Wood Pile Party

We got our woodpile taken care of-- finally!  The only thing remaining is the main part of the root system.

On Friday, G came over and helped us build the platform for the wood pile.  We reused all the wood in the platform-- palettes and a big stack of pressure-treated wood salvaged from an old patio.  All free, and all saved from the landfill.

G!  What a pro!

Salvaged wood

On Saturday, we had our Wood Pile Emergency party.  We had put out an S.O.S. to our friends, asking for a hand in splitting and stacking all of the wood.  And they totally came through!  We had a bunch of friends sorting through the pile, running the wood-splitter, making a million trips with the wheelbarrows, and stacking wood for hours.

We paid them for their services with beer, pizza, heartfelt thank-yous, and a life-time supply of firewood.

Supplies for the party!

We rented a wood-splitter for the day, and it helped a lot.  We were able to split up the large logs into manageable pieces.  And it was really fun.  A couple of our buddies wanted to try their hand at the splitter, too, and they had a blast.

K used her chainsaw quite a bit, too-- which she was not sad about!  Lots of long branches to chop up.

We worked ALL day on Saturday.  I hurt my hand from the repetitive motions, which was not helpful when I was at my photography gig that night! 

Then K and I kept at it on Sunday, but had a lot less to do.  She was determined to get it all done by the time she needed to return the wood-splitter, and she totally did it.  We also realized that the wood-splitter can go vertically, too.  I don't know if that really made it easier, though...  When it's horizontal you need to hoist the logs up onto the platform.  And when it's vertical, you don't have to lift the logs as high, but you need to bend down each time to place them.    Whatever...  It was a lot of work either way.

 

Weekend Love

We made it all the way to July 5th without putting in our A/C window units!  (On the first floor, that is -- I've had one up in my office for a month or so.  It's much hotter up there!)  It's supposed to be really hot and humid tomorrow, so K wanted to get an A/C into the kitchen and into the bedroom.  We want to get a new central air unit, but we're taking things one thing at a time.  The garage comes first.


The first morning glory bloomed on our trellis the other day.  They're such a gorgeous purple, and I can't wait until they all start blooming!  Each plant is loaded with buds right now, so they should be going nuts very soon.

Did a little yard work this evening-- mowed the lawn, pulled weeds, trimmed a tree along the street, etc.  And I put mulch around the rose bushes in the front yard flower beds.  They look so much nicer-- I wish I'd thought of it sooner!  One of the rose bushes has been spreading and blooming like crazy, and the other bush isn't.  Hopefully it's just taking its time-- those suckers were not cheap!

We also got a bummer letter today from the City of Minneapolis.  Honestly, I've been a fan of the City offices ever since we bought the house.  They fixed a couple things in the alley when we asked, and they've been helpful every time we've called.  But today there was a letter telling us that we have less than 2 weeks to move our huge wood pile because it's a "nuisance."  The pile of wood is from that giant elm that we took down so that we could build the garage.  Our plan all along was to build a nice platform/rack right behind the garage, split all the logs, and stack them up so we'll have firewood for years to come.  But we've got to finish the garage first...  Otherwise we're just moving the wood twice, and that's nuts-- there is so much of it!

The thing that really sucks about this is that the only reason that wood pile is visible right now, is that the wooden fence is not up on one side of the yard-- and that's because a few of the posts were so rotten that they only stayed up for a year after we bought the house.  We've had an orange plastic snow fence tacked up since then, so our yard looks pretty trashy from that side.  You can see right in and can see our piles of materials and supplies-- pavers, siding, insulating blankets, windows, gutters etc.  It doesn't look pretty, I totally admit it, and I think it every time I view the yard from that angle.

And once the garage is finished, ALL of this will be fixed in a relatively short time, so this is really frustrating!  The windows have already been taken into the garage to be used in there.  When the siding on the garage is complete, it will be easier to organize all that wood right behind the garage and out of sight.  And with the work space set up, it will be easier to build a new fence, like we've been planning.  So...  I don't know.  Grrr.  We're trying, Minneapolis!!  We really are!

Second House Anniversary

It's a gorgeous day in Minneapolis and we bought our house 2 years ago today! 

And unlike last year, I didn't procrastinate on getting an anniversary photo, so we actually have one this year...

