New sidewalks and smile a new lease on life

Of course all that roadwork slowed down and finally stalled our in house renovations and the front deck so maybe next spring we can get things finished.

Another thing that happened this summer that stalled things even more was the lose of our beloved Mojo.   He had been part of this family for nearly 16 years and we are still missing him badly.
We invited a new poodle puppy into our life a couple of months later.   Life will never be the same... 

 Now 8 months old and full of  intelligence, vim, and vigor Jazz has become an even more important part  of our household then we ever expected.  She is opening doors for me that have been closed for years. Her need for exercise gets me out of bed on days I would rather forget the world exists, her antics make me smile when the world is black.  Saturday we will move from simple just being a good dog training to task training and eventually on to full Service Dog status for her and me a new life outside my house and safe places.

 

Look at how bright and white these new sidewalks are.  I keep thinking there is snow on the ground when I glance out the windows.   Of course I am slowly learning to look at the GRASS.  Yes we actually have grass now at least near the new sidewalk complements of of the city.  It looks odd because it is still green when the rest of the grass in the front yard is now browned off for the winter.

We have sidewalks!

Few days ago they put in the new street curbs and now we even have a sidewalk but still no road.  Boy does it look odd.  . Once they actually get the road finished we can get to work on the deck/front steps.  Garage is nearly done and I am really looking forward to seeing how it looks.

I still have one box for the garden to get setup but the others are growing well.  I think we will have some nice salads year.   Now if I could just get the cucumbers to grow as well as the onions, lettuce and radishes. I currently have 6 tomatoes doing well and 3 struggling in our intense heat.  Beans are coming up in all the right places so we will have a nice selection of beans later and beets and Swiss chard too. 

I hate construction!

Today it became very apparent that the guy from DOT did not know what he was talking about.  Our  day lilies are not safe where they are.  We need to dig up and move all the day lilies from the bed near the cherry tree and about half of the day lilies on the driveway side of the yard.   On the up side for the first time since we moved in we have good water pressure...

We have gotten our side of the garage primed and ready for paint.  Toli decided not to paint it pure white but rather a very pale lavender similar to the color we have in the breakfast nook.  That color changes throughout the day from "white" to grey to very pale lavender.  Like the breakfast nook we will be using a greyed green for the trim.

I am going to be job hunting later this week.  After being seduced with pretty photos of bunnies and low prices I weakened and ended up saying yes to a total of three new angoras.  One is an adorable lilac tort English Angora.  He will be for display only I am NOT getting into the Fraggle Rock bunnies.  The other two are both Satin Angoras.  Do si do is a chocolate agouti doe that will hopefully make some chinchilla babies when bred to d'Artagnan.  The black buck needs a name yet but he will be a good match with Cloud Flower my sable pearl.

More garden changes

OOPS!  I forgot both the cucumbers for Toli and our first attempt to grow potatoes when planning the garden.  Thanks goodness for this online Garden Planner.  It let me play around online with box sizes and placement as well as plants and plant placement.  Really found it handy.

So drum roll please Here is what we are planning for the backyard "garden" area.   Notice how many boxes I ended up with.  5 big boxes is not what we had in mind when I started this year but it was the only way to fit everything in.  The biggest problem was fitting in my squash and his cucumbers...

Toli has been busy making the extra boxes needed and I get to do the heavy work and blend the soil for the boxes.  He is at least helping me put it in the boxes.  I also want to move my compost pile out of the corner and over near the wooden fence.  I am hoping to actually find  room for a 3 bin setup which will make life easier next year when I need compost for the garden boxes.

Slowly but surely the house and garden are getting done. 

Toli has all of our side of the garage ready to prime and paint.  He still needs to work on our neighbors side of the front.  He has to repair their door and sand down that side then all the prep work will be done.   Grin yes we are doing the FRONT of the neighbors side of the garage.  They paid for him to do it and will buy any supplies needed for their side.  It actually is in our best interests to make at least the front look cared for since our garage is one building shared with the neighbors.

The back door is done but I still need to scrape the bathroom ceiling and paint it.  Then there are those front steps...

Two of my four garden boxes are in place and filled with something like Mel's Mix. Toli will be putting on their grids today and then I will start to plant.  The smaller 3 by 3 box and the 1 x 4 box will have to wait until the wind dies down so I can mix the "dirt" for them.   Grin I did way overbuy some parts of the dirt mix so may have to sweet talk Toli into another long narrow box to plant tomatoes in since I have ended up with more indet mater plants then I have room for if I want pole beans...  Actually I have lots of room for plants it is just those climbing plants that I am lacking room for.   When all the boxes are in place and ready to each box will have a trellis on one side so there will be a total of 15 ft of trellis space unfortunately with at least 8 mater plants in there that will take up most of that room leaving me none for cucumbers or pole beans or other climbing plants.

Garden changes

As posted before the boxes were all laid out then along come Toli...

The boxes got moved now three are along the garden fence line and one is out in the middle where the old trellis is.  Together we got landscape cloth under all 4 boxes and they are ready for the soil mix.

We will do that tomorrow as we got all the ingredients for it today.  Unloading all the bags took some time and Toli was like that is a lot of soil.  Told him I have a lot of space to fill in the boxes and that any left over could be used in the day lily beds.  Now I need to figure out how to measure out and blend the right amounts of each ingredient to get close to the right percentages for Mel's Mix that I am trying to get close to.

Well the boxes are all laid out in the garden area where I want them to be but now they are waiting for me to find a way to buy dirt or in this case the ingredients for something like Mel's mix for Square Foot gardening.  The boxes are all deeper then his 6 inch depth so will take a lot of soil mix.  I think I figured to fill them to the top they would need nearly 48 cubic feet of soil.  I think this year I will just put in a 6 inch layer and add more soil next year.   

Hope we get the dirt figured out asap as my little home grown seedlings need to go in the ground.  I have a few tomatoes, a couple of eggplants and some flowers.

My tomatoes are not all the normal red maters most are used to.  I have loads of Lime Green Salad which is a little dwarf with green when ripe tomatoes, a couple of Matina and of Gregori's Alti which are both red heirloom that handle cool temperatures and ripen early. I even have a gasp hybrid I have raised from seed called Oregon Spring.  This is a red early ripening, cool tolerant hybrid. I lost my Taxi seedlings so bought a yellow hybrid called Lemon Boy.   I have not tried Lemon Boy before so that will be interesting.

No peppers survived the can't reach them time so if I want any in the garden I will need to buy some.