my home improvements – Page 2

Endless Yardwork

It’s not quite Endless Summer…but at least all this work should make for a more beautiful yard for me this summer. What have I been doing the past few days? It hasn’t been anything art-related. Though last Sunday we had a great Irish house session at my home: 2 fiddlers, 1 piper, 1 flute, 1 guitar, 1 bodhran. It was great. A nice break from all the work.

So, all those plants I got at the plant sale (see the previous post) had to go in the ground, so I dug up the ground adjacent to my perennial bed, which of course has agaves and aloes in it, that’s the kind of perennial border you get around here:

…and I plunked in some of the plants from the sale, including some hollyhocks, we’ll see how they do….

Then, alongside my new path I dug up a narrow strip of ground; my ambitious plans for an annual flower bed. We’ll see how my dreams look in 2 months, when everything will be beaten down by the scorching hot days.

I have no reason to trust all the doves and birds that love to peck at the ground when I’m not nearby…so I covered up my new flowerbed with some chicken wire (now sold as “poultry mesh”!!) I scattered marigold, globe amaranth, cosmos, nasturtium and anise hyssop seeds; they are heat tolerant and I’ve had some luck with globe amaranth before. We’ll see what happens.

Then next to the flower bed I planted a couple of somewhat aggressive groundcovers, a wedelia (yellow drops) and a creeping lantana; there’s still some bermuda grass in that area that sadly shoots up occasionally and I’d like to give what’s left of it some hefty competition. That plant is a scourge. No, it’s worse than that. It’s a plague. You can’t kill it.

Next to the 2 groundcovers, where the giant hole in the ground used to be, is my new Sweet Pete fig tree, which my mom gave to me Monday.

Here you can see what I did with my cactus pruner; I broke a blade hacking away at this agave, though. I think I got a bit carried away.

My mom gave me some soaker hose she wasn’t using, so I strung it around my fruit trees: apricot–which is just a fledgling–and my more mature tangelo, orange and lemon trees. The hose is partially underground and I heaped lots of mulch on top of it. At a slow low-water-pressure drip, the ground is soaked 3 feet deep in 12 hours.

I still have some chores left to do: install more soaker hoses, install shade cloth on raised beds, paint the work bench where my bee hive will stand, and plant a cactus garden. And then order some more decomposed granite to fill in barren spots. I hope to have all that stuff done in another month. THEN I can get back to sewing and playing music.

Garden Update

I’m off to Boston on Saturday. I’m leaving this blog behind and just taking my fiddle and a small carry-on. Nothing personal, blog. I just like to make a clean break from the routine every now and then.

I’ll be on the South Shore; and Dorchester, where some of my 3rd cousins (my Newfoundland grandmother’s brother’s grandchildren, if I got that right) live, they’re having a brunch for me Sunday, YUM. I like visiting Boston. It reminds me of my childhood, and I remember a lot about that area from the 70s.

Here’s the yard update; I can’t wait to get this project more close to done so I can start to sew again:

I cleaned up the northwest corner, now devoted to compost bins and….my new beehive, whenever it arrives (hopefully before the bees, that would be a good thing):

This is just a shot of what I’ll fix up when I get back, improve that path with the 2 tons of decomposed granite I have left:

Here are new perennials I got at the Tucson Botanic Gardens annual spring plant sale 2 weeks ago, I made a soaker hose from an old garden hose, mulched the plants, and I’ll cover this area with nice gold decomposed granite, eventually:

It looks a bit bleak, but compare it to this, 10 months ago:

Yuck! Isn’t that chain link fence and oleander horrible? I had to live with that for 5 years. And the too-close-for-comfort view of the duplex rentals next door? When the wall went up 9 months ago I was very very happy:

See you next week!

Tucson’s Best Window Installation

As I’ve just indicated, my life after work lately has been pre-occupied with the 2010 Winter Olympics. Even though the coverage is awful.

The other reason I haven’t posted much, though, is because last week I got new windows (made by Window Depot, a local business) installed in my house. I am very home-oriented, and am willing to scrimp and drive an old car with no air-conditioning in order to save money for my house. Here’s a view of one of my old windows, made in the 50s:

Here’s another one. By the way, I can’t stand these windows; most of them don’t open and dust and dirt blew in through the casement cracks.

And, just to make it clear how ugly my windows were, here’s another window that got replaced:

One of the unit clerks where I work told me about a father-son team who’d installed her windows recently; she highly recommended them. Rob and Tom Saunders. They did a super job. Plus, they cleaned up after working, too. That was an unexpected bonus. I came home from work last Tuesday, and they’d popped in the bedroom windows:

The next day, the windows in my sewing room were replaced. The very yucky sills were taken out and replaced, too. You can see why I haven’t gotten any sewing done lately. The sticker on the window is for the 2009-2010 tax credit, which allows me to get 30% of my cost back from the government next year for installing energy efficient windows.

Here you can see my sadly very ignored art quilt reflected in the glass. And the gaping hole that will later in the day be a beautiful window sill.

Here’s the view from the front: 3 of my 8 new windows. Don’t they look great? Plus, they’re cleaner and way more energy-efficient. And they make my home quieter. I’m SO HAPPY. Anyone who wants windows installed, contact me and I’ll forward you Rob and Tom’s contact info. And, they do more than just windows.

Finally….the old windows. I can’t believe I put up with them for over 5 years. Yuck.