4.25.10

Today's goal is to get the damn trellises up. I'm at the end of my rope with them at this point, and they're going up come hell or high water...


I woke up feeling a little defeated. That whole "running in slow motion" thing. Another day of working. Another day of diverting Trent from a little well deserved R&R. Another day, another day, another day! I started things off getting a few supplies I needed - some retainer stones and cap rocks and weed cloth and river rocks from HD, then some plants from The Great Outdoors. TGO almost ALWAYS produces a state of euphoria in me. Not so today. Not TGO's fault - no, not at all. Just illustrating my level of "had-it-up-to-here" -edness. If TGO can't get me high, nuthin' can.

Got home and got the party started. Trent was still game for helping me out, bless him. I had sprayed the second coat of pruning sealant on the wooden disks before I went out to do my errands, so by the time I was back, they were ready to go. We got the disks screwed to the cans, then started trying to drill the holes for the drains. That was NOT fun.

The first attempt involved drilling a pilot hole, then trying to use a jigsaw to cut out the rest. No dice. Then one of us remembered that we have a whole set of spade bits. Bingo!

Pilot holes

Here, Trent's using a spade bit to enlarge the pilot holes. Oh, if only that were as dirty as it sounds!

Once the holes were drilled, I put the drains in.

First ya schmear the bottom of the pipe with aquarium sealant...

Then you mash it in the hole!

Close up of the drains. Can't remember if I already posted one...

Used some low tack tape to keep the drains upright while the aquarium sealant dried. Taa Daa!

OH. EM. GEE. Holy Shit. The damn poles are in the cans. Be still my beating heart. This is the last one we set. And of course, it was the most difficult. Not because it was heavy - nope, it was by 2 feet the shortest one. And not because we did anything different. Nope, lather, rinse, repeat. What was the problem? We have no idea. The quickrete just wouldn't set up. Where we used 2 bags of concrete for the other two cans/poles, we finally had to add a third bag to this one. That finally got it to hold the lumber plumb. Not sure what happened, but whatever. It seems ok now. I hope!










Me. Holding the lumber. Watching concrete set up. Or not.

Me again. Still holding the lumber. Still watching concrete dry. Jeeze.

Free standing wood. Yay. (Take that and do what you will with it.)

If you look at that last one carefully, you can see where I've set the bigger trash cans in in between the smaller ones. These will be planted with the blackberries tomorrow. Unfortunately, my b.berry plants have already had one bad shock this year (when I dug them up) and are about to get another (when I replant them). They made it through the first and will likely make it through the second, but I won't get much of a crop this year. Blackberries fruit on 2 year old canes, and all of my mature canes died from shock. There is fresh, new growth on all of the plants, but they won't do me much good this year. Oh well, at least they're up and off the ground now, and out of danger of becoming a bramble.

4.24.10

Before I got going today, I took a few pictures of where I left off yesterday, as promised. However, I'm not going to go update them to yesterday's post. Moving forward, I say...

This is the "driveway" path. Just about finished it!

Trent had to help me move that stone there in the bottom left corner. That beast was HEAVY!

Center path. The bottom left corner is the weed cloth in one of the "sidewalk" paths, waiting for me to finish it with sand and stone. In due time, my friends. In due time.

I was playing around with getting up on a ladder for better pictures.

This is the path closest to the house on the driveway side. I got this path laid and blended in with the center path.

That's about it for an update for the progress on 4/23/10. Now for today.... Today's focus is the blackberry path. I want to get the trellises installed, and hopefully get the blackberries (re)planted. This doesn't sound like a lot, but it is.


For the trellises, I have to alter three 20gallon trashcans. I need to reinforce the bottom, add a drainage system, set them into place, put in the 4" x 4" posts, and add 8" of concrete. Once the concrete is cured, the poles need to be cut to the same height, a couple of them need to be stained, and the rest of the can needs to be filled with soil and planted. The posts are left over from the Great Fence Build, and have been in our garage for a couple of years now, waiting to be used!! Yay, freecycling!

I started the morning marking some rocks with big "X"s in pink sidewalk chalk. I had forgotton to leave room for the dry creek bed in the blackberry path. I needed to pop these stones out so that I could fix that. Trent helped me out a LOT today, starting with this. He pulled the rocks out for me and stacked them on the pallets. The dry creek bed will coax runoff from the roof line down away from the house, to the street. The runoff has created a visible rivulet in the soil on the side of the house, so I'm just following that line and making it better. I hope. Fingers crossed. (Yes, eventually some good gutters will be installed, and will be attached to rain collection barrels, but in the meantime, need to keep the foundation healthy!)

