Last week I posted a photo of the Cecile Brunner in the back yard. This week she has, if possible, more blooms. They're not the most elegant of blooms, but the sheer numbers are enough to make the thing impressive.

And out front, the roses are starting to go crazy. We did a lot of tying and retying and pruning this winter to get a bunch of good canes across the top of the arbor, and that seems to have been a good move. It filled in nicely and is covered in flowers. One thing you may not know is that roses tend to bud more on horizontal branches, so tying a branch that's growing straight up into a more horizontal position will make it set more buds that year (and more buds = more flowers, obviously). Yes, it really works.

Of course, that doesn't mean there are no flowers on the shrub roses. I've been cutting bouquets of them to take in to work with me. I've been standing out front sniffing them. They're the first thing I see of the house when I'm rounding the corner to come home. Roses, roses, roses!

And I hate to say it, but when this rose season is over I may end up taking out a bunch of roses. There are some that are just not thriving, so I may remove them and either replace them with new varieties (this is my vote) or move more crowded roses in their places (this is what common sense tells me to do).

Speaking of pink things in the front (is there anything not pink in the front?), here's the current state of the hydrangea bed. There's what seems to be an odd gap to the left because one hydrangea suffered great trials and torments and nearly died and then got literally eaten to the ground by $%@*! snails and is veeeeery slowly making a comeback. Both the hydrangeas and the impatiens around them like a nice rich soil, so I'll be putting some of that nice new compost around them when I deal with a minor situation.

Which is to say, there are a lot of weeds in the hydrangea bed. I have to admit, there is one real drawback to mulching with coffee grounds. It makes the whole place smell like a coffee shop. For those of you who love coffee, no big deal, or even a real inducement to weed there. For me, it's not so great, because I don't care much for coffee and even less for smelling it all around me. I admit that I've done less weeding than I should have out here because of the coffee smell. (After taking this photo, though, I sat down and weeded out around the impatiens out of sheer guilt.)

Heading around the corner to the back yard, we have another garden deathmatch. This time it's a clematis growing all over the poor Salvia clevelandii 'Pozo Blue'. I don't know how to make the clematis be a better garden citizen, but it's reached the end of the possible growing range: any further growth and it will get lopped off as we use the gate.

And here's a new and interesting development: the garden under the quince. On the left we have two Campanula incurva, one of which I sort of expected to die this year as they are biennials. But they're both there and happy, and they both really like the fully functional irrigation system. To the right we have a veritable grove of assorted Nigella, which self-sow and come in greater swaths every year. They're one of those flowers I just can't get offended at: they have pretty flowers and then interesting seed pods, and they don't totally invade even though they do pop up everywhere. (In the back on the left there's a foxglove that looks to be blooming this year.)

All over the orchard are these guys, who I've identified as Allium unifolium. Those red patches at the base of the flowers are developing bulbils, and when they are ripe you can plant them and the next year they will grow up into a regular bulb and produce more flowers. If nobody ever told you allium are easy to propagate, let me be the first.

I'm not sure how easy Tulipa are to propagate, but this year I'm going to give it a try. I'm letting the Lady Jane clusianas go to seed. Actually, I mostly just love the look of the seed pods, but also I want to have more of these and if they want to make more of themselves for free, that seems like a decent thing to me. I can see having these all over the orchard instead of in just a tiny patch. So yes, I did decide I like them, even though sometimes they look orangy because of the mixed yellow and red stripes. Last year they went to seed but I didn't do anything with it; this year I'm going to gather it and sow it.

Another plant that keeps on giving is the lupine. I have no idea how this ended up in the back yard (the lupines I planted were all in the front natives garden), but every year it shows up in a different spot and I just let it, because it's pretty and a native, and the little green bees go all insane over it. This year it sowed itself in the path, which is sort of in the way.

And finally, my minor weakness is dianthus. And this is a great dianthus (Dianthus superbus -- in the background you can somewhat see Dianthus deltoides 'Flashing Lights'). Another plant that looks best in full bloom rather than the spotty half-bloom it has to start out. Dianthus flowers last a really long time on the plant, and decently long in vases if you can bring yourself to cut them off the plant (I rarely can).

Technorati Tags: dianthus, flowers, gardening, hydrangea, propagation, roses

We've got a really nice year of fruit coming in. In the Asian pears, we have so much fruit on the trees that I will have to be very aggressive about thinning. Last year, one of the trees lost a major limb because it got so overloaded with fruit, so this is something I'm being vigilant about this year. As you can see, the number of fruits on this branch is ridiculous.

