Enclosing the yard

Even though 2011 is over, I want to catch up the blog with the rest of the projects from last year. We were relatively busy with lots of fun things, and I want to share those before I start going on about plans for 2012.

May and June involved a lot of plant watching. The long wet spring made great conditions for all sorts of green stuff...

...including some spinach that really took off once the sun came out.

We also laid mulch down in the yard, subsequent to putting down weed fabric. We got our mulch from the gravel pit in North Salt Lake, and imposed on relatives with pick-up trucks to get it home.

Then, Tai spent the second half of June and the first part of July working on the rest of the fence sections we needed in order to enclose our yard. It felt so, so good to have privacy and protection from the neighborhood critters who kept using our backyard as a thoroughfare/bathroom.

He also re-sealed the cedar on the house and garage.

Closing in the yard required that Tai build a gate by our side-yard patio and another back by the garage on the alley. He set the posts and built the gate structure all by himself...because I was too busy (lazy) with other very important projects (reading in the sun).

And the side patio gate:

We also sat back and watched the plants grow (more on that in another post). Then Tai got restless and decided it was time to turn those walnut planks into a table. Lots more coming.

Yard mishaps

The day after we finished the south-side fence, we decided to get serious about laying down the rest of the weed fabric. We have plans for mulch and drip-line sprinklers, but we wanted that barrier layer down first to save us some weeding down the road (we hope). It's not exciting work, so I present only one finished picture:

Then, I wanted to take advantage of the small gap between the finished fence and the retaining wall along our south patio to plant some vines that will eventually grow up over the fence:

In the course of digging the holes for those vines (thank you, Millcreek Gardens Groupon...), Tai got a little overenthusiastic with his post-hole digger and struck the neighbors' sprinkler supply line. We noted that line when we built the house and poured the retaining wall — it's on our property now as a throw-back to the days when their house and our lot was one piece of property — but had just forgotten that it was there. One geyser and a frantic dash for their water shut-off valve later, we had ourselves a lovely mud hole:

Tai is a total pro at sprinkler lines now, though, so the only casualty of that evening was the cancellation of BBQ plans (and our DIY home improvement pride). Instead, we dashed to Home Depot for a few inexpensive PVC elbow joints (we still had 1" line leftover from last spring's installation) and some primer+glue for the pipe. Tai had it fixed within an hour, and cleaned up by the end of the night.

So now we have a finished south fence and a fleet of trumpeter vines growing along its base. Now all we need is some sunshine with which to enjoy all the hard work...

Finished fence

Tai and his dad took a Friday off to finish the south fence, which has now completely walled in our patio and created a really nice private place for us off our dining room.

With the work the previous weekend on the post holes, the finish work went a bit faster, although it still took the better part of a day. First, they prepped the bottom rail:

...then the top:

Then, came the addition of the vertical boards:

By the end of the day, our patio smelled blissfully of fresh cedar, and the sawdust pile in the garage was a happy reminder of the work completed:

Planting

To say that I didn't know what I was doing in the garden last year would be an understatement. I didn't really garden growing up and had no real experience digging in the dirt. I didn't appreciate the importance of space for mature plants, watering schedules, and hot/cool spots in the yard and sun. I thought I could do no wrong and made all manner of transplanting mistakes that killed many innocent plants. I also suspected that it would be rewarding and delicious to eat food grown in our own garden, but I had no idea how satisfying it would be.

Lessons from last year that I'm incorporating into this year's planning and gardening include:

1. Plants are amazing. I love watching them grow. It's totally worth it to me to plant something just to watch it grow, but it's nice if it produces something delicious at the end of the season, too.
2. Pumpkins, zucchini, squash, and tomatoes are enormous plants and must be given lots of space. Not just one square foot. Oops.
3. Broccoli isn't really worth the trouble, even though the plants are pretty.
4. You can never plant enough cucumber vines. Home-grown cukes are incredible.
5. If the lettuce isn't in the ground by the beginning of March, forget about it.
6. On the other hand, overwintering lettuce and spinach works really well -- the other day I pulled a delicious huge harvest from the garden that was planted last September. The greens woke right up with the longer days and warmer spring weather without me having to plant a thing.
7. Overwintering carrots didn't work.
8. Our kitchen garden space is great for early and late-season gardening, but it's so hot during the summer that I am only doing warm-weather vines in that space this year. If those don't work, that garden box is coming out and I'm planting a shade tree stat.
9. Purchased seedlings need to go in the ground quickly, or they will die. Forget about tempering or hardening or whatever it's called. I will forget, and they will fry.
10. Who needs flowers? I used the un-landscaped spots in our front yard for pumpkin vines last year and loved it. It was instant landscaping at almost no cost and lots of fun to watch. This year I'll do a variation of that happy accident with melon, pumpkin, and basil.

