Progress!

Yaaahhhh! I love it, love it, love it. Once all of this takes root, and spring officially rolls around, we can move on to succulents, flowering trees, veggies, and all the rest. Yippee! Shout out to Tocco who waters each blade for 15 minutes x 2 each day like clockwork with a complex 4 hose approach and stares at it the rest of the minutes he's home. It's working baby! I can't wait for garden parties, summer bbqs, and a baby running around out there ;)

Yard!

Now that we've announced we are going to have a baby (yay!), we have our first project underway for her - a new and improved front and back yard to play in.

A reminder of what it looked like before, with those crazy juniper bushes...

Thanks to insane amount of rain recently our yard thinks it's spring and not December, but unfortunately it's all weeds... so, not so nice. 

Mismatched uneven pavers, wobbly broken bricks, and a fence that is broken at the front (held together by a bungee cord, *cringe*)...

Close up of the junipers...

We've just starting spray painting projects right on the stone...

The "hidden" side of the house that steadily collects everything we have dealt with that still needs dealing with...

The old koi pond in the backyard, long neglected. We tried to dig it out one day, but it's just goes down too far (and we are tired)...

Demo day 1! The Soto guys hacked at the juniper bushes for hours to get rid of them (YAY) and then scraped clean the stones, weeds and whatever else lurked (including the ant hills that have been the bane of our existence for the last year... but now they are scrambling for a new home anywhere they can, eek)

Clearing out the stones in the back...

Saving whatever we can salvage and reuse...

Day 2: soil drop off!

Yes, we still have a few pumpkins...

A new front! Its starting to make some sense around here...

Soil for the sod going all the way to the back. The ground has been graded and is nice and even now... 

The right side of the house. It will have brick placed all down the right side from the gate, straight back to this part of the fence here (which is actually a hidden storage area). Then we can wheel bikes, strollers, and trash to the back, and maybe make a little lounge area around it...

This will all be sod. I cannot wait. It kind of looks like we are going to start farming now...

The sectioned off areas you can see on the left and rounded around the back will be left with soil for us to plant our veggies, succulents, flowers, and eventually, a tree. Exciting!

Again, the right side of the house will be all brick and the fence will be fixed...

That's it for now. It's a ton of work. I am sooo glad we're not the one doing it for a change. :)) We can't wait to see what happens next~ 

Space of the week/Backyard Inspo

Gardenista

So amazing. Just want.

Landscapades

Plannin' time!

I must say, it's pretty handy to have a husband who measures the lawn and creates perfect templates. So far we've basically just deleted, ejected, and undone everything put in the yard by the previous owner, except for a few hardy bushes full of dust and I'm guessing termites? We'd need a bulldozer, chain and caffeine straight hooked to our bloodstream to remove (or, maybe, we could actually hire someone). Anyway, looking forward to filling the yard with bright, California native plants, and everything that reminds us of road trips to the beach. I've realized our style is Desert Modern and I cannot wait to have it. Sigh

One of those days (We built a fence!)

The day started with a plan, a plan that led to internal anxiety and desperation, even though it was sunny, warm, and beautiful outside. But there was this plan, something we didn't account for, a thing, our fence - the neighbors complained since the first day about it, that it wasn't willing or able to stand on its own any longer. We tried everything to avoid a repair, but no matter what, as soon as there was a breeze, the fence fall in the direction of the wind.

Same procedure as usual. Since we don't want to waste too much time fixing the fence, it means we get up early, and since Home Depot opens at 6:00 a.m., it shouldn't be too hard to save some hours by getting a head start. What do we need - we guessed around 6 new posts, between each post two beams, one on top, one at the bottom, concrete to fix the post in it's deep hole, which we need to dig, hundreds of screws, motivation, steam as long as there is steam. Off we go!

The tools to demo the old fence, and carefully please, we want to reuse the old panels since they look kinda cute, much better than 50 yards of brand new shiny ones.

This is the old sucker, only still standing because last time the wind came from the south, so the fence could lean against the tiny little orange tree you see behind the fence, don't know who was helping whom here, the tree to hold the fence or the fence trying to cover this little sad looking tree.

The rest of the story after the break...

Next project

DIY Veggie Boxes

All Things West Coast

Can't be too hard right? I'm going to try making this over the weekend. I'm picturing us growing everything we need for nightly salads, especially arugula and tomatoes. How cute is it with the lights too? They might have to come too.