Before

Pink Xs

After. It was sort of hard to see the removed stones, so I highlighted the area in yellow to help.

Here I'm making drainage tubes for the trashcans that are to hold the trellises. The idea is this - the trashcans are 24" tall. I'm only going to put concrete in the bottom 8". That'll be enough to anchor the posts. I'm going to fill the rest up with soil and plant them with varieties of mint. In order to be successful with this, the mint will need to be able to drain THROUGH the concrete. Not bloody likely!! So I've used scraps of pvc tubing left over from my frost cover frames to resolve this. Starting 9" from the bottom, I drilled lots of holes into the PVC. 'Cause the bottom 8" will be set in concrete, and I don't want that oozing out or clogging my drains, so no holes in the bottom 8". I've also capped the pipes, but didn't glue the caps on. This way, if they get clogged, I can pop the cap off and try to clean them out. The cap has some holes in it too. These drains will be set in holes drilled through the bottom of the can and held on with caulk until I can get the concrete in. Taa Daaa! Drainage. Who rocks?

Who needs a vise grip?

Ummmm.... not sure why this pic is here? Maybe I finished this path when Trent was out shooting hoops? That could be it. I would have deleted it, but the camera put a date/time stamp on it that made me think that it should stay.

These black discs are plywood, coated with pruning seal for waterproofing. The bottoms of the trashcans aren't flat. They have a half inch rim. If I put a bunch of concrete, a heavy wooden pole, and a bunch of soil into a trashcan with a floating bottom, the weld could pop and everything would fall apart. That would be no bueno. So, I cut these disks to fit the bottom of the trashcans, filling that void. They'll be screwed in from the bottom, and then the screws will be made permanent when the concrete goes in. Also, the holes for the drainage tubes will have to be cut through this wood AND the bottom of the can. God bless America, I make up difficult projects!

I also used pruning seal on the bottoms of the cans. For extra longevity. 'Cause I ain't goin' through this again.

The blackberries will then be planted into 30gallon trashcans. This is one of them. No need for fancy drainage systems, 'cause there isn't any concrete going in these cans. Just soil (backfill from the yard, amended with store bought compost and some of the "mulch that won't end"). I just drilled some holes into the bottom and coated it with the pruning seal. Just the outside - don't want that crap leeching into my berries.

Fifteen magical flutes! Er, drains. Five per can.

All of my watermelon babies have popped up! One of the varieties was a full 2 weeks later than the other two, but now they all look like the same size. Not quite sure if that bodes well for the late comer, or poorly for the early birds, or none of the above!

Didn't get to take "after" pics until dark. But what's cool about this is the fact that the paths sort of glow in the dark! They're so white that you can see them by moonlight. Yeah, sure, the flash helped, but you really CAN see them in the dark. This is the sidewalk path on the blackberry side of the house. I finished this today, between other things.

This was taken while standing atop the tallest pallet of rock. This is the sidewalk path, stretching from the driveway to the blackberry path. I took a few rocks out where east-west paths met north-south paths so that I could fit pieces to blend the intersection. VERY pleased with myself.

Sidewalk path meets driveway path.

See how they glow?! And see how the dark mulch paths offer such a nice contrast? I may have had a tear or two in my eyes at this point. It was a long day, for a lot of reasons. I'm SO in need of this project coming to an end. I feel like I'm running in slow motion. The finish line is in sight, and I'm giving it ALL that I've got, but I just can't get there fast enough.

Aside from the dry riverbed and the MYSTERY AREA, I only have one more path to lay, and the retaining wall. And the succulents. And...and...and, oh Crikey! Please let me off this ride!

As I said before, this was a frustrating day. I had to make a trip to Cedar Park to get an additional trash can (they aren't carried by the nearby big box stores anymore, at least not the 20gallon ones). That killed over an hour of work time. Later in the day, I also had to leave to get more pruning sealant so that was another 45 minutes down the drain. Trent worked with me on and off for most of the day, but we still didn't get everything done. I ran out of sealant while spraying the wooden disks, and we couldn't go forward without them being sealed. When I got back with more spray, I finished coating the first side of the disks, but it was late in the day and that meant that I couldn't do the second side until tomorrow. The cans couldn't be assembled until the disks were ready, so we were at a standstill. See what I mean? So close, yet so far! Give me strength! Goal setting is a wonderful thing, but when you don't meet them, it can be hard to recognize all you DID accomplish. Like how much more stone I laid when the trashcans couldn't be worked on anymore for the day.

