Yard Visitor

We have recently discovered that our yard isn't alone. It's not just the neighborhood cats and flying birds that like to hang out in our yard. Now we can also add cute, little fluffalicious bunny to the list (aka cottontail). He's been hopping around in our yard, nibbling our grass and just spreading his cuteness around. See how cute he is?

That picture was taken before we had done some major weeding. I saw him again today so I decided to go outside and get a few more pictures. He let me get 5 feet away from him before he scampered under the fence! Don't pay attention to the dead spot in my lawn.....just look at Mr. Cottontail:

While I was outside, I tried to play around with my digital macro setting. Be forewarned, I am NO photographer nor do I claim to be. These were the best of about 20 pictures I took outside.

This was of the bouganvilla in my front lawn. I was trying to get the little yellow flowers inside the bloom into focus, but I never could get them. The camera was trying to focus on stamens (I guess that's what they are?) in the center of the photo. The hard part about this macro setting is that you have to hold the camera really close to the object and the object must be something really small and intricate.

I liked the texture of this one. It was a piece of some ground cover in the front yard. I just held the camera up really close and was able to get the texture just right. Not too bad for my first time messing around with the setting.

This one isn't great, but I was trying to get the center in focus. I guess it's not too horrible.

I love our rosebush, so I had to capture the newest buds to appear.

This is the best photo I took in my oh-so-humble opinion. I took several pictures of this fly, but the wind kept blowing the stems making it hard to get anything to focus. This is the only photo where the fly wasn't blurry. I think my hands are a bit shaky as well. I don't think I have to tell you that these photos are completely raw and unedited.

I'd love to take some photography lessons and get a DSLR. I think it's a fun hobby that I could be good at, but I just don't have the money or time to invest in it right now. What do you guys think?

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First rose of spring!

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Weekend Project Revealed!

Did you guess what Jason did with the pick-ax and the wood? If you guessed "build a garden" then you were right! Sorry, but there are no prizes. This blog just isn't big enough and I have no sponsors! (Sponsors and their samples will be much appreciated, however.) Moving on.

This is what our side yard looked like before the garden. The wood you see was some old wood that came off of some picnic tables. We try to save the planet once board at a time here at our casa.

The labor actually started over a week ago. Jason thought he would start by digging out the hole, build a frame, then fill it in with some good dirt. Unfortunately, this turned out to be a much more daunting task than it would seem.

It's hard to tell from this picture, but the pile of dirt you see is almost all rock. Lots and lots of rock. Not too much dirt here. Poor Jason got his workout when he took on this project. He put that pick-ax to work and even bent it a little.

We had a potentially scary thing happen while Jason was pick-axing out the pit. He almost broke a water main! It was placed about 8 inches off the side of the house. When we moved in, we couldn't figure out why there were double faucets outside in a few places. We just accepted it and used which ever one was easier to get to. In reality, one was connected to the water softener (the original pipes) and the other was connected to the city water. Apparently the previous owners didn't want to waste their water-softening salt on the yard, so they T-ed off the original water main from the street and put in new faucets. Jason almost broke the "new" water main...the one connected to the city water. We plan on capping it off and taking it out later on. The water was plenty soft without the extra salt so we had disconnected the softener a long time ago. But do you know what the worst part was? We didn't know where the shut-off valve was. It's on the street and we would have to have a wrench (which we do somewhere) and then be without water until Monday morning! Aaahhh!!!!

After we learned something new about our home, he dug a little more carefully. Here's the pit he dug out, complete with a giant pile of rock on either side. It's roughly 20 feet long and about 8 feet wide.

Every time I would go outside to check on Jason, Cassius would jump in the window to see where I went. He hates to be left out!

After digging out the dirt/rock, he planned to frame it in to contain the garden. I was sent to buy him some nails. Big mistake on his part. There are too many to choose from! Finally, I found the right ones and came home. He started sawing and nailing the old picnic table wood to make the frame. Sadly, the wood was just too old and too hard to nail. It constantly split and the nails didn't want to dig into the wood. He then decided to just start over and buy new wood. This turned out to be a blessing in disguise!

It turns out that old treated wood contains CCA (chromated copper arsenate) which is used as a preservative to keep out microbes, termites and other insects. CCA was outlawed for consumer use in December 2003 because of the levels of arsenic leaching off the wood were too high. You can read it directly from the EPA here. Our old picnic wood was definitely treated before 2003, so we chunked it. The new wood treatments are just that.....new. Rather than find out in 10 years that the new treatment is also toxic, we opted to use untreated lumber. Sure, we may have to replace it in a few years, but it's better than finding arsenic in your tomatoes!

Here's the untreated lumber frame that Jason built. That's his dad in the background helping to fill in the holes and level it off.

As they worked, two cats would jump into the next door neighbor's window. They would reach out to us, as if we could pet them! The one on the left is trying to lay down in what looks to be about 2 inches of space. The one on the left is harder to see since it's mostly black, but he just wanted to jump over to us and let us love on him!

After ensuring that the frame was level, Jason & his dad started to fill it in with some nice manure-filled dirt. That part took the least amount of time! So, without further ado, here's the finished product:

I am planning on buying some seeds and tomato plants this week. Jason is in Washington, DC until Thursday, so I won't have any help until Friday! I'll update as soon as we get it all planted! I can't wait to get some nice, home grown veggies!

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Weekend Teaser

What is all this wood doing in our sideyard?


And what did Jason do with the pick-ax?

Stay tuned to find out!

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Yard Work

So, does anyone remember our horrendous flower garden from this post? I'll refresh your memory here:

Notice the overgrown everything. There's two giant purple sage bushes (if you can call them that) on either side of a HUGE rose bush. In between, there's a crape myrtle that's grown almost through the roses and the purple sage. You can't really tell here, but we even have a tiny red oak tree and a tiny pecan tree growing in there! To the far right, you can see an out-of-control plumbago. The original post was to show the beginning of spring....a few roses.

Now, Jason's cut/hacked a ton of extra limbs and it looks much better.

And here's what's left of the plumbago:

It doesn't look great, but at least it's cleaned up. Our plan is still to try and transplant the purple sages to the backyard. The plumbago will probably just disappear into thin air because it's just plain ugly now. We're going to try to trim the rose bush to a more manageable size, but we'll see.

It's the little improvements, I tell you. It's not perfect, or even pretty at this point, but it's something!

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Do You See What I See?

Look closely. Do you see what I see? You must look past the overgrown purple sage, the crape myrtle that's grown in the wrong spot and the out of control plumbago.

You may have to do some moving around to find it........

Do you see it now? The sign that spring is upon us?

That's right, the first two roses on our rosebush are in full bloom! I just love them!

I love roses so much. We plan to transplant the purple sages (if we can) to the backyard so they can get the full sun they need and possibly plant some climbing roses behind the current rosebush. I'm not completely sure yet of the final plan, but I definitely want to keep roses on that side of the house. The former house owners must have gotten tired of taking care of their yard, because there are so many plants that are overgrown. As if you couldn't tell from the first picture in this post.

I now have a few battle "scars" on my arms from moving the bushes out of the way, but it was worth it!

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Pear update

Seems like our yard pears have disappeared just as Jason said they would. Guess he was right. Who woulda thunk it?

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What do you do with 30 rotten pears?

According to Jason, you throw them in the backyard so that birds can feed off them and the remains will naturally mulch our yard. So far, no birds. So our backyard may look like this for awhile:

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