Posts Tagged: Yard

4
Apr 11

Backyard Garden, 2011

A few years ago, we had great success with our backyard garden. The next year, we were impacted by the tomato blight that plagued everyone who purchased their plants at big box stores. Heavy rains that June also gave our zucchini and squash root rot. About the only things that worked out were the cayenne peppers, and that’s because the gophers have enough sense not to touch them. Last year, we bought our plants at the farmer’s market and had about the same success as the year before. I experimented with some tomatillo seeds and they brought an unexpectedly bountiful harvest. Because we have so many cheap farmers’ markets close to our house, I decided I wasn’t going to put a lot of money or work into the garden this year. I spent about sixteen bucks on these seeds.

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4
May 09

Brick Landing

If I could wave a magic wand and make any change to my house, one thing near the top of the list would be to have a nice, new rear deck that ran the length of the building. But since I’m not going to drop thousands into a deck that I’ll only use for a few years until I sell the place, I decided I could just make some cosmetic changes that might improve the look and utility of the surrounding area.

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This was the old landing at the steps to the deck. I thought it would look a little nicer if I just assembled a new landing area that blended in with the existing brick barrier, so I went to Old House Salvage last year and bought a couple hundred used bricks.

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4
Apr 08

Building a Garden

We have a conspicuous concrete slab in the back corner of our lot that was part of some sort of carport at one time. We wanted to put in a raised-bed garden in front of the makeshift patio, but the land isn’t level. We decided we could mimic raised beds by digging channels for the lumber and mixing compost in the planting area. Here are the boards for the beds:

garden-2

You should have seen me trying to drive with these 2x10x12s on top of my car.

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