More work on the gutters

In our seemingly never ending quest to keep the house water tight, we've updated a couple gutters around the house and Matt does an amazing job of getting up there pretty much every couple weeks to clear them out. We thought we were pretty set (well, until we get a new roof and replace all the gutters, which is definitely on the list of to do's) when Matt noticed a problem. 

Can you spot the issue with the picture above? If you said, hmm, Abbey, it seems like there's a lot of dirt on that window cover, like maybe it had gotten splashed up there, well you'd be right. During one of his "rain ready" inspections, Matt also noticed this and, looking up, realized that this spot exactly corresponded to where one of the gutters ended. So we took a look and quickly realized the angle was off and the gutter was actually sloping the wrong way! Definitely not good. Fortunately, 20 minutes with a latter, some silicone, a couple screws combined with Matt's determination and that gutter didn't stand a chance.

The angle is now right where it's supposed to be and we haven't had a problem since. 

Garden Glam and lots of weeding

Last year we put in a giant awesome garden and I'm happy to report it is in full swing again. This year, we have 3 different kinds of summer squash, butternut squash, beans, soy beans, kale, spinach, arugula, radishes, carrots, peppers (of all sorts) dill, basil, and 18, that's right, 18 tomato plants (though thankfully we have more than one variety this year). Now it has always been the plan to put a flower garden around the vegetable garden, but last year we kinda ran out of steam. So instead what we had was basically a row of weeds in a two foot strip all the way around the perimeter outside the fence. Since this is the year of the yard, I spent a good 2 weeks out there each night pulling weeds  until I finally made it all the way around.

Add in some mulch, some plants from Roy and Rayanne, some transplants from our front bed, a few splurge purchases from the local nursery, and a couple ornamental squash (that's what you call squash that you didn't have room for in the garden, so decided to plant in the flower bed instead) and we now have an even awesomer garden. The time elapsed between the pictures is a good 4 weeks, so you can see the lovely veggie growth too.

 Now all we need to do is put down the edging stones we bought last year and we'll be gravy.

In addition to that weeding, I've been working my way around the house weeding, reclaiming the edge of the beds from encroaching grass, and putting down mulch. I started with the front bed, here it is back in May:

And here it is now, quite the explosion right?

And then I continued around the house.

I think you can tell where I stopped (hint, it was around the hydrangea). Almost there, just have to get out and do a little more. Oh, and then go back around and pull the weeds sprouting through the mulch. I don't think you ever really get "done weeding" but it does look a lot nicer and the mulch keeps the worst of it down.

Our Lord Fort

Any Brave New World fans out there?  Ok, so that reference has nothing to do with this post, but I couldn't resist. Moving on.

We have a pretty nice fort in out backyard. I'd like to call it a treehouse, since there technically is a tree supporting part of the structure, but somehow it just doesn't feel like a treehouse since the tree stops below the level of the platform, so fort it is.

In any case, for the past 12 months or so, its been a repository for all our yard waste, in addition to growing some pretty good weeds of its own. After our big yard clean up (which I will post on once I get my computer back and can get to the pictures) we had about 30 bags of yard waste in addition to the ones under the fort from last year and we knew we had to do something. Neighbor Mike to the rescue! Turns out, he has both a large bobcat like tractor and a dump truck, so Matt and Mike just emptied the bags into the bobcat thing and Mike lifted them into the dump truck and in about 20 minutes all the bags and waste were gone.

Of course that still left us with the sandy mess that was originally under the fort. Again, I forgot to take a before, but here is one from last year (complete with the bags of yard waste that sat there all winter. You know, for easy clean up in the spring. yep, thats why...)

In any case, once we got all that cleaned up, we figured we should do something to keep it looking nice. We knew we wanted to cover the sand with weed prevention fabric and the put something else down, but the question was what. Originally, I was set on rubber mulch but when we went to the store and saw the price, we started thinking more creatively. Maybe regular mulch or gravel would do? We went round and round for a bit, talked to a bunch of our friends that had babies, and finally the choice was clear. We'd have to bite the bullet cause rubber mulch is where it's at. So we went to the store, loaded up on supplies and set to work.

First Matt drove some extra stakes into one of the logs that lines the perimeter of the play area (the one at the bottom of the swing in case you are interested) because it had started to lean out of place. Then, we covered the whole thing with the black weed prevention fabric, cutting carefully around the tree and staking it all down.

Then we covered it in 3 inches of rubber mulch. In the end I think the extra money was worth it. It has a 10 year color guarantee, is super springy to walk on (great for spills and falls) and wont' decay down into dirt like regular mulch. Matt put the slide back up and it felt really nice to know that one area of the lawn was pretty much done (well, except for sealing it, which Matt wants to do before the next winter, but lets just pretend for a moment that we've completed something, shall we :) )

New walkway

Well I did have a post about the work we've done to our yard (specifically our grass) planned, but Matt's computer is being a little bit difficult and not letting me get to the pictures. So instead, I've put together this post, and the following ones, based on the fact that the pictures for these projects were on my phone, not my camera (google+ auto-downloading my pictures finally has a purpose...).

So, here we go:

A while ago, we noticed that our front walk was getting a little shabby looking. Now, when we moved in, we had a nice little walkway from our mailbox to our porch. However, over time it's gotten slightly overgrown. Hoping to encourage the post office to leave our packages on the porch and not in front of the door (This is silly for a number of reasons: first being that you can easily see it from not one but two streets so anyone could steal it and second that there is no overhang above the door AND the sidewalk slopes ever so slightly, so any rain on a day a package is delivered basically ends up all over the package, but I'll try not to rant on about it for too long here). In any case, I decided a little clean up was in order and started ripping out grass with a vengeance:

After the fury died down, I realize two things: First, I had forgotten to take a before shot, and second, we had more stones than I thought. But I did take a picture of the grass nearby, which is basically what the before shot would have looked like if I would have taken it. Yep, it was that overgrown

Now the extra stones I didn't know we had came into play in the form of three square ones, which were jutted right up next to the sidewalk. You can see a corner of one in the first picture, but I had no idea they were there until I finished my grass destruction. Scary really. In any case, I decided to go with a "circle only" design from here on out and just stacked the square ones up next to the stairs (more on that later).

Then, I spread some seed (its blue, you can kinda see it in the picture above). And here's the benefit of waiting a really long time to post, you can see the after after after shot with the grass all lovely and grown!

You'll also notice that those square stones got moved in favor of a nice pot of lambs ear (which I dug out of the front bed where it was both taking over and driving Matt nuts every time he mowed because of a pronounced tendency to creep out onto the grass). But never fear, those square tiles went to good use because I noticed there were already three of them under the first step, so I just copied the pattern and put these three under the second step. Looks pretty good, I think, although sadly it has not enticed the post office personnel to change their habits... looks like we might need an actual sign.