Garden Tour

Just in time for our front yard lawn replacement planning purposes, Long Beach Lawn2Garden program sponsored a Garden Tour, featuring 32 gardens.  We eagerly signed up, having spent the previous weekend looking at random home selections from the hundreds listed on their website.  They were hit and miss -- some nice ones, but lots of them that were ho-hum.  So we were excited about looking at some that were top-notch.  When we got the map, it suggested choosing ones you'd want to visit, because the average person visits only 8-10.  That's crazy, we thought, we'll see most of them.
Oh, we were so naive.

The very first garden we chose to go to was closest to our own house, and it really was remarkably different from any of the others on the list.  First off, they retained a lot of lawn.  You can keep your lawn in part, the city will pay only for the part you remove and convert.  So this family had chosen to do the parking strip and chunks around the edges.  The other thing that was remarkable about their garden was that they had a very flowery, cottage feel.  A big difference from what we had been seeing lots of, which was a dry, desert feel. So that was encouraging: our yard could look green and colorful.  Finally, they had a lot of surprising plants that I would not have thought would qualify:  lambs ear, roses, daisies, butterfly bushes -- very springy and cheerful.  So that started us off well.

Another thing that we didn't expect was that the owners were sitting outside, and the first thing they did was hand us a full color sheet that had their entire plant list on it.  The Lawn2Garden program gave them a pile of copies for them to hand out.  It was great to take note of all the plants that we were interested in, and to write any notes that the owners supplied.

The next yard we went to had some great uses of greenery as well.  The gray-green groundcover above is dymondia -- a plant I had seen here and there and always found to be rather unpleasant, as it was always superflat and dry looking.  Not so much in many of the gardens we toured!  This garden above is only 2 years old, and the dymondia is thick and textural, which was encouraging, because it's one of the most commonly used plants around here, and I was kind of dreading using it.  Now I am eager to plant some flat sections in my own yard. 

 

Many of the yards we toured had great features already established - large, mature trees or other specimen plants.  We have almost nothing, so we know we need something to anchor the whole thing.  We saw a lot of great large trees/plants and feel more knowledgeable about choosing what's right for us.  One of the really helpful things about the gardens on the tour is that they had a large, color poster of the "before" yard, with the date, so we could see exactly what they kept, and how long the plants in the yard were.  Online, we could see the before pictures, but the after pictures are taken right after planting, so they are mostly of a dirt yard with a few sad plants placed here and there.  So it was great to see how much fuller things get, and how quickly they grow.

 For those people who had, like us, a fairly flat, bland 'before', it was interesting to see how they built interest using mounds and rock features.  This guy had a dry creekbed type format, with dymondia growing in the flat bed.  He also had a couple of fairly large pencil trees, but he had a sign on those that they were for sale for $25 each, he decided he didn't want those and wanted to replace them with something else.  That's another thing most people talked about, changing their plants when they found that things didn't work for them.  From the website, it seemed like you had to stick with your plan or you'd not get the grant.  Most people had changes here and there, but as long as they stuck with plants from the approved lists, they were fine.  

Everyone was so friendly and helpful.  We got a lot of great ideas, and people spoke about the sources for their plants, stone and equipment.  We went out yesterday to visit one of the most oft-mentioned nurseries and picked up a flat of dymondia and some ajuga to try out in the backyard.  I want to see how well it spreads while we plan our yard.

We also got round-up and sprayed the front grass. We can kill the grass, but can't remove it until our plan is approved.  It takes weeks to fully kill it, so we thought we'd get started right away.  It looks even worse now, all dry and crusty, but when I look at it, I think, "soon, you'll be gone!"  Today we had a landscaper come by and cut and trim it, so at least it won't look all hairy.  With any luck, it will just stay dead and flat and before long, we'll have the big job of removing it all!

Madness, I tell you!

Alright. Although our kitchen remodel has semi-stalled due to Dale's back problems, like a fool I have started yet another project.  It all began when we got a flyer in the mail for a program we'd heard about last year, the Lawn2Garden program here in Long Beach.

Naturally, the part that caught my eye was that notice down at the bottom in green - Receive up to $3000.  Of course, any time there's something like "up to" in the title, I'm skeptical, but I got on the website to check out the details.  Turns out we would be eligible for the entire $3000 - it goes per square foot of turf grass, and that's what we've got in our front yard.  They pay 3 dollars per square foot of replaced grass, and we have over 1000 square feet of grass.  Just to remind you what 1200 square feet of sad, sad grass looks like:

That's the day we closed.  It actually looks worse now.  We knew we were going to eventually take it up, so we haven't maintained it much.  And since we don't have kids or any real use for grass, it's expensive to maintain and a real waste of natural resources.  Out here, you have to pretty much water every day. 

