Archive for category Around the house
What’s Wrong with this Picture?
Posted by nbdog in Around the house, Entertainment, Weather on 8-Apr-2010
After a record mild winter, we’re having a rather dismal early spring. We’ve had some rain or showers almost every day since March 21 and today… what a surprise! A dusting of snow decorated the trees –and surprised our ducks– early in the morning. Throughout the day we’ve had periods of bright sunshine, rain, sleet and snow. I did some yard work early in the day and then settled in to watch the first rounds of the Masters Golf tournament.
Landscaping Madness
Posted by nbdog in Around the house on 29-Mar-2010
In addition to the twelve rounds of golf, I’ve used my first month of retirement to work on some landscaping projects that have been percolating in my head for several years. Although it’s a smallish area of our lot, the revisions called for some 12 yards of top soil, 1400 pounds of boulders, and dozens of new plants. That’s in addition to clearing the random old-growth of small trees, sallal, ferns and weeds. The result has been great, however. In a couple of years when our youthful rhododendrons, heathers, flowers and grasses mature it should be quite a spectacle of color and texture. The area in this photo was just sallal and rocks a couple of weeks ago. Now the little mound is planted with pulmonaria, various ferns and beesia. The section below the boulders (all new) is home to three rhododendrons and chocolate colored Corydalis. On the other side of the mound is a new heather garden with red, lavender and yellow colored heathers as well as a few perennial grasses. I’m also very pleased with the new hand-made cedar bench.
No More Mortgage Payments
Posted by nbdog in Around the house on 14-Dec-2009
WhoooHooo!! I dropped off our final mortgage payment in this morning’s mail. For the first time since 1984 we won’t have a monthly house payment.
New Bridge Open
Posted by nbdog in Around the house on 9-Dec-2009
We have a new sense of security with the completion of the new bridge over the Snoqualmie River. The original bridge was nearly 100 years old and showed its age. Whenever I saw a moving van in our neighborhood I wondered if the next one would end up in the river.
New Mt. Si Bridge
Related articles
- Mount Si Bridge wins national award (SnoValleyStar.com)
- Mt. Si Bridge (MowatCo.com)
Euphorbia Revenge
Posted by nbdog in Around the house, Personal on 22-Sep-2009
One of my weekend tasks was to remove a very large Euphorbia plant from the back yard. It’s an old-timer we’d had for many years and it had kind of overwhelmed it’s space. We decided just to eradicate it totally. After a little digging and cutting the huge tuberous roots were in the recycle bag and body of the plant in the compost pile. I felt a little sting as I wiped the perspiration form my right eye and headed into the house to watch the Seahawks game. Within an hour or so I was in agony. I somehow got a bit of the euphorbia sap into my eye. A couple of hours in the emergency room provided some relief. A visit to the ophthamologist on Monday morning confirmed mild damage that would heal in a couple of weeks. I never thought of gardening as a hazardous hobby.
Why We Have a Fence
Posted by nbdog in Around the house on 20-Jul-2009
This weekend we finished installing an updated section of fence along the back corner of our property. It’s the area the pesky elk repeatedly broke through this past winter. Now it’s set up with eight-foot high 4×4 posts set in 120 pounds of concrete and steel wire fencing. During our three days of work an interested observer was this little doe who munched contentedly on the blackberries looking, I’m convinced, for potential weak points in our new defenses. Late Sunday afternoon I found her lounging in a shady spot adjacent to the new fence snacking on some volunteer sedum.
Front Yard Touch-Up
Posted by nbdog in Around the house on 7-Jun-2009
We finally finished our rock walls and new plantings in the front yard. It took three trips in the little Volvo to get the almost ton of rocks we needed. We like this new way to manage the slope from the east side of the yard and it gives us a new space to highlight some colorful bushes and flowers.
Front Yard Revision
Posted by nbdog in Around the house on 18-May-2009
We’ve been tweaking the landscaping of the front yard over the past couple of weeks and wrapped up work today. We added a small rock wall behind the bench, redistributed the barberries and added a few small ground covers and edge accents along the creek. Not visible here are the (now tiny) azaleas under the picture window that replaced the twiggy, twenty year old originals. We may have to do something with the viburnum at the lower left; they were heavily munched on by the elk over the winter.
Merry Christmas! Winter Scenes
Posted by nbdog in Around the house, Photo albums, Weather on 23-Dec-2008
I’ve put together a little collection of winter photos over the past week or so.
Watch the mini slides below or click on the link above to go to our collection of photo albums.
http://picasaweb.google.com/s/c/bin/slideshow.swf
Enough Winter Already
Posted by nbdog in Around the house, Weather on 22-Dec-2008
We’re having little sympathy watching scenes of winter storms in the Midwest and East. Most of that weather started here and overnight we got the winds and snow the forecasters had warned about. The snow began to fall around 4:00, the wind gradually increased and by 11:30 the power went out. I heard the wind howling and shaking the trees all night. The weather service says winds hit 70 mph over night. Trisha and I dug out in the morning to make a spot to feed the birds and ducks and huddled around the fireplace until electricity was restored just before noon. By then the temperature inside was down to 55 degrees. It was the third time I cleared the driveway in the past six days. It supposed to stay cold with additional snow showers daily through Christmas Day. Two elk have breached the vinyl fence and the north-west corner of the property and I made repairs and stacked dead trees in that area to dissuade them. We’ll see if it works.
Nutmeg50@hotmail.com 