back yard

Odds and Ends, Excuses and Alibis

Submitted by Steve on Thu, 06/26/2008 - 11:40pm
By now, I was supposed to have posted about the successful completion of my stained glass construction projects. Maybe because I was coming off that year-long second floor renovation I needed time to recharge before throwing myself into another marathon. Instead, I got obssessed with maintenance, humdrum projects and pontificating on the Old House Web forums.

First up: the garden, or more specifically my nine hybrid tomato plants. I've had diminishing returns from my 'maters the past couple of years. Last year, half the plants died shortly after flowering. So I decided to consult with the masters: the greybeard Italian gardeners in the neighborhood. They said that my soil was probably DOA and that nothing I could add to it now would fix that tomato bed. Just mix in some manure and let it steep for a year or two. So I put the tomatoes in planters this year.

Within two weeks I knew this was the way to go. With the rich, bagged topsoil the plants took off.

The black beast lurking in back is Jack, my newfie. He loves being outside but with his thick, jet black coat and natural body fat, he wilts in the sun. So he stays in the shade of the pine tree.

Another old-world trick revealed to me was to bury a dead fish with the plant. According to the Italians, a decaying fish has the best balance of organic nutrients needed by growing tomatoes.

With all the stray cats around here I figured that probably wasn't a great idea so I did the next best thing. I bought a big bottle of fish emulsion.

That seems to be working great too. I haven't had so much as a yellow leaf on any of these plants. And they're flowering like crazy. Another horticultural contribution, this time from a Brit, is epsom salts. Epsom salt is magnesium sulfate, which is great for all flowering plants. Every two weeks, scatter one tablespoon per foot of height around the base of the tomato plant. For other plants, use one teaspoon.

Believe me, both work wonders. I gave my neighbor, Betsy, three of those same hybrids for her planters. She didn't use the fish emulsion/epsom salt trick and her plants aren't half as full as mine.

While I was at it I sanded and re-oiled my teak garden furniture. I do this every year on the first sunny spring day. After a long, cold winter it's nice to be outside for any reason so it's a good time to schedule tedious jobs like this, which I'd never do otherwise.

You can also see the two outdoor speakers I mounted in this story. It's so nice to hang out in the back yard with XM's "Deep Tracks".

And on that note, another chore was stripping and refinishing the mahogany garage door I built and installed only three years ago. After all the work I put into that door and surround, it was a heartbreaker watching the spar varnish flake off.

But it was, and big time. I'm blaming the lousy Minwax Helmsman marine urethane so this time I refinished it with Cabot spar varish.

Right out of the can I knew this was better stuff. It smelled awful. The finish is also a lot nicer. It remains to be seen if it will work any better. If not, next time it's Sikkens Cetol.

The next real project, which I won't be doing, is painting the back of my house. You can see the color samples on the wall. I'll be going with the second blue from the bottom. The wall has been pressure washed so it's looking particularly funky now.

I would have painted it myself except that this north-facing wall gets beaten by winter winds and ice. Paint doesn't survive long on this old, parged brick so I wanted to try a super-thick substance I'd read about from a company called Wallcoat. It comes with a 15 year warranty. But it's only sold to franchised contractors so I signed a contract with a local Wallcoat contractor back in March.

I'm taking it easy this summer. Maybe I'll get to the stained glass, maybe I won't. Renovating an old house isn't something that should feel like an obligation. It's a stress reliever.

On that point, Doc Karen has always been horrified by my lifestyle and has been ragging on me for years to get a physical. She was sure I had everything from black lung to AADD to lyme disease. The last time I saw a doctor for anything was in 1990 when I broke my wrist so, yeah, I figured that 18 years was probably pushing it. So I got a physical. BP: 120/81, sugars: 100, PSA: normal, cholesterol: high-normal, lungs: good, heart: good, damn... I can't match three numbers in lotto so I guess this is where my luck went. It's definitely not something I can take credit for.