Also probably requiring thinning is the quince, although it does a good job of dropping excess fruit. The thing is, we can really only handle so much quince. Also, I think there might be a touch of fireblight in the upper branches that I have to climb up and prune out. That'll give me a chance to thin it out a bit while I'm there.

And here we have an apple. There are some apples on the older apple trees this year, like this one, but also a few on the new apple trees. I should really thin those off, but I'm excited about getting an apple we can eat this year so I won't. If this kills the tree or stunts its growth, you can all say you told me so.

The bad news in the garden is the nectarines and peaches. Not their fruit, which is as robustly overdone as usual, but their leaves, which have peach-leaf curl because I failed to spray them with copper in the winter. I know! I intended to, but never got around to it. And now they will be unwell this year. The infection makes the leaves curl up, so it's kind of like a respiratory illness for a human. My nectarines have asthma, basically. Untreated, it really hurts the tree (mostly by leaving it open to other infections), but for one season it will be OK, though I'll be kicking myself from now until the tree goes dormant.

And finally, the star of May, the cherry. In another week or so the cherries will be in full force in the farmer's markets (we've got an early year this year), and I better get those stupid nets on these trees if I want to see a single piece of fruit in harvest this year. This one is a yellow cherry. If I ever get more than five or six in a harvest, I think I might make a batch of maraschino cherries in a more interesting flavour than the store-bought ones.

Technorati Tags: apples, asian pears, fruit, quince, urban farming

I had already planted the Sungold cherry tomato (at the right), so I planted out a Black Krim seedling (that you can hardly see on the left) that was just big enough to go in the ground, and an Anaheim pepper in the middle. Before doing that I weeded out the bed there, because it was getting pretty overgrown.

I relocated the tomatoes this year as a part of crop rotation. Where there were tomatoes last year I've planted peas (in one bed) and cucumbers (in another). I've had very poor success with cucumbers in the past but I have high hopes for this year as it looks to be a hot summer.

I also planted out some lamb's ears along the orchard path -- in a spot where I'd already put some out and killed them by not watering (classic move on my part). Good thing I have a large packet of seeds that I got free, right? Anyway, this time I did it more right, which is to say that I let the seedlings get much larger, and I did some real bed preparation.

I dug a trench about five inches wide and four inches deep that was three feet long. Then I mixed the soil removed from the trench with some nice, new compost from the pile to make a rich sandy soil. Look at that photo! Well, it will look lighter in a day or so because it'll not be quite so evenly moist. I put the hoe and the gnomes there to keep the dogs from lying on the plants, which contributed to the demise of the previous planting of lamb's ears.

And just to show you what I'm living with in this yard, this is what came out of that fairly small trench:

A big pile of gravel, a few dozen pieces of broken glass and rusty metal, and a plastic army guy. The army guy is pretty cool, though.

With that little project complete, I had one more thing I wanted to get done while the sun was up, which was repotting the figs. When last we left the figs they were doing very nicely in their four-inch pots, but of late a couple had begun to show roots through the bottoms. It offends my sense of symmetry to repot just two of four figs into larger pots, so everybody got an upgrade. This will also reduce the amount of moisture on the cuttings, which means everybody had better start showing some decent root production or they will be sorry.

Here you see them after-repotting. White Genoa and Desert King are the two very large figs on the right -- they were both very close to the limits of the four-inch pots. Blanquette and Green Greek have both been much more conservative growers, but it's hard to tell what they'll be like as adult trees. You can have a tiny little fig that produces the most amazing fruit ever, so you never know.

In my planting future is this: a flat full of assorted red sunflowers and a bunch of Hesperis matronalis (Dame's Rocket), intended for planting along the West wall of the back yard, where I killed my poor blueberries two years ago and planted a bunch of Buddleia this year. I've been trying to kill the Bermuda grass there to prepare a bed, but keeping the area clear is harder than planting something there and weeding around it.

For those who would tell me to just start the sunflowers right in the ground, we have a voracious flock of assorted wild birds who eat any seeds I direct-sow in the garden, so everything must be started inside. Then it must be raised to be large enough to resist the fleet of snails who would immediately attack it.

After all that work, I had a nice sit in my little chair in the drainage basin (which has my irrigation toolbox on it in this photo, because I've been doing a lot of repairs and adjustments to the system this season). This is prime flowering season. In another month or so things will start to calm down, but right now everything wants to bloom, so sitting outside and enjoying it is more enjoyable than usual.

