Month: May 2013

Since this was a long weekend and the weather was great I spent a good bit of time working on my yard. The only problem here is that it’s still a nice day so instead of writing much I’m going to finish vacuuming up all the dirt I tracked in and go read outside for a while.

Edging

I re-edged the flowerbed by the fence in brick, despite the best efforts of the lilac to block me. For that matter, the lilac was the reason the old edging was coming up since the lilac was growing sprouts on both sides of it pushing it out of the way.

I also edged both sides of the path to the gate in preparation for re-doing the path (paving stones in for spacing).

This is why I put in deeper edging in front of the lilac – I don’t really want it putting up sprouts everywhere. This was under the plastic that lined the bottom of the path.

Cats

This is Talore pretending that she’s not over in that corner so she can try to jump the 6 ft fence to the neighbor’s yard. And of course the camera focused on the pile of bricks, oh well. I never got a picture of her preparing to jump because the only reason she didn’t was that every time I saw her going for it I got up to go stop her.

Talore resigned to settling down in her usual spot to eat grass since I won’t let her out of the yard.

Dash in my spot.

Talore kept trying to jump the fences – either one would do. At least she’s hit the end of her leash enough times that she’s very cautious about jumping when she’s got the harness on so I have time to catch her. Also, both cats were really interested when I had the gate open – they kept trying to sneak past me.

Path

The path with edging and the lower retaining stones in place:

Perfect width for the weedblock fabric (in the hope that it will actually keep plants from growing in the gravel).

The step is in. Not perfect, but at least since it’s set with gravel it’s not likely to settle much when it rains (I hope, still waiting to confirm that).

Started filling in/leveling the path with gravel.

Paving stones down, they fit pretty well (lengthwise, I’d measured width as I went).

You could almost be forgiven for thinking I know what I’m doing with how well it turned out. Though now that I look at the picture closer it doesn’t look level, I may have to go back out with more gravel to fill in the right side.

I still need to clean up around the path so I can finish the edges of it – the flowerbed by the fence will be shortened at some point, then I’ll put in a landscaping stone to keep the path edged in and to support the retaining edge of that flowerbed. I also need to figure out what I’m doing with the big flowerbed. I’m tempted to cut it off as far as I edged it since there’s so much gravel in that edge of it, but that’ll be another weekend.

We got some rain this week (as opposed to snow), and some of my plants are decidedly perking up.

I didn’t do a whole lot in my yard this weekend, though I did finally decide which plants I want in the flowerbed under the window and weeded out all the sprouts of other things. I also spent about an hour sitting by the back door with it open yesterday and Dash finally ventured outside: he sat on the step for a while, then jumped back inside when I got up to go outside with him.

I got a second harness/leash last weekend so I could have both cats outside together, and also so I wouldn’t have to keep adjusting one harness to switch it between cats. There’s certainly hope for the together part working since Dash sniffed around where Talore was before going back for the door, but not yet.

Talore didn’t want to go outside today, but I suspect that relates to the events when she discovered the end of her leash. I’d put the harness on Talore first and had her leashed to the door handle while I convinced Dash that he was going to let me put his harness on too. Apparently Talore didn’t realize I’d hooked the leash on something and she decided she was going upstairs: she got a running start and jumped for the landing, and was in mid-air when she hit the end of the leash. She did most of a backflip, knocked a lamp over with the leash (I caught it), and ended up with the harness pulled half way over her head (pinning her front legs to her neck). I got her straightened out, but let her go hide under the bed for a while to recover.

Once I finally managed to get Talore outside she settled down quickly and nibbled the tops off a few plants.

I finally got around to looking it up: hummingbirds are expected in Colorado next month. So long as it doesn’t looke like it’s going to freeze I’ll just leave the feeder out till then.