The Saddest Little Corner in the World

September 2013

Welcome back to our saddest little corner of the world, I am looking at you Southwest backyard corner.   We had a party in three weeks and nothing was more pressing then the cinder block monster that was now o so visible with the pine tree removal.  I honestly just couldn't stomach dealing with it. Luckily, I had done some free-lance design work on the side for some contractor friends and they still owed me. I asked if we could do a work trade instead of payment. They agreed to skim coat the cinder block wall and paint it for free if I provided the paint and mortar mix. DEAL

So I took a trip to Lowes bought 15 bags of mortar mix and a gallon of paint.  In one day they roughly applied a skim coat of mortar to the wall.  The wall was in bad shape, it was missing mortar between the cinder blocks, someone had nailed several large metal spikes into the wall for hanging baskets and it was generally pretty gross. Since we were not actually using stucco all we did was trawl on a layer working it into the mortar joints.  The final product was that we were left with a large gray wall that looked slightly better then the masonry wall of sadness.

We knew we didn't want to paint the wall any color to grab attention, that ruled out our blue house color, white paint, or the dark red of our porch.  We decided to pick a cedar brown color that would hopefully blend in if we ever replaced the fences with wood. The color was a little more red then were are expecting and is maybe a little more Tuscan then woodsy, but it looked 800 times better then the unfinished cinder block wall and we were only to happy to live with it.


Unfortunately, no actual pictures were taken in September, these were from December- blog fail

After the wall was painted we had to address the landscaping or more accurately the lack there of.  The first step was to get rid of all the random stuff we had stacked back there.  Trash cans were filled with broken concrete, plastic pots.  Wood branches, logs, leaves, and pine needles were made into fire wood or placed in the lawn debris bin.  For some reason, we unearthed 9 plastic soil bags the previous owner had laid down back there as well as a plastic dinosaur (bonus).  We also found several old rotting stumps and a random assortment of rocks.  After picking out all the rocks and doing a quick pick axe to the stumps we broke out the rototiller to level and freshen up the dirt.  We now were left with a clean but barren landscape.

We decided to keep the single rhodie that had been hiding back there.  Feeling tight on cash and already out the $400 for the tree removal we struggled with what to fill the area with that was cost effective.  We went to the nursery and bought 3 trees. We went for the biggest ones we could get in our price range.  First up was one additional Donard Cypress for along the back fence and then two Sekkan Sugi Cedars (aka. Golden Japanese Cedars).  We picked them for several reasons, first I liked their fuzzy nature, second they seemed to go with our lime green cypress trees and third they grow to only 20-25' tall and only get about 5-10' wide. After our large pine we had no interest in creating a huge issue down the line with a too large tree that would block out the sun or take over the yard.

We filled out the area with some more limelight hydrangeas (because I can't help myself) and a weeping hemlock.  It stills feels sparse, but everything grows and hopefully in a few years it won't seem so bare. I can't wait for spring when everything takes off!




 Below is a view from inside the porch in October, you can see the additional Donard Cypress and one of the Japanese Cedars in the corner.  Unfortunately, you can also see the expanse of our horrible pinstriped cyclone fence. Grow trees... Grow!

Veggie Garden Year Two

July 2012

To start, we had really good intentions for our garden this year.  We thought things were moving forward with the house and we could really commit.  We spent one weekend enlarging the bed around the raised beds because we planned to plant SO many veggies that we would need all this extra space.  Well.... we did not get our act together and none of little baggies of careully procurred seeds got started.  I tried not to beat myself up too much about it.  We had been busy with a lot of stuff both house related and personal and Portland was extremely cold and rainy right through June.

I went to the local nursery and got:  four tomato plants, three pepper plants, 2 zucchinis, 1 yellow squash, 1 cucumber, 2 snap peas, 1 pumpkin, and tons of brocolli.   The good news is I planted them all, as well as put some direct seed carrots in the ground.  Josh had planted some onions several months before and these came in as well.  Really that is about all I can say.  We put them in the ground.  There was no watering, pruning or attempt to add any additions to the garden.  I was so dazed I even forgot I needed a second pumpkin plant as a pollinator, so I, in effect, planted a vine. 

The good news, is everything in Portland grows and most of our seedlings took off and running.  As with the year before we started getting a massive zucchini stash, endless tomatoes and so many volunteer tomatoes from the year before we could have started a business. The broccoli never seemed to quite work out, and I only got about 8 carrots out of the deal.  I never planted lettuce, or bush beans, or any other seeds. 

The asapargus came back from the year prior, but was still too small to harvest, my neighbor donated a artichoke plant which thrived and gave us three delicious small chokes and beautiful flowers. Our blueberries and strawberries made plenty of fruit all though so small they were often tart and barely worth picking.  I truly look forward to the summer where I plant and stage my garden so that I have numerous different veggies growing throughout the early spring into late fall.

 

What I can tell you the yard got a lot of attention this year.  By the end of the summer, I had pulled out all the dandelions in the yard (only for 50% to grow back).  I re-edge all the beds, added new shurbs, trees, bulbs, and flowers. The plants from two years prior started to really take off and grow.  The hydrangeas doubled in size as well as did the rosemary and lavenders. Our cherry trees which started at my height were over 10 feet tall. IOur landscaping was defiantely starting to feel more mature and less nursery basic.  It was moving forward!

Yard Redemption

October 2010

 

After our planting trip, Josh and I stepped it up and pulled some long days to turn up the soil and get the plants in the ground.  We laid it all out and spent an entire day planting, mulching and laying the stones.  By 6:00 pm it was getting dark and we called it a night.  Step one was complete and we had unearthed our house from behind the rhodies.  We felt satisfied to go into the holiday season with a fresh look outside.

 

Also, on a similiar landscaping note we added two 'street trees,' these reside in our planting strip between the sidewalk and the road.  We are the only house on the entire block without street trees and while I enjoy the sunlight, it also makes us look a little bare. 

In the Spring, Josh and I purchased a dwarf Bing Cherry tree, in the Fall, we added a hybrid Cherry tree, which had four separate cherries species grafted onto one trunk.  I am very excited for the day our little saplings are beautiful trees, and of course for all those delicious cherries. My neighbor told me there is a Chinese proverb about trees... "when is the best time to plant a tree?  20 years ago.  What is the next best time to plant a tree? Right now."