I just need to keep my eyes on the prize. It's just so close. I can taste it.

4.23.10

Got a lot done today, but managed to forget to take a pic at the end of the day. D'oh! Will try to update this entry tomorrow morning before I get going...

First, the roses. I've cut 5 or 6 of them, but there are still a million or so (give or take) blooming in the yard.

I wish I could blog the fragrance too...

The little spider babies are still hanging out on that lavendar. I thought for sure they would be running away to start their little baby spider lives. I know, I know, blurry. Still working on the camera settings.

Got more stones laid in the center path. I'm still trying to fill a couple of odd spaces, but it's pretty close to being finished.

This is the center path, right near the front door. Beyond it is another path I worked on today. This is the one I finished cutting out yesterday. Forgot to take an "after" pic, but I managed to lay all of the stone in this path!

Until yesterday, I was trying to figure out what the heck to do with this one last section of the yard. In my original plans, it was slated to be a compost bin. A very intricately designed and well built compost bin. One with two sections. You would fill one, but keep the other empty. When the mood strikes, you would flip the collected compost into the empty bin, back and forth, back and forth. This would help it cook faster. But despite my gorgeous design and detailed plans, this idea wasn't sitting well with me. I want the compost, don't get me wrong, but this location is too close to the house. It might attract vermin. And, even with my design and building skills, it would still be a compost bin. Not all that attractive. And it would be smack dab in the line of sight to half of the blinding grandeur that is my front yard. So I was brain storming. The wheels were turning. Smoke was leaking from my ears. And then it came to me! I covered it in weed cloth (for obvious reason) and tucked the edges under the weed cloth in the aisles so that once the pavers are all in, the weed cloth will be perfectly sealed. And here it comes - the big idea!! Ready? READY?!

Too bad! It's gonna be a surprise!!! Muah-Hahahahaha!!!!

Progress. That's what that is, there. P-R-O-G-R-E-S-S.

When I figured out that I couldn't use the bark mulch in the paths close to the house (too tempting for termites), I decided that the look would be more cohesive if I used pavers for the paths closest to the fence too. So the plan is now to have the perimeter of the entire yard, plus the center aisle, done in limestone pavers, and only the four internal paths done in bark mulch. This "fence" path had already been filled with mulch, so here I am digging the mulch out and moving it to the last remaining unfilled "internal" path.

Why the face mask, you ask? When I was digging up the mulch, the little mulch floaties gave me a coughing fit. Plus, I really dig the look. I think I'm going to rock it next week when I start my new job.

Yep. I OWN this look. This'll make waves at the new gig. DONE!

I guess I didn't forget to take an "after" pic after all. Though I could have done a better one. Here you can see that the center path is at about 95%, you can see a teensy bit of the path nearest the house, you can see the weed cloth-covered MYSTERY AREA, the newly mulch-covered "interior" path, and the driveway path, well on its way to completion.

Emptied path. I added DG over that damp cardboard. Then weedcloth. Paver sand will come next. You've seen it all before. Didn't want to bore you...

Yeah. See? Weed cloth. If you peeled it up, you'd see DG.

Same deal, other side. I hadn't put mulch in here yet, but it was prepped for it. So I threw down the DG and this is the weed cloth, waiting for paver sand. And pavers. So. Patiently. Waiting.

Really chipping away at the pallets of materials. The paver base is down to the last 2 layers (just enough to finish the path in front of the succulent bed and the small retaining wall), the paver sand is moving quickly, as is the stone. I opened all 3 pallets of pavers so that I could pick and choose rocks and fill the puzzle in faster. The most distant pallet has been relieved of a few layers, the next one quite a few more, and the closest one is down to the bottom third. I'd say I've used most of a pallet of stone so far! AWESOME! 'Cause kids, it's just LITTLE OLD ME moving these rocks. I've now been told by not one but TWO guys that I'm doing "man's work". I scoff. (Trent exempted because he helps when I need him!)

Here is where I should have dragged the ladder into the sidewalk in front of the house and taken an aerial photo and really showcase how things are moving along. But I failed. Hopefully I will think to take one first thing tomorrow morning, before I get going.

The end is in sight. OMG. Can't freakin' wait!!