Sometimes I get so involved in messing with the garden (especially weeding) that I forget to spend time just sitting there enjoying it. I think old houses and any garden can be like that: the sort of person who buys an old house or develops a garden is the sort of person who like messing around with stuff, for whom repairing plaster or filling cracks in wood is a sort of hobby. But it's important to stop and enjoy it, too.

Technorati Tags: digging, figs, flowers, gardening, plants, propagation, tomatoes

Anyway, yesterday we laid out the footprint for the chicken house, and I'm going to be making some adjustments to the design this week to deal with that layout. (We're planning to pour the slab for the house on Saturday.)

First, it turns out that the posts we installed to hold the fence up have thickness, which I knew but had not quite registered. So when we laid out the house footprint, we noticed that we'd have about six inches of fence between the house and the gate, and decided to just widen the house to fill that space, which means new drawings and new calculations.

Also, we've had a couple of major violations of the chicken yard. Yesterday a squirrel managed to get in (looking for chicken food, no doubt) and get stuck, causing all kinds of excitement. Given that it happened a day after one of the dogs managed to get the squirrel by the tail and leave this in the yard, it was an occasion for great dog-drama.

Then while we were out turning a compost pile today, Carole flew over and landed in the middle of the fence (she seemed really startled to find it there), then walked up it and through the aviary netting and thus out of the chicken yard, which we had not quite expected. So we're going to be putting a roof on this yard sooner than I'd originally expected, so more calculations (and more material).

Apart from that, the chickens like their new yard very much. They've discovered the compost piles and are very interested in them, although they're really more into cobwebs, for some reason. But since turning the compost and infusing it with chicken poop is half of their job description, I'm quite pleased with their performance.

Because they're eating a lot of random other stuff these days, I got them some grit to help out in chewing. Here's Debbie standing on the grit feeder (well, OK, a 4" plant pot filled with grit), because as much as they like getting a nice source of grit (and they were very happy with it), they like standing up high and looking around even more.

So next weekend we're doing the slab, and shortly after that we plan to do the framing of the chicken house. As you can see, the girls are pretty much ready for it as soon as we can get it built, so it's time for us to hop to it.

Technorati Tags: chickens, compost, construction, dogs, shed, urban farming

It made sense at the time.

Anyway, one of the things that worked very well was the assembly area on the driveway. Nice, flat, relatively easy workspace, although the crawling around did get tiring after a while.

The real benefit of a nice flat workspace is that you can make a nice square panel that is glued and screwed together so it is incredibly strong compared to the usual built-in-place fence. And strong was very important to us because of the conditions on the other side of the fence.

We brought the chickens out to spend the day in the chicken yard wile we worked, which was great for them. And of course the dogs were out with us, too, mainly getting in the way. I made Goldie a nice wallow out of freshly dug dirt to get her to lie in a less inconvenient spot.

And I've been meaning to take a photo of the Cecile Brunner rose for the last several days and just not getting around to it. As you can see, she's about four feet above the fence she's leaning on, so around ten feet tall. This is her great flush of blooms and it's always a stunner.

And today we had this lovely butterfly flitting around the garden.

Not that I really got to spend much time looking, because we were busy building a fence. And we did.

Now back to the Accordion Room to spend some quality time with the floor.

Technorati Tags: butterflies, dogs, fence, roses

I did some measuring and a bit of quick math and it didn't take too terribly long to make the first door. It's got L brackets at the upper and lower corners, and some totally overkill metal connectors at the ends of the middle bar (where I figure the door will be gripped a lot). Then it's squared with a sheet of chicken wire and a wire cross-brace tightened with a turnbuckle.

Have I mentioned how much I hate doors that sag?

We went through the next three pretty quickly, then took them out back to hang them. Apart from a sort of not-very-funny circus in which we repeatedly dropped small screws into the grass, the hanging went very smoothly.

Goldie settled down to observe inside the chicken yard, and shortly found herself a prisoner.

It took longer than we really planned, but less time than it could have given my perfectionist tendencies, but soon there was a chicken yard, with dogs on the outside. (The dog up front is our neighbor Beanie, who is not well-schooled in posing with projects.) Also, check out the right corner there. Rosie was chasing a squirrel and pulled the chicken wire right off the staples, the little turd. Noel re-stapled it and will secure it against future dog infiltration tomorrow.

And even though it was pretty windy and cold by the time we finished, we brought the girls out to check out their new digs. They approved.

Tomorrow: attach some fence panels.