2014

And again, back to the morning we bought the house...

2012

Lots of things left to do, of course...  But we have done quite a bit already!
Things we've done in the last couple years:

• Removed the front awnings
• Added edging around our sidewalk and along the front of the yard
• Removed the 4 giant bushes from the front and side yards
• Added flower beds on either side of the front window -- and I just put some rose bushes in there this week!  Finally!
• Took down 2 sick elm trees and trimmed up all the other trees
• Poured the concrete slab for the garage
• Added a patio door to the back of the house
• Replaced the front porch light
• Built my little garden plot in the backyard
• Fixed the drywall, painted and added flooring to the basement office
• Painted and added flooring in the main basement room
• Cleaned out, painted and added shelving to the storage room in the basement
• Replaced the washer & dryer and painted the laundry room
• Painted the ceiling in my office and added my "closet" hanging bar
• Scraped the popcorn from the living room ceiling
• Installed the refinished vintage chandelier to our bedroom

Exciting plans in the works for this month, too--  K has ordered her garage supplies and will be starting the garage in the next couple weeks.  When we realized yesterday that it's now been two years since we got the house, she said, "I can't believe I've been living without a garage for two years!"  And that's true!  Because she did have garages at our last couple rentals, but not at the home that we've actually owned.  Like I've said before, it will be a HUGE help to have the garage built and functional. 

My little garden is coming along nicely.  Started everything from seeds this year, so all the plants are a little small right now, but they look great...

Yummy lettuce and spinach

I also got an amazing present a few days ago from my bestie-- she made me an herb pot with all sorts of yummy things in it!  Basil, mint, lime thyme, parsley, oregano and sage...  YUM!  I have a couple of these growing in my garden, too, but the ones in the pot are fully grown and ready to be eaten...

Beautiful herb pot gift!

She also gave me a couple big clumps of chives from her garden.  She's had them growing in her garden for a few years and they've spread out a lot, so she had plenty to spare.  They smell amazing and they're so gorgeous!  I planted them in a big galvanized utility sink that I already had. I've had it for so long that I really don't remember where I got it!

Pretty chives...

Sicky Elm Tree - Update

So, our lovely treehouse elm has been taken down.  We cut it down on Friday evening, and today we dealt with the branches and logs.

There are no pictures, I didn't bother.  It wasn't fun and it wasn't exciting.
It was just sad.

Sicky Elm Tree

Oh, I'm so sad!  Came home today to find this note in our mailbox:

Our treehouse elm has Dutch Elm Disease and needs to be cut down.  Soon.
We had noticed recently that it looked wilted and a couple small branches had died off.  And what we just learned about Dutch Elm is that by the time the tree starts looking sick, it's pretty much too late to save it.

And here's the bright orange paint to go along with the letter...

 






















The first time we saw the house, even though there were a dozen trees around this house, we both looked at this elm and thought it would be the best place for a tree house for our kids someday.

It's a beautiful tree.  Verrry big.  The branches extend over the sidewalk and part of the street on the side of our property.  I think this part looks so pretty.

We want to replace the fence some day, and had planned to move it to the other side of the tree, to get this tree more "in" our yard. 
The view from the back yard...

Elm canopy meeting up with the backyard ash, far overhead...

*sigh*.....

Rushed Re-Grading & Flower Beds

The weather was just gorgeous on Friday, so when I got home from work I found K working in our yard. 

One front corner of our house is where that water leaking happened before we moved in.  The ground kind of dips at that corner, and K has been meaning to re-grade the yard there.  Now that we have all that freshly churned up soil from the excavator in the back yard and a little bit left that we dug up from the garden area, we had dirt that we could use for this.

Re-graded dirt, and poly about to go in.

Dirt over the landscape fabric

She piled up dirt to fill the dip and made sure it was piled higher against the house and sloped down to the yard.  She put thick poly over that layer, then another layer of dirt, then landscaping fabric and a last few inches of dirt.  I will still be able to put plants in there, by sticking them through the landscaping fabric, and that will help keep the weeds down.  She also put water-proof caulk in the crack between our concrete slab and the foundation on the side of the house.  The concrete is sloped properly, but water was likely seeping in through that crack to the area next to the foundation and basement below.