So we are excited about overhauling this, but not so much about the timing.  But I don't want to miss out on the chance to get funding, so we applied and our application was accepted.  Our next steps are to do the online class, then submit our plans.  They do not require a professional garden designer, we can submit a drawing, as long as we use the plant resource websites to list and identify the plants we use. There are also lots and lots of garden plans available online, and we have access to every participants plans, so we can drive around and check out their finished yard, and if we like it, we can see their plans.  Lawn2Garden has a great website with lots of resources.

So we have 45 days to get to our next step, which includes our design.  I'm checking lots of Pinterest ideas, here are some of my favorite images:

 

 

 

 

 

all Pinterest images on my board are here:Ideas for the Yard

 

Of course, all these gorgeous garden photos show gardens that are lush and full, and ours will start out spare and wimpy looking.  Our biggest fear is that our garden will look wild and dry, so we really want to fill out the space, which will take a LOT of plants.  We also have NO attractive features to focus on, it's just a flat, boring space.  So we have to create some drama.  I am looking forward to having a summer project that I can work on without Dale (in case he require surgery or something!), and of course, I am living with a crap kitchen, but these things will work out eventually.  I am looking forward to this planning part of our yard transformation!

Well....look here

OK, it's been quite awhile since I posted last.  It's not that we haven't been doing anything -- really, we have! -- but there have been some other factors.  I mentioned that Dale had pulled a muscle, well -- it turns out he may have herniated disks.  So...that has slowed us down a LOT of course, he's been getting all kinds of various therapies and treatments for that.  And in the meantime, my daughter Leslie had her baby!  Our first grandchild!  So I had to rush out of town for that, of course!

isn't he adorable!?  of course he is -- Parker Jameson Reed, born on April 16 (his due date, his mother is VERY organized!). 

So I had to rush out and be there right away ... but because the IKEA sale ended on April 28, I knew I'd be out of town and so before I left, we ran off to IKEA and ordered our cabinets.  I told Dale he could go do it, but he wasn't about to fall for that one.  So they were ordered, and delivered while I was gone.  When I got back, this is what I was greeted by:

189 boxes. This view actually looks pretty good.  And the reason it looks so good is because Dale cleaned out the garage so there would be plenty of room to put everything. 

We spent some time this afternoon putting some of the cabinets together.  We're going to finish up tomorrow with the cabinet boxes, then I'll take some more pictures.  It's pretty overwhelming, but working a bit at a time, we're getting through them.


We did manage to save 20%, nearly $1000, so that made the last minute trip to IKEA worth it.


The other thing that happened while I was gone was that we had some really windy days, and we lost a couple of big branches off our lemon tree.  Our lemon tree is already rather sad looking, and it has a LOT of fruit on it, so the windy days were a little more than it could handle.  We have a couple of baskets of lemons to give away --

 OK - one last picture of our adorable grandson:

doing some floor prep

So - we did get our stove delivered the other day, but after I got it all unboxed - we saw a big dent in the back panel, so we had to call and have another delivered this morning.  Argh!  But the delivery guys were great, and our new one is sitting here ready to be installed.  Which I'll do in the morning....

With the money we got from selling our old stove ($160 bucks, woot!), I bought a tile saw on craigslist.  Our plan is to buy a tile saw rather than renting one - we rented one twice for the bathroom, and I could get a used one for less than that.  When we're done with our renos, we'll just sell this tile saw on craigslist for what we paid for it.  That's what we did with our old stove, actually - we paid 150 for it, so we even made a ten dollar profit!

This saw was only $130 - works great.  Well it did until the switch broke at the end of the day!  It's a 3.99 fix, so tomorrow I'll get most of the rest of the marble cut.  After spending an hour cutting a bunch of strips, I laid out a sample of the border on the sidewalk:

We tried several sequences, the original one I'd drawn up was a little too involved, so this is what she ended up with.  I have a lot of skinny strips to cut -- I need a total of 80 1" white strips, 32 1" black strips, 48 4" black strips, and there's the center black and white checkerboard of full tiles.  We brought some of the pieces in and took a look at how we're going to deal with corners --

We're working on the corners -- I think we'll mitre the corners of both borders.  Ironically, this is what I went out to do when the switch broke.  But taking a break was good, we had some errands to do and needed a break for dinner!  I'll cut the rest of the pieces tomorrow.  I can't wait to get started!

Getting the floors moving along

Dale's back is still hurting - he's been going to physical therapy to get that muscle mass relaxed, and so our progress is still s.l.o.w.....but I did get the hardwood flooring section integrated:

We are planning to have a place where we can slide barstools up under the island, and I wanted the floor to be uninterrupted there.  We'd found some good match hardwood at Lumber Liquidators, and along with several other places in the house that will need patching, we bought one bundle so we could get an integrated look here.  We will be refinishing the floors at the end of the kitchen remodel, as it moves into the living room, so getting an unfinished floor will save us from having to run the sander up under the island so much.

