Weed Forest: By Special Request!

I always feel kind of silly posting as many photos of our yard (the intentional and unintentional stuff) as I do.  While most people revile their weeds and would gladly resort to napalming them if it was legal, I just can't get enough of all the fascinating forms of flora we have in our little 0.6 acre patch o' paradise inside the Beltway.  I think the diversity in physiology of the leaves and flowers, how some spread while others just grow on their own, how one day we just had a barren rockland and the next, there was life everywhere is amazing.  Luckily, it appears as if I'm not alone, as John received a special request from his mom for some additional photos of our rattlesnake weed.  Oh, I should mention, when I say "rattlesnake weed", I mean the Hieracium venosum, not the Euphorbia albomarginata, which also goes by the common name rattlesnake weed.  So, here they are for Beth and anyone else who might be interested in some little weeds to enjoy!

The foliage.  I think they must be past their prime because it was hard to find some good specimens.  Plus, someone might have gone a little crazy with the weed whacker a couple weekends back...

These are the rattlesnake weeds' flowers.

While I was out and about, I also found the following yard stuff, which I found interesting.  Oh, and it was so nice to be able to be out with the dogs taking photos and not have to worry about them dashing into the street.  Thanks, new fence!

A huge, crazy fungus!

A weed garden!

Something in the weed garden!

This thing with cute little leaves!

Wild strawberries?

This viney thing that reminds me of our creeping jenny.

This stuff that kind of looks like poison ivy to me... I'm not sure...

A tiny purple forest!

This disgustingly pitiful thing.  I'll have to remind John to throw it away before it goes bad or attracts the fox.

Picket Fence: Episode 2

Like many others who were cut down in their prime (R.I.P. Arrested Development and Freaks and Geeks), our fence saga has had its final episode.  Well, OK, I guess I'm making it seem more tragic than it is... the reason it's over is because we finally had our fence installed on Monday!  I had barely finished posting about our decision to take the plunge on the fence when John received a call from Carter Fence (the company we decided to go with) asking if we wanted to take a freshly available time slot the next day.  Our response?  Heck yeah!

We were a little nervous finally making our choice considering we really had nothing to base our fence installer decision on besides price.  John called up about five or six local companies in addition to the big wig, Long Fence, and Carter Fence was able to give us the best price as well as giving John the best impression of professionalism and likeability.  Like Stephen Colbert, sometimes we like to ignore the "facts" and "truth" and go with what feels right.  You know... truthiness.  It's a word.  It's on Wikipedia, so it must be real, right?  With a combination of budget and truthiness, we handed over the red rose credit card to Mr. Carter Monday morning and put our trust in him and his three workers to give us and our sons the best fence our measly budget could afford.

New fence!  New fence!

Throughout the day, John and I stalked the three fence installers with our Nikon snapping photos of their progress.  I'm sure they thought that was perfectly normal...  First they had to remove our weird fence chunk (may it rest in pieces in our backyard) which was way too easy and a little disappointing to see how poorly it was originally installed.  We now have a bunch of free-ish (only 29.5 more years to pay it off!  woot!) lumber, though, that we plan on attempting to reuse in some fashion.  Maybe some raised beds.  Maybe a doghouse.  Maybe part of a paintball obstacle course...

Our poor old fence.

Then they went around the yard digging the holes for the posts, both by hand and with some awesome giant corkscrew looking thing.  I would enjoy owning one myself for future digging or possible largest-bottle-of-wine-ever opening. 

Man...

versus Machine! (the thing by the tree)

After that, they installed the horizontal boards to secure the pickets to, which soon followed.  At this point, it was really starting to look fencey and exciting. 

Once it was all picketed, they went through with a chainsaw and scalloped them to give the "Mount Vernon dip" style.  Seriously.  Just with a chainsaw.  If it were me, I'd have to individually measure them, mark it off, and cut them one by one with a Dremel.  They were like those ice sculptors who make amazingly detailed sculptures with the chainsaws.  Hmm... I wonder if I could commission one of them to make an Ice Dexter for his party...

