And also...

And also, I started mulching the rose bushes with cut up wine & champagne corks that I've been saving for a while & meaning to recycle.

Only had enough to do one. Better get drinking!

Garden Project!

We decided to postpone painting Adrienne's office -- she had too much work to do this weekend, so rather than try to squeeze the project in & end up stressed out, yelling at each other about the proper technique for painting trim, we decided to just put it off for another weekend.

Instead, I took advantage of some excellent weather & tackled a yard project that's been on my mind for a couple weeks: turning the panda corner into a little reading/meditation/morning coffee/sitting spot.

As you can see, the placement of the lemon verbena, hibiscus-like plant, & two rose bushes set this corner sort of awkwardly apart from the rest of the yard, making it basically unusable as-is:

View when you enter the yard.

View from the side.

What's back there: ten square feet of grass & spiders.

I've been reading two books about garden design that gave me the idea for the project. One pointed out that even in a small yard, it's nice to have multiple places to sit & view the rest of the garden from different vantage points, and the other is all about landscaping for privacy in dense environments. I realized that I could take advantage of the fact that this corner is set apart & a little hidden, & turn it into a cozy spot to sit. The added bonus is that it is one of the only spots in the yard that gets bright, direct light in the morning, & the only one that gets light shade in the afternoon. 

Another thing I've been thinking a lot about is finding ways to repurpose random stuff that was left in the house when we moved in: scraps of wood, cracked flower pots, a tire, a name plate from the tailgate of a Nissan pickup truck, an old headboard, etc.  

I was planning to take apart the headboard & build a bench, when, sitting out in the yard with Adrienne & our friend Brian on Saturday, I saw the tire through the window of the Haunted Garden Shed, & realized that would fit the spot perfectly, while the flower pots sitting next to it could be broken up to make some sort of paving material.

On the way out this morning to start the project, I took the recycling with me, & I remembered something else I read this week about burying wine bottles bottom-up for a paving sort of effect -- we've had folks over a couple times this week, so there were a handful of wine bottles in there, & I have plenty of beer bottles of all shapes & sizes that I keep handy for homebrewing, so I thought it would be worth a try to see if I could make something interesting. Why not?

Here's what I did, (more or less) step by step:

Step One -- cut back the rose bushes, clear out grass & spiders:

The rose bushes attacked me, but this was the easy part...

Step Two -- put the tire in place, & dig a hole for the bottles:

This was the hard part --  it's all hard-packed clay & inch-thick roots down there. 

I bet it took me an hour to dig just 12 inches down.

Meanwhile, my friends were there keeping me company & cheering me on:

"Be mindful of your back!" said Zoey.

Step Three -- setting the bottles into a design:

Finally the fun part!

The stick is there to help me get them level with the ground.

In the end, I decided it might be more interesting to leave them at different levels.

Step Four -- smash smash smash!

Big, medium, & small!

In the spirit of repurposing as much of what we found here as possible, I also added all the bits of glass & pottery that we've found around the yard over the past nine months (!) since we moved in.

Step Five -- build a small wall on the side, with bricks found in the yard & Haunted Garden Shed:

Sorry, forgot to take a photo. Here is somebody else's photo of a brick.

Step Six -- step back & take some photos of the finished product:

Done!

A little closer in...

There's the brick wall -- a visual boundary, & also a convenient place for a drink.

View from the side.

I think I would like to plant a berry bush or something in front of the brick wall at some point.

Step Seven -- that rim inside the tire isn't going to be comfy, so make a cushion:

Old blanket we moved in with, rolled & tied up like the spiral rugs we had when I was growing up.

Old towel sewn on as a cover.

Beginning to end, I think it took me about six hours, maybe seven, to finish. I ought to sleep well tonight! 

And be sore tomorrow.

Speaking of sleeping well, after all that hard work outside, Zoey was exhausted. She came back inside & settled down for a long nap in the corner of the couch:

I knew it had been a while...

...but I didn't realize it had been a whole month since I last posted! Four different people have asked after the blog in the last week -- I've been busy with work and with dog training, & Adrienne started the school year on August 13, so we just haven't been doing much bloggable work around the house.

We did, however, get one thing done this month that I've been meaning to post about for two weeks -- electrical work!

The system was upgraded from a fuse box to modern circuit breakers by a licensed electrician in 2007, but the entire back of the house -- the kitchen, Adrienne's office, the sun porch, & one of the outlets in the bedroom -- was on just one circuit. Already a less than ideal situation. Then, Mr. Bunkport had to monkey with the system when he rebuilt the structure under Adrienne's office so that the refrigerator would still run while they were working -- he's a licensed contractor & knows what he's doing...but let's face it: he's not an electrician, and things were not quite right back there after he finished. He came back twice, and couldn't figure out what the problem was, but things seemed to be fine when we just left everything unplugged. We figured we save energy that way anyway, so let's just sit tight, continue to save our money, & then get an electrician in when we go to redo the back of the house, since we'll want to have more circuits added at that time anyway. This sounds ridiculous as I'm typing this (hello, fires?), but it made sense at the time.

