HFM

I just realized I never posted about the trimming back of our neighbors' giant yellow tree a few weeks ago. Our neighbors, Pete and Mary, told us once that the guy at the garden center said it was a bush, and it wouldn't get very big. Much to their surprise, over time, it turned into this 30+ foot monster: View from the yard View from our second story window It's a beautiful bush/tree, but it was getting to be a bit too much, hanging over about a third of our yard, so Pete and a buddy trimmed it back. It's a tricky one to trim, because all the leaves are at the end of the limbs. It's not possible to trim off a couple feet off each limb, because you would end up with a bunch of naked branches.  There's no choice but to go bold. Here's how it turned out: View from the yard View from our second story window We were very surprised, and also very grateful for their hard work. And there's still nice shade for the egg chair in the afternoon, so everyone (especi...

Thanks to the heavy rains we've been having this winter, all the foliage on Mars is going crazy. Just wanted to get this ridiculous lily into the official record: For scale, that fence is six feet high.

This week, the roof and sun tunnel project was started and completed, entirely on time, within budget, and without any horrible surprises. A miracle! Seriously, it feels like a miracle. The roof was reaching end of life and had a small problem that we knew about, but wasn't leaking anywhere, so we were cautiously optimistic that it might go smoothly. The thing we knew about was the fact that Mr. Bunkport's roofer hadn't done the most thorough job joining the new roof to the existing roof during the 2014 project. Looking at the pictures our roofer took before starting, it's uglier than we thought, but still not leaking four years later -- he gets credit for that: Also, this little vertical wall wasn't really done well in the first place -- it was just sort of a mass of shingles layered on top of each other: There turned out to be three things we didn't know about. First, we didn't know that there was loose tar paper left flapping in the wind under the flashin...

Today we are observing Todos Santos -- the day we pause to remember and honor our departed loved ones. Especially present in our thoughts today is Auntie Cynthia, a childhood friend of my mother's and a dear friend of the family, who passed away earlier this week. She will be greatly missed. Cynthia (Callahan) Langton 1947-2018

I've been taking full advantage of some warm weather we've had for the past two weekends to get cranking on finishing touches to the back garden before the winter rains start. After many hours of trimming, weeding, and moving cuttings of succulents from the front yard into the back to fill in spaces and empty pots, I feel satisfied with how things are looking, and even more importantly, I have received AJ's seal of approval! It's done! Here are some scenes from around the garden, starting with the approach from the house: I had this corrugated galvanized steel sheet left from the last fence project. I added it here to reflect light and heat onto the plants. This is a flue that was attached to the stove when we got it. A finishing touch in the cozy egg chair area, in front of the panda. I made the planter on the right out of a figure-8 fish tank I had handy. The terra cotta bits are smashed up tiles left over from kitchen project. This is a broken Williamsburg Virgina pi...