So long, lawn!

Well the good news is, the lawn is gone! This is how it look after a week's worth of work.

Hello Again

We here at This Old Blog are about to boldly go where very few home owners in our neighborhood have gone before - to the land of no front lawn! The neighbors may hate us, but hopefully mother nature may love us more. Here we go!

Photo from a few months ago, when we tried to get someone else to take care of this huge problem!

Early Summer Garden Pictures

Young Master House standing amidst the various plants in the garden.  Foreground: Radishes and Onions, Background: Tomatoes, Tomatillos, peppers, sweet potatoes, melon, corn, zucchini, and one lonely bean plant.  The Tomatillos and most of the tomatoes are courtesy of Josh. The soil they came with was so black it almost made me cry to plant them in my grey clay soil.  They seem to be doing ok though.

The Radishes are doing quite well as you can see in this next picture:
 

 We also have a volunteer pumpkin plant, growing out of the side of the compost pile.  Correspondingly, the plant is huge and the three pumpkins are quite large. The one pictured is larger than my (large) head.

 Above are the many many sunflower plants, growing along our new garden wall. Note also the purslane, which apparently does not want to go away.  And yes, the caps on the wall are loose, they need to be re-mortared.

This one almost needs its own post.  Our white nectarine tree had a fairly heavy set this year, something on the order of 200 pieces.  After some weather and thinning, we had approximately 75.  A fake hawk watched the tree, and netting was deployed over the choicest fruit (the tree being too tall to net the whole thing).

This is the only piece of fruit that Mrs. House got to taste, a single cut from a bird downed fruit.  She was not happy, although she did declare it "the most delicious fruit ever" or some such.  Squirrels, birds, and at least one possum got the rest. Next year I think we are hiring some weasels to guard the tree.

Garden Update

 Just a quick post on the status of the garden.  We harvested our first radish yesterday, because it was starting to bolt.  About a dozen more to go, most fairly large, so we seem to have found something else that will grow in our soil.  The onions are also doing well.  Pretty much everything else we grew from seeds or planted as seeds has died, so it is off to the nursery soon for us.

Mrs. House spent some time juicing lemons yesterday, as you can see from the picture above.   She made about half a pitcher of pure lemon juice, which we will combine with simple syrup when needed to make lemonade. Grapefruit still available in substantial quantities to those interested...

Cuttings

One of the biggest issues with taking plant cuttings is disease.

This tip says to use cinnamon to alleviate the chances of getting fungal infections in your cutting, improving your chances of success.  Since I know that some of us are interested in rooting plants, it should be worth a try.

In other garden news, only our radishes and onions came up, all the other seeds planted in the garden were failures (save possibly a single nasturtium, but we will see with that one).  Next up is transplanting our seedlings from inside, which historically has had about a 20% success rate.  So we will see.

Spring Garden

Due to some landscaping reorganization and projects (the never ending masonry wall), our garden moved this year from its typical location to another one between the garage and the addition to our house.  This area is west facing, so it gets a LOT of afternoon sun, which may be good for tomatoes, and should extend the growing season into November.  Hopefully we will have a better growing year than last year.

A disadvantage of this location is that it has not been growing plants very long, so it had about 2 inches of top soil and pretty much pure clay below that.  I forked it over a few times, and added some lawn clippings, which should help a bit, and every plant will go in to either compost soil or river bottom soil from my parents' house, which ever bag is closer to hand at the time.

Here you can see young Master House and myself relaxing after planting.  (Please excuse the hat hair, tangled mess in the left foreground is the compost pile, and as always, click to enbiggen)

Seed row planted this weekend, which you can see below:

 From left to right we have: Dill, Basil, Cilantro, Radishes, Thyme, Lettuce, and a whole bunch of red onion sets that I let sit in the garage too long.  We will see what (if anything) comes up.