The correct answer is: a ghetto blaster.

Submitted by Steve on Wed, 06/18/2008 - 11:36pm

I'm not saying anything that battle-experienced home renovators don't know. Sometimes, the simplest little task can consume gobs of time and a bucket of money before you realize you made a tragic mistake. Not always, of course. That's how you get suckered into doing it over and over again.

It started as a simple idea: I wanted to have music in my back yard. I could have bought a boombox a/k/a ghetto blaster for a hundred bucks and kept it under the deck. Problem solved and, when all is said and done, that actually would have been a more flexible solution than the mission I set for myself. Even if I wanted XM Radio (which I did) they make XM blasters too. The bonus would have been that I could have had XM in my car as well.

Instead, I wanted the speakers fed by the big, honkin' Denon home theatre system in the living room. Why? I don't freakin' know. Probably because it was there.



The Back Yard



The back yard wasn't too bad in comparison to the house but it had problems. The poplars in back were infested by a several termite colonies, which had attacked the house. The cement path to nowhere made no sense to me. The Madonna shrine was unfortunately not my taste either and the lilacs were diseased with some kind of leaf rust. Finally, the chain link fence was rusted and falling down in back. So I had all the excuses I need for a Sawzall slash and burn.

Click on any picture to expand it
The original back yard.


Work in progress. The fence was stick-built from CCA stock, with each picket glued and nailed. It wound up costing less than half the price of a pre-fab Illinois fence of similar construction (materials cost was about $750) and less than a quarter the price of an installed fence. Actually, it was easier to install than a pre-fab because we hit major obstructions while attempting to dig 8-foot standard post holes. So each of the panels is a slightly different length.

With help from my next-door neighbor, Betsy, and her friend, Todd Schultz, we got this far in five days. Once we got the rhythm and process down, we were able to knock off a panel every ten minutes, with a twenty-minute rehydration break between. The post holes were dug to between 24-36" and filled with 100-150 pounds of concrete and gravel. Then we moved on to replacing Betsy's fence too. 		Betsy's fence is finished. The post caps are installed and a gate was built between Betsy's and my yards (in the shadows under the pine tree). I installed low-voltage lighting on the fence posts, as did she: a nice Hollywood touch. I ripped up the lawn with a roto-tiller, tossed in six bags of peat moss and planted grass seed. This is just a temporary measure to anchor the mud until Betsy figures out my future garden for me. Since I planted grass so late in the season I don’t expect a House and Garden contender here.
This was shot in late November while the backyard is in winter shadow. You can't see that I actually have something of a lawn now, as well as a small garden, thanks to Betsy (who went nuts on it this year... I really need an updated shot). The fence was sealed with a semi-transparent stain. May 9, 2004. I did the lawn, roses and iron/brick work but Karen and Betsy are mostly responsible for everything else. There's a pretty well-stocked herb garden on the left and veggies on the right.
August 20, 2004. The morning glories have taken over. Next year, I'm going to lose them (which isn't going to be easy) and plant roses and cucumbers on that fence. As a matter of fact, I think I'm going to dump most of the flowers and plant veggies instead. A garden should pay for its own keep. Summer '05: my daily tomato and basil harvest. Two seconds after this picture was snapped, Jack made gazpacho out of Betsy's display.
March '06: I had enough heartache trying to keep the grass healthy, especially with two active puppies. So I had it bricked in.

I had intended to do this job myself but the more I got into the details, there were drainage and soil issues I wasn't comfortable with so I called Jim Lally (upper left) of Galway Bay Contracting. I've used Jim for several projects here. He and Jamie, his main man, laid it like a mud floor, with a 4" concrete bed over crushed gravel. It meant having to excavate and remove over 10 cubic yards of dirt, which was another reason I wanted a crew for this. Jim is an artist and has always gone above/beyond with his jobs here. Check out the herringbone "dance floor" design in the middle. 		Summer '06: So long as Auggie has a ball, he's satisfied.




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