Thus far this year I have planted seedlings for chives, tarragon, cilantro, strawberries, tomatoes, basil, peppers, shallots, cantaloupe, and watermelon. I've also put seeds in the ground for cucumber, rosemary, beans, peas, squash, another melon variety, and another cantaloupe variety. I have plans to plant seeds for a couple of pumpkin varieties, zucchini, more basil, and more cilantro once the weather is warm for good. Photos to follow, if/when these things survive.

First signs of a fence

The first good-weather Saturday of the year last weekend meant that we were actually excited to work in the yard, despite all the digging and weeding ahead of us. We're putting in a fence on the edge of our patio, so while I went to the Wasatch Community Gardens plant sale Tai got right to work digging the post holes.

By the time I got back, he was nearly done with the five holes for this part of the fence -- it took so much less time than we thought it would. Probably because our clay hasn't yet baked into solid rock yet (July). The holes were about 30 inches deep -- the bottom six inches or so are filled with a layer of gravel to drain water away from the post base and prevent rotting, and the other 24" are filled with concrete for stability.

You can see my haul from the plant sale in the foreground. I got three feather reed grasses for our parking strip, two creeping mahonia plants to join the four others already on our north side, and a few veggie and fruit starts for our garden boxes that I'm hoping to not kill this year.

While Tai worked on the post holes, I got down to weeding. I guess our weeding policy this year has been "if we ignore it, they'll die, right?" I faced reality and spent the morning on my hands and knees getting rid of this mess:

After (I know you don't care, but this weeding caused me substantial physical pain, so I'M SHOWING THE PICTURES):

Brother Daniel came over to help Tai set and level the posts. I was making eight-legged enemies among the weeds so I don't have any pictures of the laborers. But here is evidence of their hard work:

Along the way I learned that you don't pre-mix concrete for post holes -- you just dump a bunch of the powdered stuff in, then add your water. Neat.

Next up for us is finishing the fence (hopefully this week, if we can get some cooperation from the weather), and leveling our remaining exposed dirt and putting down weed fabric. Before we can do that, we do have to take care of this little mishap:

This gash is more than a year old and dates to our appointment with the sprinkler trencher. The pipe was buried rather shallowly (and the trencher wasn't really, um, paying attention), so this sliced conduit has been exposed for the last 12 months. The wires aren't live, though, so we've sort of ignored it until now. We're hoping to get our electrician out sometime this week to repair it for us.

Oh, and we finally got rid of this abomination:

So now I'm sure the Smurfs are mad at us.

The walnut tree

Way back in 2009 when this house was a mere twinkle in our architects' eyes, this lot had a lot of unkempt greenery on it. At the time, I mentioned that up to one-third of the narrow lot's width was consumed by cedar, Chinese elm, and Russian olive trees. In the process of cutting them down, we also felled the trunk of a walnut tree that had been dead for many years before. Since then, the walnut trunk has lived in the back of our property while we tried to figure out what to do with it. A few calls around town led us to Nick Barlow, who enjoys cutting up trees and has the mobile gear to do it.

This trunk was about 14 feet long and around 18 inches in diameter. We didn't really know the true condition of the wood and were worried that it might have some damage from insects or just general wear and tear that could make it unusable. 

Nick lopped off the top end where the trunk started to split in order to get a good look at the quality of the interior wood...which was gorgeous.

He then split that upper part into several chunks, one of which might eventually serve as some sort of stool or footrest for visitors at our front door who need a place to sit while they remove or put on their shoes. Tai's dad took another chunk (I hear there are plans to turn it for a bowl), and we have a few plans for the other chunks.

Nick needed to take a slice off the top of the log before creating true planks. 

The wood was already really, really dry -- his best guess was that the tree had been dead for at least 15 years. This is good news for us because it cuts down the curing or drying time before we can use it.

Nick chewed through three chains in the process (because the wood was so dry). 

We already have plans for a dining room table, but while we put the finishing touches on those designs, we'll let the wood dry for a bit more.