Technorati Tags: carpentry, chickens, construction, dogs, fence, urban farming

One of the things I've figured out from this whole thing is that the hardest part of a renovation is getting a plan and sticking to it. You're going along really well until one day you get sparks out of the outlet when you try to use the toaster, and pretty soon you're pulling bales of uninsulated wire out of the kitchen ceiling. Or one day you wake up and realize that you cannot live another day with that dark green bathroom, even if it means putting another project on hold while you prep, prime, and paint.

So this post is the first in a series I'll be writing about project planning and management, with a few tips on how to get on track and stay there. And what to do when you get off track, because we all know that's going to happen no matter how disciplined you are.

The very first thing to do is make a list of projects. I like to make lists on the computer because they are easy to reorganize, but another way to handle it is to put projects on index cards, which is what I recommend for people who are starting out. Just list one project per card, then you can sort them around on a big table and see what you're dealing with.

Actually, coming up with a list of projects might not be so easy. Maybe you've just moved in and you're not entirely sure what's actually not working yet, or you're not certain what you want to do about a problem. You don't need to know every detail up front. If you're not sure what you want to do about the kitchen, just make a card that says "kitchen." You'll know what it means, and if you ever can't figure it out, you can remove it from the set of cards and nobody gets hurt. And if you're not sure what projects might come up, maybe make a list of the first several projects you know you want to undertake.

With cards in hand, now is the time to do some arranging. The first thing to do is find projects that have a natural affinity for one another. Things like replacing plaster with drywall work well with more invasive projects like rewiring or insulating. Find any projects like that and group them together with a paperclip (in my computer file, I use an indent under a common title to make things a group).

When you have all your projects grouped, now is the part where the cards are a bit easier than the computer file. You need to arrange projects in chronological order. When we started prioritizing our projects, we found that everything we wanted to do came back to the foundation in the end, and this actually moved up our projected start date for the foundation replacement by a few years. This is often the case: you work from the foundation upwards, and from the outside inwards. So in our case we made a ten-year plan (which you can find in our Planning archives) which basically started with the idea of doing the foundation work.

Our ten-year plan started with the idea that there we had a large set of projects with affinity for each other (removing a bunch of plaster and drywalling, redoing all the floors, doing an addition on the second story, plus retrofitting the upper part of the house with bracing). In fact, the set was so large with such a strong affinity that we realized we would basically want to do them all at once, but there was no way we'd have money or time to do it for at least ten years. Once we had that idea in our heads, everything fell into place. How many projects can we do in ten years, with one of us 250 miles away at school for much of that time? We took everything that wasn't part of that large affinity group and put it on the list. We spoke in very general terms, but also specific enough that you could tell when a project was underway.

So look at your cards, and consider whether you want to make a lot of steady progress over a long period of time, or whether you want to do a few things then a major project, then a few things, and so on. If you'll be doing all the work yourself, think about when you're going to need to do an easier project after a hard one, or a smaller project after a longer one. Think about how you like to work.

And arrange. For us, a table of of index cards would have the foundation on the far left (like most Westerners, I think of time moving from left to right), then a bunch of cards at the same level after the foundation for things like the landscaping, and paneling removal, and paint stripping. Almost nothing hinges on those projects, and any one of them could be done first.

When the projects that are gating factors are all in the right places, consider money and time. Every project has a cost, both in terms of cash and in terms of your time and energy. If you're not going to have the money to rebuild your front steps for a few years, that should more further into the future. The key is to be realistic with your plan.

At this point, make a note on the cards about rough expected cost (money and effort on your part). You will be coming to them later wondering why you decided to put off that roof project, having forgotten that you got a quote for more than your current net worth. And without planning, it's easy to get in over your head. A lot of people I talk to think that planning can work miracles. It can't give you more money or more energy; all it can do is help you use them better.

When you have everything arranged roughly as it has to be done, you can start rearranging as you want to do it. So for us, right now, our cards would be in this order: back fence, chicken yard, Accordion Room, chicken house, deck, pantry. That's all the projects we've got on our roster right now, although there are a few others on the one-year plan. But two weeks ago, we would have put the Accordion Room project first, because it seemed more critical and also we had not yet started the fence as we were waiting on a second set of asbestos test results (which were negative!). With the end of the fence in our grasp, and the chickens fast outgrowing their habitat, those projects jumped in priority.

Which is the beauty of the index cards. You can rearrange them as you need to. When you wake up one Saturday morning and know the bathroom must not be dark green for another day, you can have a discussion about moving it up in priority and what will fall behind because you need to do this for your sanity. Or when you're waiting for test results or supplies or even just a permit, you can move another small project up the queue and work on it until the first project can be restarted.