Just past the birdbath, you can see the dude with the chainsaw.

To cap it all off (te he), they added plastic black caps to all the posts and hung the gates. 

By about 6:30, they were done, and just in time to avoid the rain that finally rolled in.  Boo to the rain for preventing us from skipping through the yard, squealing like little girls.  Maybe that was for the best... We still trekked out in the rain, though, to adore our new fence.  It feels so sturdy, the gates swing cleanly and lock snuggly, it gives our yard that cottagey look I was hoping for, and as an added bonus, our backyard now has a freshly cut lumber scent, which makes me feel nostaglic thinking back to all the lumber projects my Dad worked on in my youth.  Sadly, I can't attribute the fence to my own DIY prowess, but really, I think if we were to have tried tackling it ourselves, we might finish it by the time we're ready to move.

Right side gate.

View from the left, with Ghosts Chewie and Dexter, of course.

Left side, complete with already-bloomed, gross looking azaleas.

Looking back from the left gate.  See how the azaleas once separated by a fence are now reunited!  It's almost as awesome as when the Berlin Wall fell.  Almost.

Pretty much most of the fenced-in backyard.

The right side... and our crazy moss tree.

Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.  Seriously, this is where the poison ivy lives.

The fence from the neighbor's driveway.

Final verdict?  We're loving it! (please don't sue us, McDonalds).  Dexter and Chewie can run free without us having to watch them every second or panic when one tiny pup gets lost in the Weed Forest (although, I was liking the idea of making them wear little orange vests outside...).  It has only been a couple days, but they're quickly adapting to being out alone, which allows me to pack my lunch in the morning whilst they get their morning squirrel chasing in.  I mean, I love watching dogs poo at the break of dawn every morning, but you know, it's nice to have a few extra minutes to prepare my bologna and ketchup sandwiches.

So, next step is more landscaping!  We have visions of adorable plantings all along the fence with mini-trees or shrubs at the corners.  Maybe even a lawn gnome or two, if my Dad makes good on his threats.  Who knew getting a fence could be so fun?!  We're lame. :)

Picket Fence: Episode 1

I mentioned in my last Yard Stuff update we are finally going to take the plunge and get a fence and I'm thrilled to share progress is being made!  Our first step toward picket paradise is to get our yard surveyed and marked off so the installers will know exactly where our property is.  It's a little tricky for us because our yard isn't a nice, typical subdivision rectangle.

This is part of our survey that was performed right before we closed on The Grafton.  As you can see, there's a weird clipped off corner and a third or so of our driveway is actually in our neighbor's yard.  Keep in mind, starting at the stoop, our property dips down considerably, about half way back, it turns into a crazy forest and there is basically a wild thicket of weeds bordering the whole lot.  Plus, take a look at the street border and the back line against the school's property... they aren't parallel, so as we stand in our yard, we can't really look "straight back" anywhere.  It's all on an angle.  Keeps things interesting, I guess.

Oh, and as far as the style of the fence goes, we decided on a "Mount Vernon dip" picket with pressure treated lumber.  We'll have three gates: one on each side of the house and one at the back so we can access the poison ivy field, if we should ever feel so inclined.  This is sort of what it will look like, except instead of the pointy tops, we're going with the flat black toppers.

Luckily, our fencing company recommended a guy who will come out and flag our yard every so often with little pink flags so we can clearly see what is actually our property.  We thought that's what we were getting when we first had our survey performed and paid to have it staked, but that guy only staked the corners... which is not helpful at all due to the reasons I stated above.  *sigh*  However, we now have a yard with a bit more color...

Here's that multi-colored azalea I mentioned in the last post.  I think it matches our new pink flags nicely.

Thanks, Borderline, Inc. for actually staking our yard in a way that is helpful and useful!

