually SEE the house:
I know that's not the very best comparison since the lighting is totally different (morning vs mid afternoon), but you get the idea. I've also been working on pulling the grass from the driveway. it really annoys me that the grass sprouting in the driveway is way more lush than the grass in the lawn area. I've finally gotten 98% of it and my house looks somewhat respectable once again.

John also advised against trying to keep the apple tree. It seems to be too far gone to rehabilitate into a handsome addition to the yard. I'll call around in a few more weeks to have that removed. I'd like to at least enjoy the apple blossom season after being forced to deal with picking up all those apples last fall.

The roses are putting out buds and I'm excited to see what the one closer to the house produces (it had stopped blooming by the time I moved in while the other one was going strong all the way into January when I pruned it). It is definitely another floribunda. Both have beautiful, lush growth and I sprayed with soap yesterday after spotting some aphids. I hope they bloom soon!

All in all, it was a productive weekend at The Dump and some quality time with the fam.

Gnoming around

In a fit of "I have a yard and it needs some character," I bought a garden gnome. Actually, according to the website where I found him, I "adopted" him (they were having a 50% off "adoption event"). His name is Buckston.
I put him in the back yard to hopefully decrease the chances of him getting bitten by the travel bug.

Impatiens = Cheap and Cheerful Color

This weekend brought some amazingly beautiful weather with it. Saturday was busy with lots of stuff, but Sunday offered several hours to putter in the garden. My pre-emergent weed killer I spread a month or so ago has done a pretty good job of keeping the weeds in the rose bed to a minimum and most of the pansies are thriving.

The bed in front of the porch has been weeded and enriched with compost and pre-emergent weed killer several times, but still grows some amazing clover. I weeded it again and decided that it needs some plants to improve the curb appeal a bit. It's a mostly shady bed, due to the magnolia tree, so I was struggling about what to put there--I didn't want to invest in some nice perennials that are going to get trampled once construction starts, but most bedding plants are sun lovers. In the end, I opted for a flat of impatiens for $20 in the "mystic" mix of hot pink, light pink and super-light pink. I plugged in all 48 plants, and I'm sure they are far too close together, but I so don't care at this point. I want an explosion of color and foliage that won't break my heart when they get thrashed by construction workers with big boots.

I watered them this morning and told them they better not die today--I need them to last at least a week. :)

Moving forward

Howdy all! It's been a month since my last posting and quite a bit has happened. I'll quickly recap before moving onto to the exciting news.

Between Thanksgiving and Christmas I furnished my living room because I was tired of sitting on my bed with my laptop perched on my knees to freeload WiFi, watch DVDs, read, knit etc. I wanted a proper place to sit since it was going to be at least 3 more months before construction begins. I knew I'd have space for this stuff in my storage unit when the time came. Here's the living room full of holiday cheer:
Here's the best pic I have of the outside all decked for the holidays:

The first weekend after the new year will forever live in my memory as The Great Flood of '08. The bay area had a whopper of a storm (actually, 3 storms back-to-back-to-back) that flooded lots of places, knocked down redwoods in Marin, killed power to hundreds of thousands of people, and generally wreaked havoc. That Friday was my first day train commuting (my new year's resolution). As I drove home through Atherton, it was quite dark. I passed a street closed down by PG&E--my neighborhood was without power. In fact, most of RWC was without power, including the shopping center across the street where I was going to venture to acquire some candles and a flashlight. Instead, I decided to go to my storage unit since I knew there was a box labeled "candles" readily accessible. Thankfully they had power, but they also had water. I opened my unit (3rd floor with 2 exterior walls) to find my TV and several boxes sitting in a large puddle of water.

I immediately called Mrs. Blanco since she also has a unit on the 3rd floor. She informed me that her yard (in my neighborhood) was under 12" of water because their sump pump can't do it's job without power. At that point I knew I was in trouble at home, but first I had to resolve this minor flood.

I called Kat to see if I could pull a major favor from them and have them come help me move into a new unit. She in turn called Axt and he and his lady Susan rolled over to pitch in too. I have GREAT peeps in my life!!! Blancos, Inneses, Axt and Susan, mom and I set about moving everything into a new unit, which is happily on the first floor, but unhappily, is smaller than my current unit. Putting off facing what was waiting at home, I took everyone out to dinner as a small gesture of my great appreciation for what they did for me.

After that, I went home and found Great Lake RWC in my crawlspace. I had a sneaking suspicion that the submersible pump I found in the shed at the close of escrow meant this would happen, so I was not totally surprised. However, I WAS surprised at how much water I proceeded to pump out of the crawlspace over the next 2 days (the three storms didn't give the ground enough time to drain). I'm fully aware that this issue will be resolved during construction--adequate gutters, french drain, sump pump etc will all prevent this from being a long term problem.

However, all that water must have triggered a massive growth of mold because I've been plagued by a hideous amount of snot for the past two weeks.

Last Saturday I was vacuuming and got totally frustrated by my vacuum's poor performance on hard floors that I went out and bought a new one:

Notice how full the canister is after one pass of my whole house. I have a very hairy feline. Hopefully the new Dyson will help reduce her impact on my allergies since the mold is definitely doing a fine job on it's own (again, I am NOT freaking out about this since the house is going to be gutted in approx 2 months!).

Last Sunday I attended a rose pruning seminar hosted by my local garden center. I immediately came home and pruned my roses that definitely have not been properly pruned in many years. Here's how they look after I was finished with them:
The adorably crusty old man who taught the seminar said that I will likely lose the really thick woody part of the climbing floribunda, but to leave it for this season and let new canes sprout from the base (oops! Mom thought those were suckers and pruned them the first weekend here!). The tea rose has also been poorly pruned, so I'm hoping some new canes sprout up this year and I'll be able to bring it back into a normal shape at pruning time next year.