When you have a pretty clear idea of the order things will happen in, make a short list on paper that has your next several projects. It's all too easy to get sidetracked and start another massive project without finishing what you started. It's also easy to get sidetracked and then wonder, six months later, how you managed not to get any of your scheduled projects started, much less finished.

We tend to keep our current short list as a mantra to recite to one another in times of weakness. We hang copies of our ten-year plan in the stairway niche and in the kitchen, because it helps us keep the bigger picture clear in our minds. Also, it means a lot to cross things off that list.

So maybe you hang up a big-picture list and a short-term list, or maybe you choose to focus on one or the other (if you're not ready to start work just yet, go for long term, so you'll be thinking far enough in advance). Now you work from the list. Do not ever work on a project that is not on the list. If it needs doing, it needs planning. Even things like plumbing explosions that are fairly obvious top priorities should be discussed in terms of the list. If you spend a weekend working on the drainpipe, that means you will delay work on other projects. It's easy, when you're running late or short-tempered with each other, to forget that you both agreed that there would be a delay.

With your planning complete for the moment, put the cards in a box or rubber band them together, and set them aside until you need to do more advance planning. Every time you are deciding what comes next you should spread all the cards out and re-order them or add to them as needed. It gives you a perspective on why you made those decisions in the past, but it also allows you to change and be flexible as your work progresses.

Technorati Tags: advice, organization, renovations, schedule

Tomorrow I will make some doors so the girls can have more outside time. We may also go to the neighbors behind the fence and dig out some stuff that has pushed a few fence panels loose. Somehow a previous owner back there used the fence as one side of a raised bed, so that piece of fence has a lot of issues. But given the work on the rest of the back fence, it would be nice if we didn't have to do more than go around and dig some dirt away so we could re-attach a few panels this year.

When I'd finished the wire fence, we went to work on panel building, and in a fairly short order, we were able to assemble three more fence panels to be installed tomorrow. It's still light out, but it's windy and cold and we were both starting to make stupid mistakes. Stupid mistakes can get you badly injured, so we packed up and came inside.

Tomorrow we will assemble three more panels, and hang all of them!

Technorati Tags: chickens, fence

This seems to happen a lot.

Anyway, this is how I spent a little of my evening. We were able to make a trip to Home Depot to get the rest of the fence panels and some 2x4 redwood, and I made one wall of the chicken yard. Then I tried to staple the chicken wire up and ran out of staples, hence the incomplete look.

I am pretty happy with how the cross-pieces came out. They're attached with Simpson Strong Ties, so they don't have to rely on me being a good woodworker to be strong (good thing, because one thing I learned in architecture school was just how lousy a carpenter I really am).

I only have to attach the wire to these frames, then build the four doors (two sets of double doors) on the other side, and then I'm going to fill in the area where the chicken house will be with more chicken wire to make a complete yard. Covered over with aviary netting, this will be a nice place where the chickens can come out and play while we work in the yard or play with the dogs, and where they can have a little, modest chicken shack to live in if it takes us a while to get round to building the chicken house.

Also, we're being little social butterflies all weekend, so we'll see how much of the back fence we actually get built. Noel is optimistic, but he's always optimistic.

Edited to add: Found! In the last half hour of light, no less, so I was able to get the chicken wire over the new section of fence before it got too dark to find my way out of the compost pile I had to stand in to do it.

Technorati Tags: fence

In the meantime, it turned mid-month again, and I'm making my bloom inventory. This time I thought I would share it with you, or at least as much of it as I got decent photographs of.

Temperatures: high 66F, low 46F
Honey bees not flying, but native bees out

Anagallis monelli -- bought as an alleged annual from Annie's Annuals last year. Not dead yet.

Dianthus 'Firewitch' -- I want to dislike this one, if only because the colour is a bit too reminiscent of the front hall for comfort, but it blooms so consistently and has really nice foliage year round.

Dianthus 'Rose de Mai' -- still getting started with its bloom, this one is a bit disappointing to me as it looks somewhat mangy and never quite gets covered in blooms. On the other hand, like all dianthus it is cast iron in this garden, so I'm not complaining. These are supposed to be short-lived perennials and the only mortalities have been specimens in pots that went unwatered during heat waves.

Dianthus superbus -- a nice, somewhat inoffensive dianthus that puts up with a lot (even being laid on by dogs). I somehow ended up with two of these.

Dianthus deltoides 'Flashing Lights' -- a favourite, for its intense colour. Photos do not do it justice.

Dianthus -- one of a pair of showy commercial hybrids I bought last year in a moment of weakness. They contrast strongly with the more delicate old-world varieties.