Yard Stuff: Return of the Beds

(Note: I wrote this post about a week ago, only to find out Blogger had some issue and lost my post.  How frustrating!  So, here's another go at it...)

With our average daily temperatures reaching around the mid-70s lately, John and I have found ourselves outside more and more.  Who could resist with a yard so full of beautiful beds, big ol' trees, and amazing weed forests??  We have to enjoy it while we can because before we know it, the horrible Virginia summer will creep up on us, bringing with it 90+ degree days coupled with stifling humidity.  Oh joy.  For now, we're absolutely loving our shady backyard, warm breezes, and the soundtrack courtesy of our bird friends.  Dexter and Chewie are having a great time, too, chasing each other through the yard and battling over sticks, even though I'm pretty sure we have enough sticks in the backyard for every dog in Virginia.

So, here's some exciting news for you... we're getting a fence!  Since we've moved in, we've dreamt about continuing on with our fence chunk to provide some privacy, a safe place for our boys to run around in, help delineate our property, and eventually serve as a corral for human children.  We first thought about fencing in the entire backyard, but that would be way too expensive for us right now, and who wants to go out and play in the poison ivy, anyways?  We revised that plan and decided we'd rather just fence in the front half of our backyard with a picket fence.  It'll still be tall enough to keep in our boys and allow an unobstructed view of the entire yard.  In preparation of this, we spent our last Friday night clearing a path for the fence along the back, removing leaves and pricker bushes for the fence dudes.  While I love working in the yard, I couldn't help but think I can't believe this is how I spend my Friday nights now... viciously attacking pricker bushes with giant garden shears, but I must say, it alleviates stress about as well as a couple glasses of wine.  It's hard to tell the difference, but here's a photo of our scooted-back leaves.  We actually reclaimed quite a bit of space.

John working the giant garden shears.

Then, of course, once we started landscaping, we couldn't stop.  We love the progress we've made in our front yard beds, but decided they could use a little more oomph.  It was back to Meadows Farms to wander around and try to find our best bets for adding color for our partial shade beds on the cheap.  We ended up with four more heucherellas (if you remember, we went with the "Georgia Peach" variety as part of our Shade Lovin' Container Garden).  This time, we chose two "Sweet Teas" and two "Golden Zebras".  We love their big, colorful leafiness, and the fact they're perennials, so we can enjoy them for years to come... assuming they don't succumb to our black thumbs.  We also picked up two flats of purple impatiens to complement the purples in our pansies.  Here is everyone in their new homes:

The left-side bed, complete with ghost Chewie.

A Golden Zebra and its flower friends.

The Sweet Tea heucherella.

Right-side bed.

Another view of the right-side bed.

We also finally got around to planting the remainder of our begonias.  We picked up another flower box for our entry way and stuck the begonias in there.

So, that was our landscaping efforts for two weekends ago.  Little by little, our yard is starting to look less like a neglected weed wasteland.  In case you're curious on the progress of the rest of our yard, here's a few more photos of random stuff...

These yellow flowers popped up out of the rattlesnake weeds.  Kind of pretty for a weed.

This azalea lives on the opposite side of our fence chunk.  His neighbor already flowered and lost its flowers, but he's just now starting to bud.  Interestingly enough, it appears to be a different variety of azalea, as its buds and flowers are much larger than its neighbor's were.

This azalea mirrors the other azalea, but on the yard side of the fence.  It's now just blooming, too, and has the larger flowers, but it also has pink and white flowers!  And in some places, flowers that are both pink and white, or a very light pink.

Here is our container garden.  Everyone is growing nicely, especially the Creeping Lamium.  Those pink and white flowers are a sort of new addition.  They're one of the zombie plants we thought were dead and tossed into the compost pile, only to have them sprout back up and flower.  So, we decided to give them another chance as long as they promised not to eat our brains.  Can't trust zombies, you know.

Finally, these are just some tiny baby berries I thought looked like alien eyes.  :)