Then in mid-August, things started acting funny again, so we decided to just bite the bullet & bring an electrician in to tell us what is going on. I got a referral from our friend Amanda, who works for our Realtor® & knows all the best tradesmen. Our Realtor® is herself a landlord, so in addition to referrals, she sends a lot of work to these folks herself. And they all know that if she catches wind of a client done wrong, that's the end of the line, so that's a level of assurance for us.

He came right over, & confirmed that sure enough, that one circuit is overloaded, & also general contractors, while super at building things, don't always make great decisions with rewiring. He suggested adding 2 more circuits to the house to solve both problems, but also said that if we wanted to wait until we redo the back of the house, that would be ok as long as we were careful about how much we were plugging in at one time.

Then, the next morning, he called me back. He said that he was talking about the house the night before, had decided that there was actually a safety issue here, & to encourage us to get the work done now, he offered to knock 25% off the price he had quoted me. He also offered to come do the work the next day. Sounds scammy, but this guy is not at all hurting for work, and he comes to us from the very best source possible, so we agreed. Better safe than sorry, & that discount really helped take the sting out.

The next morning, he came at 9am, with his wife Connie in tow. At one point during the day, I said to her that this seems like interesting work. She answered that she thinks it's horribly boring, but Samson was worried about us, & had asked her to come help him so that he could bring the cost down, instead of his having to pay his usual guys for their labor.

Also, when he was leaving at 4:30pm (!), he told me that our Realtor® had called him after we'd already agreed on the discounted cost, & asked him to knock the price down further to help us out -- he said that he couldn't cut the price more, but instead installed a third circuit & replaced our counter-top kitchen outlets with those circuit-breaking safety outlets for no charge.

So, now, not only are we sitting in a safer house, we're actually all set up for a kitchen remodel that we'll hopefully do in 5 or 6 years. Another happy ending on Mars!

Here are our brand new circuit breakers (the ones with the black marker):

And here are our new outlets.

Tomorrow, we are going to start finishing & painting Adrienne's office, so stay tuned for more posts this week!

Mr Pickles Famous Ginger Beer

Zoey, who is also widely known as Mr Pickles, as well as The Duke & Duchess of Pickles, has been very busy at Susie & Paul's, brewing her own ginger beer.

It is a very serious & potent ginger beer, as you can tell from her expression on the label. It demands intellectual rigor, in addition to intestinal fortitude, and it will cure all that ails you.

Fence Magnificent!

As promised, here are photos of the construction of our fancy new fence!

First, the before photos:

The Jungle overtaking the fence when we moved in.

After Adrienne cut back the overgrown ivy -- note how thick it is coming over the top. 

The neighbors had a trellis attached to the back of the fence, with 200-300 pounds of vining plants on the trellis. Mr. Bunkport, our contractor, feels that this is the reason the fence failed, & that it failed before its time.

When we started working with the neighbors to replace the fence, they removed their trellis & cut back the plants from their side to get ready for Mr. Bunkport to work his magic. Here is the fence in May:

Mr. Bunkport & Company were on another job that went unexpectedly long, so it took them until this past week to get to us. Happily, the work went quickly!

The wood was so rotten, that it took one guy with a hammer & his bare hands just an hour to pull the whole thing down.

Fence gone! Trellis & vining plants remain!

Rotten retaining wall removed!

Remnants of vining plants that needed to be cleared for construction!

Ready to begin!

Then, two guys & a Jack Russell terrier came over, spent 4 hours in the yard, & voila! Fence!

Adrienne enjoying the extreme privacy afforded a 4'11" woman by a 6' fence.

The wood makes it smell wonderful out there. Having the work completed makes me excited to start planning the next backyard project. Maybe it will be reusing the random bricks & paving stones that we dug up out of yard to make a little patio area to break up the extensive dirt patch back there.

Lastly, in veg news, we dug up our first carrot:

It was delicious!

Fence done! Meditate-a-Thon beginning!

Big news on Mars this week: the fence is finally finished! And it is gorgeous!

Photos are forthcoming. In the meantime, I wanted to mention something else that's happening for the next 30 days on Mars: I'm doing a sort of meditate-a-thon to both improve my own health & also raise money for a 30-year old LGBT community clinic called Lyon-Martin Health Services.

The clinic is based in SF, & provides critically needed care here, but it also runs very important national educational programs for healthcare providers on cultural sensitivity when working with the LGBT community. The kind of healthcare that LGBT people -- & transgendered people in particular -- get is a real travesty. A recent national study found a high rate of transgendered people having been turned away at emergency rooms, being verbally abused in doctors' offices, & just generally experiencing the kind of crappy, humiliating treatment that makes folks not seek healthcare at all, which obviously leads to abysmal health outcomes.

Every little bit helps & every little bit is hugely appreciated. If you, or anyone you know, would be interested in pitching in a few pennies, here's my fundraising page:  https://www.firstgiving.com/fundraiser/christinedarosa/30-days-of-health-2012

The site is secure, & the donation gets sent directly to Lyon-Martin. And Lyon-Martin is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization, so all donations are tax-deductible when the tax man cometh.

Thanks for reading my pitch! Photos of the fence tomorrow!

Little Doings

Lots of little doings around Mars this week.

 New rug for the dining room:

Favas & lettuce coming up nicely:

Getting ready for fireworks on July 4, we tried out drugging the dog (under a vet's supervision, of course):

We expect she will do just fine on Wednesday.