Boys Will Be Boys

Posts Tagged ‘landscaping’

Spring is supposed to mean sun and um planting and flowers and ….cold, icky, winter like rain?

I know I shouldn’t complain about our weather because it’s been a wonderful mild Oregon winter BUT we were getting used to the sun and beautiful weather then BAM here comes the cold wintery rain.  We are talking rain that comes down sideways and then pelts you like ice hitting your legs brrrrrr.

I just want it to warm up some so I can finally work on the gardens and get them ready for planting.  We are adding another garden bed to the backyard and it’s going to be our early season bed because our other cedar bed doesn’t get the full sun we need for early veggies.  But we need to get some decent weather to get back there and cut back the weed fabric and build up the bed a bit with some more soil, plus we need to add more soil to the cedar bed & my herb garden bed.  Oh the dreams of fresh veggies…if this cold snap would go away and let me get to work!

Besides the thoughts of Spring and gardens, we are in the midst of our birthday season.  Braysen’s was March 23rd and he’s now 4!  Hard to believe that 4 years has gone by so quickly.  It’s one of those things people always says “the time goes by fast when you have kids, enjoy every moment.”  Understatement I say, time seriously FLIES!

We have this digital photo frame up on the counter and it cycles through all these cute baby pics of the boys, even their ultrasound pics and I can’t figure out where time went that I now have a daredevil toddler on my hands and a smart funny preschooler entertaining us.

I need to start planning Merrick’s 2nd birthday party.  We are keeping the parties small this year, family & friends really.  It takes away some of that chaos that comes when I plan these huge party blowouts haha.  I just can’t seem to 1/2 ass it.  I just like to throw parties and I spend hours looking at decorations, finding the right theme, deciding on food …I just can’t help it!  I’m a planner!  It’s in my nature.

We just had a nice Easter, despite Merrick throwing up all over me on the day of our neighborhood egg hunt.  I still took Braysen out but Merrick had to miss out on the festivities. It’s funny how you get puked up on when you have kids and you just take the shirt off, put on a new one, grab a steam cleaner and then go about your day until you have to rinse/repeat hehe.  I am always the one thrown up on though, it’s a mom thing I guess!

Luckily Merrick was over his little tummy bug and we had the in-laws over for a wonderful yummy Easter brunch.  I made this sausage egg breakfast quiche, a yogurt & fruit salad and then I made some yummy donut recipe for dessert.  Hank and Pat brought over the ham (which we are still eating haha)  and they picked up our “honey bunny” from our fave bakery (Great Harvest Bread).  The honey bunny bread is becoming a yearly thing for us to get since it’s so cute, shaped like a bunny and perfect for Easter brunch.   The boys of course got some fun stuff from the Easter Bunny in their baskets.

This weekend is full – a birthday party for our neighbors little girl and then we are having friends over that evening for dinner.  Sunday – the boys are being watched so we can head out to look at new couches and redeem my Gymbucks. Hopefully the pickings aren’t too slim for clothes..they both need summer clothes like no other!!!

Well ~ I probably should be productive so I’ll try to post again soon.  I find our schedule to completely exhaust me lately.  Patrick let me take a nap yesterday afternoon, bless his heart.  I slept for like 2 hours or  so and still felt tired.  I’ve just been drained and running out of steam with all that comes with our crazy family schedule!

*I really need to figure out what I did to make my paragraph spacing so close together, it’s driving me nuts!!!*

Mondays seem to be my “list day”.   I end up with post-it notes to myself of things I should accomplish for the week or things that need done.  I put these little notes here, there and everywhere.

  
My post-it process:

1. Write notes
2. Toss notes into various places in my purse, notebook (for misc. notes when I’m out and about), stick them to my Iphone, put them in my wallet, put them in the outer pocket of my purse, attach them to various papers I have already in my purse.
3. Lastly, I take them home…only to forget them. 

A week or so goes by before the notes have overrun my purse.  I don’t want to weed through them all so I just toss them away.  Yep, it’s a good process I must say so myself!   