Onion sets:

We also have an array of seeds growing inside the house, which should give us our tomatoes, tomatillos and so on. (including sweet potato)  We have typically had about 60% of our seedlings die when we transplant.  Not sure if it is due to transplant shock, or too much sun or what.

In other home news, we finally broke down and got an electric lawn mower... more on that later.

Recycling

An unfortunate feature of having a house with a crawl space and county ordinances restricting the height of fences is that a fence is never tall enough to block the view of the neighbors.  Since we have little desire to increase our level of familiarity with the neighbors too far, we have been looking at ways to reduce visibility.

Planting trees in line with the neighbors' windows was the first step, and following a lucky find at Costco of all places, we now have three pink Jasmine plants in between them. Since Jasmine is a climber, the plants needed a trellis, and we quickly realized that we had something that might work; left over wrought iron fence pieces.

As you might recall, when we moved into the house over two years ago, the side yard had an iron fence, but we replaced that with a redwood one (with great labor).  The cut out pieces have been sitting on the side of our house ever since, waiting for an opportunity like this one.

Here is the result:

Since this picture was taken, we added cement blocks to the bottom of the fence to make it a bit taller and more sturdy, and took out the stick in the middle of the plant to let it spread out a bit more.  I expect that by this time next year, the whole of the iron fence will be covered with plant, and hopefully the neighbors will be that much harder to see.

On a side note, I cut down the last pieces of the fence this weekend, and let me tell you, there is nothing so fun as taking a Sawzall to metal fences.  Cut it like butter.

Grilled Nachos

As a late fathers' day present, I got a new charcoal grill, upgrading from my 11 year old portable grill that I got as a birthday present after graduating college, to a gas ignited charcoal grill with about four times the space, as well as some other nifty features. [mainly not having to crouch down to use it]  I will try to post a review of the grill later, after I have had some more time to get used to it.

Every new grill needs new recipes, and after cooking the obligatory barbecue foods like steaks, chicken legs, corn, and kabobs, we decided to try something more ambitious.  We also had 2lbs of chips left over from a party.  Result?

Enter Grilled Nachos.

This basically used the grill as an outdoor oven, although I did grill the steak ahead of time.  I got the temperature up around 250 degrees Fahrenheit and kept it there for about 20 minutes, with the nachos on a cookie sheet wrapped in foil to protect it from baked on cheese and grill flareups (of which there were none).  Aside from the steak, I also grilled some tomatoes and tomatillos from our garden (featured in the last post) and some onion, all of which were added to the nachos.

Here is the final result:

Very tasty!

First harvest of the season

First harvest of the season.  In august.  The end of august. Whaa Whaa...

The Twelve Things We Found

We are getting ready to sell our unwanted shed, and, not wanting to do anything simply, we decided to "clear it out" last night. By "clearing it out" I mean that we spent hours taking out the old floor and uncovered a great unholy lot of things, dead and alive, in the progress. Mr. House donned his best gloves and dust mask and ripped out the plywood floor, not finishing until well after the sun went down. I was lucky enough to avoid the task by taking care of the young Master House instead. We would come out to check on the progress and Mr. House would just hold up fingers to me, keeping a running count off all he encountered.

This little game inspired me to write a song.

Ahem . . .

(To the tune of "The Twelve Days of Christmas")

The First thing we found

When we were cleaning out the shed

Was a live rat looking at me*

The Second thing we found

When we were cleaning out the shed

Two Shelobs

And a live rat looking at me

The Third thing we found

When we were cleaning out the shed

Three rat nests

Two Shelobs

And a live rat looking at me

The Fourth thing we found

When we were cleaning out the shed

Four wasp nests

Three rat nests

Two Shelobs

And a live rat looking at me

The Fifth thing we found

When we were cleaning out the shed

FIVE RAT MUMMIES!

Four wasp nests

Three rat nests

Two Shelobs

And a live rat looking at me

The Sixth thing we found

When we were cleaning out the shed

Six feet of web

FIVE RAT MUMMIES!