I fertilized and spread a preemergent weedkiller today and will spray them with copper and horticultural oil next weekend (rain in the forecast for Monday) to see if I can help prevent rust and mildew issues.

Alright, this brings me up to the current week. I figured out how to use my work phone as an internet connection, so I can use the computer anyplace in my house. yay!

Also, I got the drawings from Remy's QC on Friday. SOOO EXCITED! They sent over one version of the floorplan exactly as it is now, and one with a lot of walls knocked out so that I may doodle all over it. We're meeting Tuesday evening to go over it and move forward. It's pretty exciting to finally be doing something that feels like progress. I'll see if I can figure out how to get the drawings up here so y'all can give me some suggestions.

Gardening

My neighbor's yard is really shaping up--the sidewalk looks good, but the patio I don't like so much. In any event, I needed to step up my efforts for the cutest house on the block competition, even though I know the big work down the road will make me a shoo-in for that title. This recent activity next door called for some short term tactics that wouldn't be too far off course for the long term strategy, or be too much of a time or monetary resource drain. Bedding plants to the rescue!

We got lots of rain on Saturday, which I figured would help release the weeds from the rock-solid soil. It did, to a certain extent, and I pounced on Sunday. I pulled up lots of weeds from the bed that runs between the driveway and the fence, but there were some that still wouldn't budge. The soil in Redwood City is very heavy, dense clay, so it was a very muddy, messy task, but strangely satisfying.

I went to the garden center and got some gypsum and compost to mix into the bed for an interim fix. I know I'll need to do it again in a BIG way (with the help of more powerful equipment) when I deploy the big garden plan, but for now, I wanted to be able to plant some seasonal color. Mixing it in proved to be a challenge since the existing soil was like concrete about 2 inches down. So, I mixed it as best I could without damaging myself and then plugged in a flat of red and white pansies. They are so cute and perky and cheery, and just the trick to add some pop for the winter months:
As I left for work this morning, I caught myself talking to them, encouraging them to grow.

I am, maybe a wee bit crazy.
There are some weedy patches at each end of the bed that I just could not clear (see above, far right--the whole bed was like that), so I'll work on them again after the next rain, and will plug in some more pansies when the time comes.

Haircut

Yesterday's major accomplishment at The Dump was to remove the jasmine that was growing wild on the front porch and carport. While it was very pretty when it was in bloom, and I'm sure smelled like heaven, it a) was way too much for the little house and b) needed to come down anyway when it came time for doing the roof. Probably was going to be in the way of wrapping the house for termite fumigation too.

I decided to remove it now rather than wait. I wanted an instant improvement and I definitely got one!

Here is what it looked like a few weeks ago:

And here's what it looks like now:
It was growing up into the roof and was tied on with string and twist-ties and looked like it had never been thinned out. All in all, it was quite a masterpiece of plant gone wild. There are some really thick, woody stalks that I could not cut with my hand pruners, so I'll get some long handled loppers this week to take care of them next weekend to bring them down to ground level. I'm not sure if it will send out new sprouts or if I cut it back enough to kill it. If I didn't kill it, I wouldn't mind having it climb back up, but would definitely do it in a more controlled fashion so it doesn't overpower the little house.

When I have someone out to remove the apple tree, I'll have them limb up the magnolia while they are there. I think that will do a lot to open up the view of the house from the street. Much like trimming shaggy bangs...

We also took a whack at the shed attached at the back of the house, but it wasn't ready to budge, so we left it there.

And I now have a nice, clean living room:
(remember how it looked on the 5 cent tour?):

And here is an apple-free yard:
Worked on the bathroom yesterday too. That is some persistent soap scum, but it is coming along. No photos of that until it's totally clean so you get the full effect. However, it's cleaning up so nicely, I'll be able to shower there if necessary without getting the heebie jeebies or needing to wear shower shoes.

Backyard

Here are some photos of the backyard. I spared you a photo of the hideous metal shed that takes up 25% of the yard. Instead, I give you apples:

I have no idea how a tree that is so totally butchered can produce so many apples. It is quite a nasty sight to behold. And the apples are EVERYWHERE!!!! That tree will be removed as soon as humanly possible. It hangs over the roofline, and also hangs into my neighbor's yard, so I'm going to remove it now before it has a chance to cause some more serious trouble.

That shed next to the apples is also going to be removed asap. Doing so will give me a little patio (approx 4' x 5') on which I can put my bistro table and chairs. Nice. That's the window to the big bedroom, so I'm even thinking about making that a door so I have access to my nice little patio.

There are some healthy looking camellia plants near the back wall of the house. I'll be interested to see what they do. I'll leave them alone for now.

As you can see below, I desperately need a new fence on two sides, so I'll negotiate that with the neighbors after the rest of the construction is complete. At that point, I hope they'll realize that I'm adding tons of value to their property by improving mine, and a shiny, sturdy new fence will only further that trend.
Since I know your interest is so piqued, and I'm sure you're tired of seeing apples, here's little corner of the Big Ugly Shed peeking out from the left side of the photo:
I plan to post that bad boy as a freebie on craigslist. I might leave it there during construction if they want to use it for storage of equipment or materials since my garage storage it pretty small.

I'm thinking of doing raised beds along the fences, but landscaping is really the least of my worries at this point, so I have plenty of time to come up with some ideas. I'm open to suggestions!