Allium schubertii -- Great big architectural flowers dry into large, weird seedheads. If you want an allium that says HELLO WORLD, this is your allium.

allium -- these are some species allium I spread all over the garden last year without making any notes.

Mimulus, aka Monkeyflower -- I'm not sure why this is called Monkeyflower. It has a tendency to the orange which means it is here on probation.

Strawberries -- in heavy bloom right now, and actually setting fruit, too.

Campanula rotundifolia -- a purchase from High Country Gardens, this is supposed to be moderately invasive. We do not have nearly enough water in our soil for that to happen in this garden, but it is spreading nicely and getting groundcoverish.

Another campanula -- this was a small potted plant from Trader Joe's a couple of years ago. Unknown variety, as it was, naturally, unlabeled. Seems not to spread very much.

Nicotiana langsdorfii, a self-sown plant from the original which was on the other side of the nectarines. I have nicotiana coming up everywhere.

Apple -- all the trees are in bloom now, so I have hopes for more than two apples this year.

Salvia spathacea -- a passalong plant from a friend. Bloomed all winter long. Chickens love to play in it and eat the spent blossoms. Hummingbirds have thus far ignored it, even though the common name is Hummingbird Sage.

Salvia 'Indigo Spires' -- another year-round bloomer. Doing poorly after a run-in with a dog at top speed. But still blooming.

Little pink oxalis -- oxalis is a weed here, and most of it is yellow. But this year I have been getting a lot of this pink oxalis, which I don't mind all that much.

Spanish lavender -- self-sown from seeds in the compost. This will have to come out soon because it's growing too close to the apple trees, but the bees are loving it so I hardly have the heart.

Blue babiana -- the blue half of the pair of babianas from Annie's Annuals. Both have grown enough that when they go dormant this year I should split them. Very pretty, but not terribly popular with much apart from honeybees.

Montmorency cherry -- birds are supposed to leave these sour cherries alone, but last year they stripped the tree before any of them ripened. This year, I bought some nets.

Freesias -- I planted these in a huge clump last year. When they go dormant I should spread them around a bit more.

Wisteria -- coming over the fence from the house next door. Needs heavy pruning as we neglected it this last fall. Losing a fight with the Cecile Brunner rose.

Cecile Brunner rose -- now grown to five feet above the top of the fence it is leaning against. Lots of little pink blooms in the spring, lush, evergreen foliage in this climate. This is not a rose to be messed with, or to plant too close to a structure.

Dandelion -- I let these grow because the insects love them, and they don't tend to get too invasive around here. Noel, in some kind of midwestern lawn instinct, occasionally goes through and pulls them out of the lawn and wherever they show up.

Thalictrum rochebrunianum -- I have two because I thought I killed one. They like water, and will go dormant if they don't have enough. Supposedly has pink flowers, but I've not been good enough about watering it through a summer to see them yet.

Heucheras -- not in bloom, thank goodness, but lovely at this time of year. Heucheras are one of the few plants where I think the bloom really makes them look awful. Right now, with lots of water and warm weather, they are feeling perky and happy.

Dicentra spectabilis -- a California native woodland plant. Goes dormant in the winter. Pretty little pink flowers with hearts on them.

Columbine -- one of many varieties planted in this area. Tendency to powdery mildew and a fave of the local slug population. On the other hand, they do self-sow to fill in their bed, and the foliage is nice even when diseased.

Hydrangea and impatiens bed -- It's full of low-lying weeds and smells like a coffee shop, but the plants are doing well, where they haven't been devoured by snails. This is a good location for snail-hunting in the evenings.

Linaria triornithophora 'Three Birds Flying' -- Incredibly invasive, popping up all over the place in the Fern Walk. Pretty flowers, though.

Anemone -- at the very end of its season.

Ranunculus -- also at the end of its season but still quite handsome.

Geranium 'Bill Wallis' -- a nice true geranium, tends to self-sow but not in an obnoxious way (this one is right next to the pot with the mother plant).

Salvia greggii 'Teresa' -- from Plant Delights, a nice pale-pinkish salvia. Has been very subtle about blooms so far.

Camellia 'Tama Peacock' -- planted this winter, still doing well. Likes lots of water, which it certainly has had this year.

Sweet pea -- planted this winter, this is the first bloom. Another plant that tends to get aphids and powdery mildew but makes up for it by having really awesome blooms.

Penstemon palmerii -- a nice, pink penstemon, has taken to growing horizontally most of the time rather than in nice, ladylike spikes. Then an occasional flower spike will come up several feet from the original plant. Growing in an area that is sort of out of control and undirected.