The area in the front of the house had been just areas of dirt and some grass with really nothing else growing there, and the egress window well in the middle.  I had put a potted hibiscus in front of the gas meter, for a while, to hide it.  And since we never got the window basket put up, we left it on the ground, instead.  Basically, the area wasn't doing much to improve our curb appeal. 

To border our new flower beds, K used some pavers from the giant pile of them we have in our back yard.  She got these free shortly after we got our house, from a work project where they had to take out the pavers to install a deck. 

K and her string-lines....  ;-)

One down, one to go.

I think the difference is noticeable.  The area looks like it's been taken care of.  It will look better once I get some flowers in there.  I'm hoping to add some flowering shrubs this week.  Right now, I'm thinking red rose shrubs, but we'll see.

Beds are level with our house, even though the yard slopes down.

The flower bed on the right will be next -- we'll make this match the left side.

K was rushing to get this "little" project done yet that evening, because her dad and step-mom were coming to stay with us the next day.  I know the feeling-- you just want to do anything you can to make the house look better than the last time they were here, so that it looks like we're making progress!

Last step was to get some grass seed onto the patches of bare dirt around the new flower bed, and hopefully get that grass to take hold and keep that newly sloped dirt from washing away.  We have some grass seed leftover from filling in the patches from the bushes in the front, the kind of seed that is mixed with recycled newspaper.  It works great, stays in place.  The grass is a different type than what is originally in the yard, slightly darker, so if you look close you can kind of tell where we patched the lawn, but I think it still looks great.

There's still time for grass seed to grow this year!

I'm really excited to get some flowers in here!! 

Excavator Madness!

Yesterday afternoon, K sends me this text:

        " This happened today :) "

Yup, that is an excavator in our backyard, digging up the stump and roots left over from our tree removal.  I was beyond excited when I got that text!

There have been 2 things holding up any further progress on the garage--
#1:  Figuring out to do with that stump.
The tree stump absolutely had to be removed.  With the way the plans lay out in the back yard, the stump would lie half under the concrete slab of the garage, and half under the asphalt driveway, which will eventually lead to one or both of those surfaces cracking as the dead wood rots away.  It's possible to change the plans, sure, but neither of us wanted that, if we could get the stump out instead.
#2:  Getting the plans OK'ed by the city.  (I don't think she has brought the plans in, yet, so this still remains.)

K asked the excavating subcontractor that they use at her job if, since the job site they're working at is 5 miles from our house, he would come over and see if this was something he could do.  She said he was working on it for about an hour, but got the entire stump and most of the root system up and out of the ground, evened out all the dirt in the area, and then used his shovel to pack down the loosened dirt into the hole left by the stump.  Amazing!!

Here are some pictures and video of the process:

And the result:

Look at how tall these roots are!

Garden Plot - Day 1

Today we started one more thing on our To Do list...  Now that the tree is trimmed, there is a lot more sunlight in the yard.  And sunny space for my garden!  I know I'm getting a very late start on it, but that's how it goes.  Snow all through April, rain all through May, and lots of other things with higher priority through June.

We got a great start on our raised bed today.   It was very hot out, but we went to the Depot and got everything we needed, backed up the truck onto the lawn and heaved the supplies and all the bags of soil over the fence.  (Got covered in muck from wet compost/manure bags... Don't even want to know.)  We picked a spot that now gets great sunlight, and isn't too filled in with weeds yet.

 K planning our layout

Me, happily, sweatily upturning all the weeds in the square

We got pretty far today before we had plans for the evening.  K built the box, and got the stakes buried in the ground.  As with everything, we hit a couple small snags-- one being some really large rocks under the dirt, pretty much right where our stakes needed to go.  Had to shift the box over just a bit.  Annoying, but fixable.

The beginnings of the box

The box -- almost there!

The next steps are wire mesh to keep out underground critters, landscaping fabric to keep out the weeds, and then filling the box with all the top soil and compost that we bought.  And then get some plants in here!  I have a few seedlings that were doing great, and are now struggling in their tiny containers.  And a mint plant and a basil plant that I bought at Trader Joe's.  But other than that, I will probably be making a trip to a local nursery to get some plants that are where they should be by the 2nd week in July.  Excited!

