A trip Down Memory Lane pt 2

In a nod to our friends at Casa Decrepit I'm going to do a garden report on our old garden and the pond and hardscaping.

Our Glorious Landscaping
As you step out of the side door of the house you are greeted with this nice cobblestone path.
We didn't do this the new owners did and it looks and works great.

 

In no particular order....heh, pictures of our old deck. This was our first deck and
we tried to do a nice job. Remember, we thought that this was going to be our
forever house.

 

A shot of the balcony and the outdoor speakers. Still working and sounding good I'm told

Here's a shot of the deck from the corner looking out on the upper koi pond.



 

These next two pics are supposed to be of the deck but the stupid sun got in the way.

Yep, I'm no pro photog.

Little bit of the lower pond in this shot.

 

The pit of despair as we used to call it. We dug a massive trench all the way across
the backyard to deal with the underground water. This is the sump pit. The two garbage
cans we used are slowly being crushed by the pure clay soil. Can pure clay be called soil?

 

Here we see how the Zmax hangers are holding up. Before install I sprayed them with
two coats of cold galvanizing compound. I see white on them which isn't great. Its a good
guess that all of the hangers look this way. After seven years I'm not sure if this is good or
bad.

 

Here is a shot of something else I was worried about. To hold back the
dirt around the edges of the deck I hammered in rebar then slid sections of
copper pipe over the exposed rebar and put a PT 2by12 against them and then
back filled. They look to be holding up pretty well.

 

I also walked all over the deck and hopped all over it and could not find a
loose board. This was good because I felt like we were pioneers in the, use clips
to hold the ipe down and use construction adhesive where the planks land on the
joists. The deck still looks like furniture when its wet. Its in need of another coat
of Penofin though.

 Here is a funky diagonal shot of the upper pond from the corner veggie filter.

 The waterfall which still has a couple of the plants we left the new owners.

This is a shot of the lower pond and the plant tower. These reed things have
totally taken over, bummer.

In the upper pond we had a skeleton, of course. Mr. Skelly has lost both
of his arms! Stainless steel hardware, ha!

A better overall shot of the lower pond. This pond is ~3' deep and is where
the big fish live.
Overall the ponds have held up fine with the only things needing replacement
being the pumps and UV light.

 

Here is a shot of a dwarf avocado we planted a zillion years ago. We
never got any fruit and now its full!! Plus they trimmed it in a kinda cool
bonsai effect.

Here is the shot of the actual veggie garden part of the yard. Still have
ripening tomatoes because of that giant brick wall keeping the plants warm.

A shot of the avocadoes. They are smooth skinned and dark green. I have
two ripening on the counter and am really going to enjoy eating them.

The Meyer lemon full of lemons. I may pick them and make lemonade as
a surprise for the current owners.

This is some kind of lavender. I just love how it looks like a twisted old tree
near the shore.

Giant well groomed rosemary plant that we planted. I think they should
go the bonsai route on this one.

Just three circuits water the entire yard!

Um....pretty plant.?

One thing the new owners have done is make nice paths trough the yard and
maintain them.

This is a new Mexican lime tree.

This is lemon verbena and its fricken huge.

Ha, smoking section right next to the composter.

Here we have the most ginormous Thai lime tree ever. It smells soooo dang
good...wish the limes were good for anything else besides their zest.

 Ahhh, the blood orange. I think we maybe got 4 oranges off the thing and they
were amazing. I'm super jealous of this.

This is an artichoke plant they we planted a million years ago. It just
keeps coming back and making artichokes? Tasty 'chokes and pretty purple
flowers.

This is a new addition to the yard a cherry tree. Hope its dormant.

Vining roses with LOTS of thorns. We planted this as a sorta natural bob wire,
heh, ghetto living.

More path.

This is something new, they are saving some of the ground water that gets
pumped out of the pit of despair. 

 That's it for the memory tripping.
Up Next:
Knife Catching?? Could it be?

Garden Report Sept 25th.

Okay, just cause Aunt Sue asked for it.....

Garden Report for Sept. 25th.
If there is any kind of society for the prevention of cruelty to tomatoes I'm probably going to get picketed after this post.

The sun gold tomatoes....don't they look super healthy and vibrant and awesome?
I'm going to blame the super cold weather we've been having on how pathetic this plant looks....

The green zebra's look not much better...tomato plants are supposed to turn grey-brown right? And why the green zebras are yellow??? Heck if I know...

We've already eaten several tomatoes from this plant....we haven't been overwhelmed by the flavor..

The pineapple tomatoes are doing just as splendid as the others as you can plainly see....yikes... The few ripe ones we've eaten do taste better than the not-green zebras though...
Doesn't that plant look healthy?

The basil-pepper pot is going the best. We are constantly clipping basil and adding it to pasta...Out of two different pepper plants I only got 2 peppers....guess I better pick them soon and eat them before they get over ripe....but they just look so pretty on the plant.

The neighbor on one side has yellow cherry tomatoes that are growing up over the 6' fence! She regularly gives us bags of tomatoes! Please her heart....

Here's the other neighbors tomatoes planted in the exact same pots as mine...yet hers are growing taller than the garage they are planted next to!

Here's another neighbors garden as viewed from our stairway window....shes got tomatoes and sunflowers and well, tons of stuff!

So, to sum up the garden report, my tomatoes are sad and pathetic, and everybody elses are doing great..... Yes, I've got a brown thumb it seems....

The End.

Garden Report July 18th-We have Tomatoes!

So, another super exciting Garden Report...cause I wanna be just like Casa Decrepit!

This is a pure case of garden jealously. My neighbor, who has tomatoes planted in the exact same kind of pot, has cherry tomatoes that are like 7' tall! In this pic you can see them right at the edge of the garage. This is the view I see from our front porch...her tomatoes, taunting me!!!

The neighbor is super cool and told me her secret.....worm castings! Which I think is just a fancy term for worm poop? Anywho, she took pity on me and my pathetic tomatoes and left some on my doorstep.

I was afraid to open the bag but it just sorta smelt like steer manure to me.

I split the castings evenly between my four pots and worked them into the soil. The castings left a yellowish stain on my hands that washed off with soap. Here's what the Sun Sugar looks like now. Maybe 3' tall at most....and my plants get WAY more sun than the neighbors...

The Zebra is doing well with several tomatoes growing.

The Pineapple still looks the sickliest...but its finally got a bunch of flowers so hopefully we'll have a decent amount of em.

The basil-pepper pot looks pretty good. If you look closely you can see that we have two jalapeno peppers already.

The tomatoes are starting to grow through the deck railings...I probably shoulda put cages on em as its a lot harder to train these things than I thought... they're not super bendy are they...

Here's our cat Squirty checking out the pineapple.

And of course, what ever Squirty does Henrietta has to do...such a little sister.

We got our first 'harvest' from the sun sugars....they tasted pretty good but where not as juicy as I expected? I think I'm watering the plants really well but maybe I'm doing that incorrectly?

One thing Tasha and I do every evening is 'inspect the tomatoes' I bring her out there when I turn the watering on and we look at each plant. When I say, its time to inspect the tomatoes she runs to the back door and slaps it and says, 'Na-do's'. On one of our inspection rounds I gave her a little piece of basil to chew on. Now she demands some every time. She also likes the cherry tomatoes. Here Irene was teaching her about the amazing combo of fresh tomato and basil.

And here's just a cute shot of everybody on the porch, just for the heck of it. The cats are indoor only cats so when we let them out (or when they sneak out) on the balcony its a big deal...