Four wasp nests

Three rat nests

Two Shelobs

And a live rat looking at me

The Seventh thing we found

When we were cleaning out the shed

Seven rusty nails

Six feet of web

FIVE RAT MUMMIES!

Four wasp nests

Three rat nests

Two Shelobs

And a live rat looking at me

The Eighth thing we found

When we were cleaning out the shed

Eight black widows

Seven rusty nails

Six feet of web

FIVE RAT MUMMIES!

Four wasp nests

Three rat nests

Two Shelobs

And a live rat looking at me

The Ninth thing we found

When we were cleaning out the shed

Nine layers of crap

Eight black widows

Seven rusty nails

Six feet of web

FIVE RAT MUMMIES!

Four wasp nests

Three rat nests

Two Shelobs

And a live rat looking at me

The Tenth thing we found

When we were cleaning out the shed

Ten kinds of spiders

Nine layers of crap

Eight black widows

Seven rusty nails

Six feet of web

FIVE RAT MUMMIES!

Four wasp nests

Three rat nests

Two Shelobs

And a live rat looking at me

The Eleventh thing we found

When we were cleaning out the shed

Eleven-thousand termites

Ten kinds of spiders

Nine layers of crap

Eight black widows

Seven rusty nails

Six feet of web

FIVE RAT MUMMIES!

Four wasp nests

Three rat nests

Two Shelobs

And a live rat looking at me

The Twelfth thing we found

When we were cleaning out the shed

Twelve rotten boards

Eleven-thousand termites

Ten kinds of spiders

Nine layers of crap

Eight black widows

Seven rusty nails

Six feet of web

FIVE RAT MUMMIES!

Four wasp nests

Three rat nests

Two Shelobs

And a live rat looking at me

* Mr. Houses exact words were "A rat just looked at me" . . . which is actually pretty funny when you think about it.

                                            

Name that weird thing!

They're here already! You're next! You're next, You're next...! 

I hate to spoil the yummyness that was the last post with this post, but I am having an Invasion of the Body Snatchers moment here.  This morning, some strange things were found out in the garden by my dad's wife. She brought me outside to their garden area to show me. She that she had found several of these buried in the dirt, all along a 3 foot span. She thought they were insects and described it as looking like a "shrimp" inside. At first they look like mushrooms, with the outside having that same spongy leathery texture, but then you cut in to it and I am pretty sure this ain't no mushroom. Just inside the skin there is a layer of smiley substance,  then another white skin type layer. Inside that is more goo and then pink/brown little things. Please help me figure this out!

The mystery - intact w/ trowel for scale

Just inside the skin

Skin opened more

Layers

Inner

I thought it was maybe a snake egg. . . but the inside doesn't really seem like it. I hate to think of insects this big crawling around the garden. Please advise!!

***UPDATE  6/19***

SO! After much thought and poking and digging, we have turned up some additional whatevertheseare, and they look like the might be different sizes, even very small, and have roots??? Here are more pictures.

What's for dinner tonight?

Homemade deep dish pizza. Oh yeah!

Ready for summer

Our patio is the place to be this summer.

When life gives you lemons

Today we finally got around to juicing lemons from our lemon branch. That pitcher of lemon juice is straight juice. And there are still SO MANY MORE LEMONS. We are getting ready to post an offer on craigslist to try to get rid of some lemons and some grapefruit.

In any case I decided to make some simple syrup and make some fancy lemonade. I even mixed the juice, syrup and water in a cocktail shaker and poured it over ice. Delish! Now if I only had some vodka . . .

California American Water II

As you may recall from my previous rant on the subject, California American Water (CAW) is our private water service provider (using county lines).

In the fall of 2010, a CAW contractor installed a water meter in our backyard, after telling us that they would be coming out to do so about five times. (starting in September 2009)  Our house was built in 1958, and has the water main in the backyard, running along the property line, east to west.  As you might expect from a 1958 construction, the utility maps are not very useful. 