Trimming the Ash in the Backyard

Once K and I were moved into our house for a bit, we thought we'd have to cut down 2 massive trees in our yard-- the elm directly behind our house and the ash off to the side of the house.  But after cutting down the elm, our tree-trimming-master neighbor suggested that we just trim up the ash in order to get more sunlight in the yard.  Like, drastically trim it. 

We thought it was worth a try.  Worst case, we could always take down the whole tree later if we hated it.  But I really doubt we'll be doing that now-- the tree looks great!  And there is SOO much sunlight in our yard!!  We can actually have grass now, and a garden--  not just dirt!

 

Our backyard before:
Gloomy, always dark, damp, buggy.  Grass only growing in the patches where the sun could reach.

And the trimming process... 

What remains:

Tall and beautiful elm, with a wide and lush canopy-- just up much higher now to allow in lots of gorgeous sunlight!
(We did take care of trimming off all the stubs-- I just took this picture before that.)

And now...  All this glorious sunlight in our backyard!  It was so lovely to see the sun hitting each new patch of ground as each branch came off.  And the tree will still provide a bit of shade when we want it.  The best of both worlds.

 

Lackluster Lilacs

Since this was our first Spring in the house, this was the first time we got to experience the lilacs blooming in our backyard!  And it was...  disappointing.  For the amount of space taken over by these huge lilac bushes, there were very few actually flowers.  And almost all of those were up 9 feet!!   There was one bunch that I could actually reach last week, so I had one little vase of them in the house for a few days.  And that's all.  :-(

At some point, the lilacs were 6 or 8 distinct bushes.  Now, they are an overgrown sort of wall.  Grown in between to mesh with each other, grown deep, and very, very tall.

K was talking about hacking them down so that they weren't taking over the yard so much, and that sounded horrible to me!  But then I did some reading to see what we'll need to do to get them to flower more, and that's pretty much what we need to do.  We'd need to basically cut them in half, height-wise.  And trim a lot of the extra shoots and the old, dead growth.

It sounds like we probably won't have any flowers the next year, after we do this.  But that the year after, they should do nuts!  And I'll actually be able to reach the flowers without a very tall ladder.  Sounds like a sacrifice I'd be willing to make.

Taking Down The Tree

First of all, I want to say that I really have mixed feelings about this particular project.  It's been very hard for me to participate in the destruction of such a large living thing...  But I was able to talk myself into being positive about it because of three things:

1)  The tree was not healthy.  It has some kind of disease-- not Dutch Elm, I don't think, because the bark is fine.  But the leaves were really weird looking last year-- it looked like bugs were burrowed into them.  I'm still trying to identify what caused that.  A bunch of the big branches had been dead for years, and it was scary to have those reaching near our house and power-lines during storms.

2)  K needs to build her garage.  Where this tree stands is the best place to put the garage.  It's right behind the house, just off of the alley, and it makes the most sense for moving vehicles and her work trailers in and out.  The sooner she builds this garage, the better!  There are so many projects for the house that she can be working on in the garage -- shelves, kitchen cabinets, trim, etc.

3)  We have so many other trees!  Last year, our yard was just a JUNGLE!  It was all leaves and barely any sunlight hitting the ground.  Once this tree is gone, we will still have a bunch of medium-sized trees along the alley, a line of tall trees along the railroad track, a large ash in the side-yard, another huge elm just outside of our fence, the craggy crab-apple tree in the front, and at least 2 trees along the street (these probably belong to the city).   We are basically ringed by trees, which still offer great protection from the wind, and probably still give more shade than I want.  I'd like to have a garden this year.

K and our neighbor have plans to do a great trade this year -- he used to be a tree-trimmer, so he helped us cut down this tree!  And in return, she'll build him a nice-sized shed in his yard.  A couple days' work for each of them and everyone wins!  Bartering is still alive and well, when it comes to home-owning neighbors.

Three hours of work on the tree on Saturday, and about 1/5th of the branches were cut down.  This is what resulted:

My adorable lumberjack

And then a FULL day of work on Sunday.  We were out there all day!  K was out there way past dark.

Now it's down to just the trunk!  Amazing!:

We also have a gigantic brush pile, now, with all the branches.  We'll rent a chipper and turn this all into a huge pile of mulch for the garden and yard.  And more firewood than we'll need for a while!  Next year, these logs should be ready to burn.