The beginning of the gardening project
Sadly, I can't find any pictures from the earlier phases. I would love to have pictures of the roto-tilling process, and perhaps some of the soil amending and seed planting for the lawn. It would be especially great to have a picture of Tristan (the other housemate) looking remarkably non-reluctant while helping out with a shovel.
At this stage the drip system is fairly complete, you can see the pop-up lawn sprinklers carrying tags.
It turns out that one of life's great pleasures is petting the baby seedlings. They are so cute!
That dark cloth you see behind me is actually semi-shade 45% transparent plastic mesh. In this picture, you see it protecting some succulents that we have planted that aren't ready for full sun yet. More to come on this.
No Weeds!!!!
By this time everyone in the house agrees that I am insane. (I believe that this assessment is made because of my devotion to the lawn and garden.) An example is this rather extreme measure that I took to get the weeds out of the lawn without walking on the seedlings. Say what you will guys, it worked pretty well. That's Kevin there on the left.
You can see that things are starting to come along nicely now.
The sprinkler system is working pretty well.
In the picture on the right you see what must have been the pinnacle of my attempts to grow miniature roses. I am so glad you cannot see what they look like now. Along those same lines, check out that lawn... isn't that beautiful? I wish it still looked like that now. Ah well, the process continues.
Mulching!
Look at those roses. Aren't they georgeous? The white one was picked out by Meredith, the pink one was chosen by Kevin. If you look at pictures above, you can see my rose blooming. It's the red one on the left.
The pictures that you see are much smaller than the full scans. If you click on the pictures, they link to the full size images. The scanning was done by Kodak. I requested the Kodak PhotoCD option, it's pretty cheap, and scanning is really time consuming. Besides, they can do a much better job with professional equipment than I could with a simple flatbed scanner. I want to apologize for the images being kinda crummy, I don't have a camera, so I have been using disposables. I've had good luck with disposables in the past, but these pictures are a dissappointment. Oh well, it is still nice to have a record of the garden.
The picture on the right shows our front yard extension (albeit poorly). It is all planted with flowering ice plants that are fed with drip line snaking all over the ground. Sometime you should ask me to tell you how I got the water to the extension. ;) Heh. In the background, you see Meredith, who has done lots of gardening work alongside the rest of us. You should have seen this before we started working on it. It was a shameful mess.
This was really the first project we undertook after roto-tilling everything that wasn't paved. It turned out really well, and got us enthusiastic about the possibility of continuing throughout all the gardenable areas. It was really Kevin who got the whole project up and running. After he started planting ice plant, I chipped in with the installation of the drip system that I was excited by. Meredith and I were out there for hours routing that drip line around all the ice plants without hurting any of them, but it was so much fun, especially when we turned it on and it really worked. Kevin should also be proud of the brick work. (I don't know if you can see it in the picture, try clicking.) The edging on the two ice plant beds is a really nice touch.
Let's go indoors.
Here is the shelf I built for all the orchids. Lately, I've been working on an automated mister system that is mounted to this shelf. It's really cool. When I get a picture of it, I'll show it to you. These nice windows are in our living room, and they face east. They let in lovely morning light. The computer on the left is Kevin's.
Here is a picture of Meredith in the student shop, where we were working on the garden swing. When you guys see the garden swing, I swear, you are going to demand that I build you one. It is really nice. Meredith and I were in a local garden center, and they were selling a manufactured garden swing that we couldn't afford, but Meredith really loved it. I made the mistake of muttering, "I could build this." Meredith responded excitedly, "You could? Let's!" Eeeech. Shoulda kept my mouth shut.
Perhaps I was showing off, but we went ahead and built one from redwood. I think ours turned out nicer than the one we didn't buy. I can't wait till I have a photo of it to show you.
I would say that I was teaching Meredith how to build, but she learns so fast... she wound up doing every bit as much cutting and drilling and building as I did. I think we both had a really good time, all the way till four in the morning when we finally finished.
I can't wait for you guys to visit, so you can see all this stuff for yourselves.
Love, Keith
10/10/01