now you don't

so here is the same area as the picture below, but without the brick wall. This is not a great picture. There was frost this morning and it was very chilly so I took the picture from inside. But it does give you some sense of where we are going with this.

now you see it... now you don't

Now you see it...the wall that is circled is already gone...and the next pictures I'll post will show you.

plantings almost there

So here you have the almost final version of our new plantings. We need to lay down additional mulch (David ran out last night-so we've got to go buy some more). The rocks are from the rock wall in back, and that may have been the most difficult part of it all. We had to get them all to fit right next to each other, which was kind of like a puzzle. We added a few more plants than the picture I took of all the plants on the concrete. I think it will fill out nicely.

Now we just have to put down some grass seed, more mulch, and we should be done! Well, almost done. Then we have to tackle the other side of the walkway. And then the bathroom. Or maybe the order of those will get switched...

Hope you enjoy the pictures!

planting done

Well, last night, just as it was getting to be too dark to see the ground, we finished planting our new bed.  We still need to plant the groundcover, and the cabbages, but the rest we amazingly got done yesterday after work.  We need to put the mulch in as well, but I'd say it is looking pretty good.  This morning we woke up to rain, so it was really good that we got it done yesterday.  And all the better for the plants to get some extra water to establish those roots.  Needless to say, it was too dark last night to take pictures, and this morning the rain made it not so pretty.  So, hopefully later this week I'll be able to show you the fruit of our labor.

working weekend

And by working, I mean manual labor. Here are some pictures of the work we did saturday and sunday on the yard. By the time we stopped working tonight (sunday), it was too dark to get a picture of our progress, so I guess you'll just have to be surprised by that some other day.

Here is my cutie taking a quick break to give me a smile.

This is mid-day on Saturday. The dirt hasn't been properly distributed across the yard yet, and the incline needs to be made slightly more obtuse.

Here is the progress by end of the day Saturday. Dirt has been distributed and smoothed over.

This morning, I made David sit down with me and draw out a plan of sorts so I could start to visualize what the yard with a bunch of plants would look like. Here is what we ended up with. Not all of this will happen right away, but some of it will. The thing shaded at the bottom is our house.
When we finally returned from the nursery, we put everything we bought together, and boy--it sure is alot.
Dwarf cypress in front, New Zealand Flax (spikey stuff) flanking it. On the left is some ornamental cabbage, and there is more behind this stuff ---see next picture.
Here we have some flaming red sea grasses (bright green groundcover in front of the sea grass), 3 little juniper bushes, and I forget the name of the things to the right. Oh well. We are going to try to plant them tomorrow and maybe a few other nights this week.

And tonight we hauled (okay David did most of the hauling), some big rocks and installed them at the bottom the slope to help stop erosion and run-off.

I'll post more pictures later. Our new camera is pretty fun!

Searching high and low

David and I have been searching high and low for Halloween decorations. He really wanted the classic looking ones that you tape up in your window etc. We looked at target and fred meyer and bartells and the grocery store, but we couldn't find anything like that at all. So, last night we drove north to Lynnwood to go to one of those party stores that converts to whatever holiday it is. They had like 100 different costumes to choose from, and rows and rows of halloween accessories etc. We finally found the decorations David has been wanting. Yea!

We also finally bought the compact digital camera that we asked for $ and gift cards for last year. It is a cute camera--very small and it seems like it takes good pictures. It has 7.2 megapixels--more than we could ever need. Can you believe they now make memory cards that hold 4 GB? When David got his camera years ago, the highest memory card I can remember was 128 MB. Amazing how quickly technology changes. I haven't figured it all out yet, but I'm going to try to download some pictures tonight and post them. I'll make sure I show you our halloween decorations!

Maggie's new toy

Just to post something today, here are some cute pictures of Maggie with her new toy given to her by Linda and Pete.

Her paw is looking pretty good--and she doesn't seem to need the e-collar anymore. Thank goodness!

saturday work continued

more pictures....

Here is the mess of wood that resulted from disassembling the green awning. I helped pound the nails down so they weren't dangerous. You can also see here the brick wall that fell down under the weight of the awning, once it came down.


David did all the carrying of the wood back to the junk/garbage pile in the backyard.

Here is the Before picture-- looking from the sideyard back into the backyard.

And this is what I call the aftermath picture. You can see all the dirt moved into the yard--we raked it into the holes. We are trying to use the dirt we moved to even out the nooks and crannies in our yard. This picture also shows you our junk/garbage pile in the backyard. I really need to take a close up of this pile. It really makes us feel like we've been working hard. (and see part of our new trees :-)

And, I couldn't post without showing you our new trees from a good angle. They are Raywood Ash trees. They will be wonderful when they fill out.

saturday's hard work

Here are some before and after pictures to show you how much we did yesterday (saturday).


Here is the back of the house before we ever did anything. See green stuff in "awning", funky table, and latticework.


And after! Lattice came down, funky table came off, and yesterday David and I took down the green "awning" that is on the back of the house. Looks good, huh? Oh, we also installed a rain barrel so we can be more eco-conscious in watering our plants.

Before Picture: Here is the area looking from the side deck into the backyard. Note wooden "bridge deck", also the peninsula of dirt right in front of it held in with the bricks.

Here, the wooden deck has been taken off, and in the process of taking down the green awning some of the bricks fell over (they were pretty precarious to begin with). Peninsula still fairly intact. Looks like quite a mess.

This is what it looked like sunday morning (can't work outside today for the rain). Much of the mess and dirt have been cleaned up, and can you tell that the peninsula is almost gone? David did a lot of shoveling, and I did alot of wheelbarrow dumping. We worked hard!

There is definitely more to show....I'll post more as Blogger allows me to download photos.

new bedding!

Well, we finally found at least one new bedding set for one of our bedrooms. I'm really excited about it. It is a great color, and a really cool pattern is stitched into it. Here's a picture. We didn't get the brown pillows, but they look great with it. Maybe we'll save some more and buy those too.

Celebrate

Today is National Coming Out Day .

As posted on the Human Rights Campaign Foundation website:

“Talk About It” will be the theme of this year’s National Coming Out Day to be celebrated on October 11, 2006. The Human Rights Campaign Foundation’s Coming Out Project is an on-going campaign to empower gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and allied Americans to live openly and honestly about their lives.


Says Lizzy:
Right on.

kitty cat antics

Our condo neighbor sent us this link to this video. It is so funny. For anyone who has a pet, but especially for cat lovers. Enjoy!

Kitty Cat doing amazing / funny things.


Very Funny!

Happy Birthday Dad!!

Happy Birthday Dad! Hope you have a great day, and don't get wheezy from blowing out all your candles! ;)

don't say anything

You know that old saying that if you can't say anything good, don't say anything at all? Well, I'm going to take that advice right now. If I were to write right now it would end up a bunch of complaining and bad stuff, so I'm not going to write much at all. It will be like a mini blog vacation, only I'll be working my butt off on other things. So, please accept my apologies in advance, for my lack of posting this week. I'll be back soon!