So, I tried the whole To Do list thing on my I-phone.  It’s just not working for me or maybe I just don’t have the write app. 

So like every Monday I’m sitting here looking at the calendar and I realize that I need to stop trying to make plans without glancing at the calendar because it’s making life a little complicated.  We schedule things and then the light bulb switches back on my head and I realize that we already have something that day.  OOPS!  

Monday ~ easy peasy day, may make a run to the nursery to look at flowers.  (another post coming from this ..why is that my husband and I never argue but for some reason we argued part of the way home from a nursery yesterday about toxic vs. non-toxic plants in our backyard…seriously??)   Get the Evite out for our BBQ

Tuesday ~ Water Aerobics night (no more flaking, my friend “Craigslist-Extraordinaire” and I need to get back on schedule!)

Wednesday ~ easy peasy day

Thursday ~ Water Aerobics night with “Craigslist-Extraordinaire”again

Friday ~ 2:45 hair appt.   That evening we are heading off to the Spirit Mountain Casino for a little B&B (Bingo and Buffet) with another couple from our neighborhood, “Lady-with-many-kids” and “Lady’s-Geek” (I am a Casino Bingo Virgin so that will be interesting!)

Saturday ~  Wine party at Anthony Dell as part of our wine club membership.  Heading there with our neighbors next door, “Jack-of-all-trades” and his lovely wife “Lady-who-can-cook-anything.” 

On a side note, you are probably wondering where all these whack names are coming from.  Well, because I want to be silly of course! No really, I just don’t want to post their real names and instead of just calling them “A” or “B” I decided to nick them based off personality or feats or brilliance! 

Characters from my real life:

*I apologize to those that are now characters, I tried to give you nice names*

Craigslist-Extraordinaire:  A good friend/neighbor that I got to know more last year when I started doing water aerobics and am so thankful that we had a chance to get to know each other better!  To say she is the queen of craigslist is an understatement!

Lady-with-many-kids:  She is not only the boys daycare provider but a mom of 7 kiddos herself.  So she has a lot of kids, both her own and ones she provides excellent care for!

Lady’s-geek:  This is Lady-with-many-kids’s husband.  He is very similar to my lovely husband.  They are both computer geeks and maybe that’s why we find them chatting about things we don’t quite understand. 

Jack-of-all-trades:  Our next door neighbor.  He’s a friend, part of the family in many ways and is one of the nicest guy you’ll ever met.  BUT he is also the mastermind behind our deck project plans, our garage shelving, the trim around the boys chalkboard and many other projects he’s helped us on! 

Lady-who-can-cook-anything:  This is the wife of Jack-of-all-trades but really to say she is just the wife of him is silly because they compliment each other!  Again, one of the nicest people you’ll ever meet.  She’s part of the family in our eyes.  She loves to entertain and you’ll find her making the most amazing 5, 7+ course meals when you come over for one of their dinners/parties.  (Jack-of-all-trades also cooks alongside her though too and can definitely hold his own on the kitchen!)

Do you know what plants are toxic to kids & pets?  Have you ever researched it?  I bet most people would be surprised if they actually did look into it.  I wonder how many people with kids have a yard full of toxic plants. 

Here’s a link for ya~

http://www.ohsu.edu/poison/youAndYourfamily/plantSafety.htm

*I check the web though also with the name of the plant I’m interested in, some lists don’t contain all the toxic plants*

So I bet you are wondering what sparked this whole rambling.

I walk into a well known nursery near us today, hoping to get some more insight on a plant we like.  I was hoping that they could direct me to something non-toxic but similar.  I go check out the plants we like and take note where they are, what the names are and head over to talk to one of the sales lady’s. 

The conversation went something like this:

Me:  Hi, I was wondering if you could tell me whether this plant over here is toxic to kids & pets?  (knowing that it probably is but wanting to lead into my next question).