We also had our stove delivered this morning.  My goal is to get the floors done this week while I'm on spring break, and also get the cabinets ordered.  Although progress is slow, it's moving along OK.

We did take a little drive around on Saturday. I'm trying to keep Dale moving so he doesn't get his muscles stiff from sitting in a recliner, so we did a trip to LACMA (Los Angeles County Art Museum) where I am a member, and he can come along as my guest.  I'm trying to work my way through the museum one trip at a time, without getting overwhelmed.  The last time I was there, I visited the two blockbuster shows - a Stanley Kubric exhibition and a Caravaggio exhibition that were both great.  This time we went through the modern and contemporary collection, and enjoyed seeing Chris Burden's Metropolis in action:

the little cars are whizzing around -- last time I visited, it wasn't in motion, so this was fun to experience.  We also had to walk under Levitated Mass, which is a fun experience as well.

While we were downtown LA, we decided to stop over and visit the little railroad known as Angel's Flight.  It's a railway on a pulley system, and we rode up:

Then walked around the plaza before finding a nearby Geocache and braving the traffic on the way home.  Other than that, we are trying to balance enjoying the time off and getting some work done on the kitchen.  We decided to scrap the arch, instead, we are going to build up the beam a little with some molding - watching one of our HGTV reno shows, we saw a really effective approach while keeping the beam straight across, and I think that'll suit our place better.  It's mostly about adding some interest to a pretty basic setup here.

Refreshing the patio furniture

Last year we made a 3 piece seating set for our patio.  You can see that process here.  After having guests out all summer, we never got around to painting or finishing the wood in some way, which of course, was something we needed to do to help preserve the wood.  So this weekend (while Dale's back is STILL keeping him from doing kitchen electrical), I went out and sanded it all down and gave it a coat of paint.  Here's what they were looking like:

Along with the wood getting weathered, the cushions were really faded from a year in the hot SoCal sun.  So I went out and bought some fun fabric and made new covers.  here's what the faded fabric looked like (You can see where this one had a pillow lying on top of it!):

Although I could buy sun-resistant fabric, I know that I like to change things up, and whipping up new covers with inexpensive fabric is a nice way to update the furniture each year.  That, and a quart of exterior semi-gloss paint and I can get a whole new look.  Last year, I thought I wanted them to be a dark red (well, that never happened!), but this year, I was thinking a nice black background with a blue batik style fabric would look cheery:

One thing I'm not sure about is the configuration - it's supposed to be set up as a U shape -- but I found that a little bulky.  I've got it set up as two independent pieces this time:  an L shape and a stand alone sofa.  I'm thinking of taking off one or more sides of the last piece -- still up in the air about that, but I'm not afraid to grab the sawz-all and lop the arms off if I think it'll work out better!

I have to recover some of these toss pillows, too - they worked great with the background of the cushions last year, but they clash a little with the blue. 

We really need a coffee table here, too -- so we could sit out here and eat out, now that spring is here!

Side Trip!

Our kitchen is in total disarray, but we took off to go to a conference in Fort Worth, Texas! I had a number of presentations to deliver, and was particularly excited to get together with my grad school friends.

 

my friends Roy and Moxie - Justin took the picture.

That was the highlight - alas, I wasn't very impressed with Fort Worth. We did have good breakfasts at the hotel, however...
  

Texas shaped waffles! Yummy!

One thing that we did enjoy was driving to Dallas and visiting the 6th floor Museum at the Texas School Book Depository -- a museum that details the assassination of John F. Kennedy.  It was an interesting visit.

So naturally I came back to being behind on my grading -- which I am still busy catching up with.  And then Dale pulled a muscle in his back at work, so he wasn't able to do any of the final crawling around under the house so we can finish that.  Instead, we focused on cleaning up the junk pile and getting our trash organized.  Not the most glamorous of duties, but a necessary thing.

In the meantime, we've been looking at ideas online for our beam, and I believe we are going to make a slight arch across the space, and build up the edges into some faux columns.  Something like this from Remodel-aholic:

 This is their 3-D model image - we really like the way they built a lot of character into a space that had none beforehand!  That's a similar challenge that we face - nothing remarkable about the bare space, and we like character.  So we're approaching how to adapt this idea into our space. 

In the meantime, we also went out and ordered our stove - we love the look:

And we are finalizing our plan for kitchen cabinets.  A trip to IKEA to talk with the kitchen planners and clear up some questions about particular cabinets.  We have to order in the next month so we can get 20% off during their annual kitchen sale. Score!

Hopefully, the next post will have some updates on our progress ---