California poppies -- several varieties. The orange ones have stayed because Noel really likes them even though they do not fit the colour scheme.

Chinese Houses -- another California native, self-sows, very short bloom life but totally worth it.

Penstemon heterophyllus -- Much more reasonable in growth habit than palmerii, very pretty blue flowers. Last year somebody ripped a bunch off around this time, but the plant was OK with that and I don't mind too much as long as they don't actually dig up and remove the entire plant (which has been done).

Cobweb thistle -- shown with little green bee in deep involvement. A California native, endangered in its native habitat along the bluffs north of here. Good at self-sowing, but prickly.

Iris douglasiana -- Another native, has generally done poorly in this garden for unknown reasons that could be anything from too little water to too rich a soil. Seems happy this year.

Rose hedge -- mostly in bud right now. I expect the major bloom in mid-May, which is a bit early but we've had a warm year.

Wooly thyme -- people keep telling me this is hard to grow. It's taken over the walkway where I planted it and is creeping along the planting bed. So far, not too hard to grow.

Also in bloom: hollyhock, another type of allium, armeria, lupine.

Technorati Tags: california, flowers, gardening, native plants, plants, springtime

To avoid the worst of the heat, we timed our supply run for midday. We went back to Home Depot for fence panels to make the first segment of the fence (mostly to try it out: does this design make sense). This was irritating because it was Home Depot, so of course it was going to be irritating. Also, the panel I had carefully chosen and calculated for from the web site was not actually at the store, so we had to do a lot of quick math. But soon we were home with our pieces.

The nice part about this fence design is that the panels can be constructed on the driveway, where it is clean and smooth and work goes quickly.

The first panel had to be about 57" wide, so we laid out panels that miraculously turned out to be 57" wide with no trimming. I suspect none of the subsequent panels will be nearly as obliging.

Our cross pieces are panels ripped down the middle. We glued them to the panels with construction adhesive (this is the influence of architecture school: the overuse of glue), then screwed them together from both sides. With cross pieces on both sides, plus the glue and screws from both directions, the panel became very solid.

And there you have it. Just a little more work to be done.

We carried it to the back, Noel trimmed off the ends, and then we attached it to the posts with four L brackets.

When we had finished that, we were flush with our success and went on to put in the next fence post for the chicken yard. As you can see, it was getting later in the day and the weather was cooling down substantially. Much easier to work in.

Sometimes when we do a concrete project, we have the girls give us a grudging paw print. I guess one of them decided to just get it over with.

We had one quick break for water and some food, then the last two posts went in very quickly. We spent some extra time cleaning up the tools and putting concrete things away for the moment, until we do the chicken house.

And finally, some neighbors were clearing out a bunch of clutter and gave us these little chairs for our garden. A good place to sit at the end of a long, hot day. The pink thing is a Zoom Groom, which is Rosie's favourite way to have her winter fluff brushed off. The garden is awash in fluffy balls of black fur these days.

Our next big project is more fence panels. And tomorrow I will staple up some chicken wire (yes, I know it is not optimal for chicken fencing, but in this case I think it is what works best), and maybe go get some aviary netting for the top so we will have a real chicken yard.

Technorati Tags: digging, fence, summer

The first thing we had to do was move a bunch of compost around, so there was a lull in the digging activity while we forked compost all over the place. Now it's in a large, not very tidy looking swath.

And of course, as soon as we started digging, we hit yet another buried tree while digging a post hole. Noel finds something unaccountably funny about the idea of using a power tool like this on the lawn.

We also found this token.

And in the end, we had a couple of posts that look totally crooked because everything else back there is out of plumb or leaning heavily.

But we're mostly done, and with only minor casualties.

Technorati Tags: compost, digging, fence

In the morning, Noel went to Home Depot to get concrete. I had gone there last night, but it was a case of shopping while female, because the floor staff refused to bring a pallet of concrete down to the floor level for me, complaining that I would need them to load it on my cart and then into my car and they'd rather not. I'd be outraged, but that sort of thing happens about half the time when I try to buy building materials at Home Depot, which is why I am not a huge fan of the chain. So this morning I sent Noel over to get concrete because presumably they would be willing to sell it to a man. (He had no difficulty.)

Once we had all our stuff assembled, we set up lines to show us the top height of each post, and the front face. We did each post completely, so rather than dig all the holes at once, we went through the entire process for each post, which worked well. It did mean taking down the lines every time we dug a hole, but that was not all that difficult.