However, you would not expect that it would take four holes and a whole day to find the water supply, but somehow it did.

Here are some pictures of the "delicate" work that the contractors performed in our back yard.  These were actually taken several days later, after they came back and cleaned up the mess, pictures of the original state would merely send me into (another) rage.

Damaged were our fig tree, its drainage pipe (needed due to clay soil), and our two large artichoke plants which were removed and discarded.

After a few heated phone calls, and several meetings with the contractors, I was able to get the drainage pipe re-installed, the yard cleaned up, and got a $40 gift card to some obscure local garden supply store, which seems to primarily cater to landscapers. Said supply store did not have artichokes.

Fortunately, several months on, the fig appears to be doing well, and they must have missed a root when ripping out the artichokes, because one grew back.  The lawn looks fine as well, although it does have a huge box in the middle of it. We hope to get a prickly pear cactus from the garden store, but who knows if they even carry it.

Weird Weather

As you may be aware, California is suffering under some unusually wet weather as storm after storm comes off the ocean.

Wednesday we had some pretty heavy hail, which is as close as we get to snow around these parts...

That is a view looking across the street at our neighbors.

Here is our roof (and also evidence of future project #2094, fix the crappy roof drainage).

We are expected to get another 1-3 inches today (2.5-7.5cm), with up to 65mph (100kmph) winds, so good times! 

Wood Storage

As you may recall from our long ago post, we have a good deal of firewood (mainly Modesto Ash).  Previously, meaning for the last year and four months, this wood was piled up on the side of our house, covered with a ratty old plastic tarp.

Mrs. House decreed that this needed to change, and further, we are planning to put in more berry planters in the location where it is currently sitting (as well as some sprinkler plumbing).  You will also note that the place it is sitting is pretty low, so the rain puddles and gets the bottom stack of wood wet.  So a project was born!

Never one to do things the easy way, we enlisted my dad for some help, and built a wood cradle to store all the cut wood.  We used wood left over from the demolished old storage closets, and a new redwood 2x4 for the horizontals.  As is typical for our carpentry projects, this is way overbuilt, and could probably hold 10 times the wood it has space for.  Sorry that there are no WIP pictures, but really, there is not much to this.

Still covered by the same ratty old tarp, but much nicer looking!

In other house news, still slowly working on installing baseboard.

New Plants

Thanks to the sharp eyes of Mrs. House, we are now the proud owners of four new Hylocereus Pitaya plants, or Dragon Fruit. These plants were found via Craigslist, and were acquired for the low price of $10 for all four.   Not very large now, but in the future, they will hopefully be more sizable.  Somewhat of an experiment, since we have never even tasted the fruit...

Additionally, for Valentines day, Mrs. House received an aloe and two cacti. Our killer cactus jr. will have some more company!

Babyproofing

The time has come to get this place babyproofed. We are starting with the traditional cabinet door latches. This is a real family house now!

California American Water

As you may be aware, we have a private water company here at Panske House. We are with in the county limits, and less than a mile from the City, but some how this places us under a private company. This also means that we get well water instead of the excellent river water that most of the City gets. Well water that may or may not have exciting exotic chemicals in it. (thanks AreoJet!)

Our water company, California American Water, wants to raise rates a little bit for next year... a mere 40.3%. This is on top of last year's increase of 24.3%. (next year projected at 22.8%). If I am calculating this right, that means something like a bill of 210% of the bill the year we bought the house. Fortunately, local area customers, and the PUC's independent Division of Ratepayers Advocates, disagree with this increase.

Anyway, hopefully the rate hike is mitigated somewhat, since our new car, and young Master House are somewhat crimping on the budget. Further, it seems that utility costs should not increase in a time when raises and inflation are correspondingly non-existent.

Coming soon: a rant about water meter installation, what happens when your house has 60 year old utility maps, and what happens when your water main is in the backyard.