Sales Lady:  Well, I don’t know.  *leads me inside to another older lady at the register*

Sales Lady to the older lady:  Do you know if Andromeda is toxic to kids & pets?

Older Sales Lady:  *looks at me and says*  There are more toxic than non-toxic so probably so.

So here I am left standing there with 2 women who obviously care less if the plants is toxic, could care less about helping me. 

Me:  Well, ok I’ll check into that myself then.

I felt like saying to them- This is a nursery, shouldn’t you know whether something is toxic to kids? 

Guess time to take my business to another nursery, too bad because I like this one.  It’s close and I buy all my annuals for my front baskets each year there.  I just need to find a nursery with a little better customer service that can help point us to some plants that will work.

I have books and books I borrowed from a neighbor about every possible plant, NW plants, gardening design books..you name it. I’ve read and re-read websites, books and visited a dozen nurseries to look at plants but I feel like I just need someone to help design things with me a bit! 

I’m so behind on posting pictures here or really even talking much about our Never Ending Backyard Project, as I call it.  Let me catch you up!

Years ago when we moved into this house we had visions for our backyard.  Building a deck was one of those visions.  Then we had major drainage issues, we are talking flooding our entire yard!  Each summer after Spring left us, we’d be calling/emailing up the builder of our house to get the landscaping company back out here to try and fix it.  We went through various “quick fixes.” 

Last summer they finally came through with putting in a French drain.  We weren’t happy at all about it going through the center of our yard, nor were we happy that they only replaced a putting green section of our yard (when it was all pretty much drowned out from the rain/ flood) so we fought them a bit.  More sod was replaced and more seeding was done.  They assured us that this was “the” fix and all was done.  Of course I wanted to believe that but I just had this gut feeling it wasn’t. 

This Spring rolls around and instead of flooding the left side, we are now faced with flooding the right.  This was the original good side of our yard really and now our grass was nearly dead!  ARG! 

This brings me to the deck vision.  We put off this deck vision over the last few summers due to – drainage issues, having a baby last year and well finally this summer dove into that head first. (regardless of the issues!) I think we actually just threw ourselves into the project and haven’t turned back.

Carl, our most wonderful next door neighbor/surrogate family member had drawn up our deck plan last summer but …again, that didn’t happen.  Well, he came over in May and was out there measuring this and that.  Next thing I knew he had this fancy smancy detailed drawing of the deck, explaining it to me…(he might as well been speaking French to me!) and I knew we were in good hands!  He made up a material list for us to take around and get the material estimates so we could try to figure out the best deal + estimate out the small fortune this would cost us. 

Without too much boring details.  The materials were ordered – we went with Pressure treated wood for all our supports (this thing isn’t moving and is rain friendly haha) and Composite Timbertech decking (hello low maintenance!).  The boys had the framing done in about a day and 1/2.  My FIL was over with Carl & Patrick in the morning helping out the most tedious task of measuring and reassuring, leveling and re-leveling.  Our most wonderful friend Sam (we have lots of most wonderful people in this post I realized) came over to help and relieved my FIL.  They had that thing framed so quickly and were slapping deck boards on in no time!! I was impressed!  The boards went on in one day, although I think what we did to Sam was borderline Slave Labor.  In my defense, I did try to keep him fed and watered with adequate nourishment…in fact I even tried to make sure he had brownies and anything else he needed!

From there we have been on a whirlwind of projects!  The deck, which seemed like this huge monster project really was just a small start in some ways to what we’ve done since June. This post looks insanely long to me so I’ll save the rest of the details and do a short run-down below!

We now have~

  Raised Cedar Bed built next to the deck as you walk out of my house onto the deck for my future Herb Garden!!!  
  Cedar Garden bed framed for veggies next year    
  Raised stone flower beds & flower beds wrapped around the deck (some starting to get flowers yay!)
  Fire pit area with chairs (we bought some tonight for it! ~not to cool off to break it in!)
  Of course the Deck with new patio furniture so we have a place to sit & enjoy it all!!!

So much more left to do but it’s a start!