Category: House

Two sides complete!

Well, maybe complete at any rate. I did another bit of retaining wall+gravel along the fence side of my center flowerbed. I’d put off doing that part because I figured I’d have to decide how to do the north end of the flowerbed before I could put it in, but instead I just put in about three-quarters of the width of the weed-block fabric worth of gravel. That means I really can’t do anymore without deciding if I’m extending the flowerbed or stopping it there. Maybe I’ll finish the house-side of that flowerbed next if the weather cooperates.

Before:

Walkway before
Walkway before

After:
Walkway After

A few weeks ago I bought a dozen more landscaping stones for my gravel retaining wall. Unfortunately I didn’t pay enough attention to the shape and they’re completely different (not nearly as rounded). They’re also a different color and a little shorter. I wish I knew where the original stones came from (they were put in by the people who replaced my fence – they did a good job on the fence, not so much holding the gravel back to make my yard level). Anyways, so long as the new stones work as well as the old ones when stacked 2-high it shouldn’t be a problem.

On a completely different note, I’ve got two more types of purple flowers blooming now:
Small purple flower

Large purple flower

I have no idea what either one is, but the smaller one has had buds for quite a while, just they didn’t open until the last couple weeks. The larger one has been blooming for a while, and it attracts some rather large bees. I tried for a picture of one, but it didn’t stick around when I started waving the camera nearby trying to line it up for a close picture.

Unwelcome Guests

These were not the target audience (there were three when I took the picture, but this was the one that didn’t react to me getting close with the camera):
2013-09-21 13.36.40

After the wasps got in a fight with a bee I took the next opportunity I saw to take the hummingbird feeder down. It’s barely been drained at all the last couple weeks and I haven’t seen hummingbirds in a while. I don’t really see a need to attract stinging insects to my yard.

I was outside to put up a trellis for my rose vine to climb instead of wiring it to the fence. It was starting to reach over the top of the fence on one side and was so long it was draped nearly back down to the ground on the other side (when I didn’t hang that vine on something).

Before:
Before

The vine was hanging from a couple screws that were left embedded in the fence by the previous owner. It didn’t really stay on them by itself, so I’d wired it to them. By this weekend that was starting to fail, largely because it had too many long pieces and I didn’t have very many screws to anchor it to.

With the trellis before the vine was arranged:
Installed

Trellis + vine:
After

Next time I mess with that vine that much I need to wear long sleeves and get some leather gloves. My partly fingerless gloves helped a great deal, but I still ended up with a number of scratches and had a few times where I was pretty well stuck to it. At least I didn’t quite give the rose vine a taste of blood: don’t really want it to get agressive or anything.

Yard Progress

The last couple weekends I’ve been working on finishing the landscaping for another section of my yard.

Before (look along the fence by the gate):
Before

When I started the weekend before last I was only planning to remove some gravel so I could work on the flowerbed edging and retaining wall along the fence. Since I wasn’t planning to do anything major I didn’t think to take a good before picture. Then once I’d removed some gravel I got to looking at it and decided I had enough space to start adding things, and eventually it got too dark to work and I had to stop. This was taken the next day:
After round 1

I was pretty proud of the progress I made, but having loosely retained gravel holding up a few paving stones made it hard to get to the fence-side of the flowerbed. After having to work my way along that side several times assisting Talore in hunting grasshoppers (bonus pictures of this later) I figured I should work on that this past weekend.

I didn’t start with big plans, I was just going to move some dirt/gravel out of the way (again). This was taken when I realized I’d cleared a whole ‘nother segment-worth of space (segments being the width of the weedblock fabric I’m putting down under the gravel):
Before 2

And the after picture from Sunday:
After 2

I tried to line up the pictures so they’d be from the same angle, but it was hard to flip back and forth between them (several other pictures between) so I figured this was good enough. I’m really happy with how it’s progressing, but to do more I’m going to have to decide how I want the end of that flowerbed to be done. I also need to go get more landscaping blocks to go along the fence since I only started with a single row and the wall I’m building with them is two-blocks tall. Hopefully I’ll do more on it this weekend (long weekend for the win), but I’ve got another couple projects I really need to get to that probably should come first.

As promised, a picture of the ferocious hunter and her catch:
Talore with prey
Admittedly she wouldn’t have eaten it (happened shortly after the picture, and boy did it crunch) without my help, but by the time she lost it in the grass it was maimed enough it couldn’t jump and was leaving a trail of goo. I didn’t see any reason to leave it to die and feed the ants, so I dug it out for her.

With how much Talore seems to crave the hunt she sure doesn’t prolong it. Most of the bugs she catches get eaten as soon as she’s managed to stun them so they don’t jump when she lets go with her paws. This one apparently was rather more resilient and led her on a merry chase around my yard in circles (I kept having to untangle the leash from the taller plants).