The concrete mixer has been totally worth the pain and suffering we underwent trying to figure out how to assemble it. Concrete work is always hard work, so mixing by hand is just adding more hard work to a difficult day. Rent or buy a concrete mixer, folks, and save your backs.

We tried to fig the holes as tightly as possible, but there are limits. In the end, it required more than a single 60-lb sack of concrete for each hole.

In one of the holes, we encountered a mystery chunk of wood, and had to get out the Sawzall. It turned out to be a felled tree lying on its side.

I don't think the post-hole digger would have gone through that, even with a lot of muscle throwing it.

And here they are: six of the seven posts for the back fence. The boards you see there are propping up the fence to keep it out of our way. And the posts are five feet on center so this will be a very sturdy fence. It's going to have to hold itself and the other fence up, after all.

We have five more posts to install, to make the fence around the chicken yard.

Technorati Tags: concrete, digging, fence

Only, where is the property line? Looking at the plat map, it seems the neighbor's fence may be on our side of it, and indeed all the fences at the back are on our side. And they're not exactly straight or square, either. So we just sort of drew a line from one edge to another, keeping the line itself straight, and that's where we're putting the fence. A foot or so either way really doesn't matter much (adverse possession in California would require them to pay the property taxes on the land, so we're not worried about losing ownership of the property on the other side of the fence).

So we set the first corner post. On this side of the yard, neither the fence that runs along the property line (visible in the photo) nor the fence that divides the two neighboring properties and is perpendicular to the visible fence has a post at this point. So we decided to put a post here and tie the visible fence into it, because three fences meeting with no post seemed stupid.

You will note that of course this is right next to the Mme. Carriere rose I moved this winter. Of course.

For this job we went and bought a post-hole digger. We'd been borrowing one from our neighbor, but hers is fairly simple and there are all kinds of fancy improvements in newer ones. This one has really big scoops, and also a handle that is shaped so you can't whack your hands on the handles all the time. Nice. Noel's going to be digging eleven more post holes with this this weekend, and then some more holes for the upcoming deck construction, so it seemed worth it to get something more comfortable to use.

And in no time at all, we had a nice, straight post. Nothing else back there is straight, so every time I look at it it seems to be leaning, but the level assures me that it is dead-on.

And speaking of the new post, it turned out that the only fence posts of reasonable quality that were not pressure treated (which I didn't want for both aesthetic reasons and because at one corner the fence will be in the chicken yard, and the chickens will definitely peck at the fence and I don't care to ingest whatever they use to treat the wood in my eggs) were FSC wood.

FSC certified wood is sustainably forested, so you get to feel like your fence didn't mean clear-cutting an old-growth forest. It costs a bit more, but not much on the larger scale of things (about $3 more per post). But even better, the quality of the wood was notably much better than the quality of the redwood posts that were not FSC certified. So you could say that the certification of the wood was free; we just paid more for a higher grade of wood.

Technorati Tags: digging, fence

We taped a sheet of plastic around the window:

The light switch and electrical outlets were also covered, because they had gaps.

I made this lovely plastic-wrapped and plastic-lined box to hold the tiles after we removed them:

And then Noel constructed a cute little plastic antechamber in case we needed to leave the room during our work.

Here's the floor:

For a long time this was about all you could see from the room:

The room had two slit doors: one into the Accordion Room and one into the hall. A slit door is made by cutting a slit in the plastic sheet, then taping a drape of plastic up to hang over it. It's a remarkably effective door, and easily made.

When the containment system was done, we suited up. Coveralls, feet covers, head socks, gloves, goggles, and then respirators.

Here I am going into the room through the antechamber. It was very slippery.

The floor, before.

We came up with a very simple division of work. Noel operated the heat gun and did the main scraping, while I held the tile up to keep it from re-sticking to the floor, then stacked tiles and put them in the box. This was more involved than it sounds, because every surface quickly became sticky thanks to the assorted adhesives used to hold the two sets of tiles down in the first place.

We started work at 11am, and things went fairly quickly, with only a few mishaps. When we get to doing the finishing on the floor, I'll discuss some of the mess we found under the first set of tiles (the asbestos ones). It's pretty nasty. After finishing work we sprayed things and each other down, bundled all the possibly contaminated materials up in plastic, and took this shot at almost 2pm.

The floor has been stained dark reddish brown, and also has a coat of grey paint over it that's probably lead. It's been ineptly evened out (well, they tried, at least) with some kind of weird mastic which I have to send off to get tested. The whole thing is pretty sticky. But it no longer has stupid ugly tiles on it.

Technorati Tags: asbestos, flooring