Pining for the Fjords

As those of you who are my buddies on Facebook might have seen, Chris and I recently joined my Mom's side of the family for a long weekend in Cleveland, Ohio to attend the wedding of my cousin Ashley to her love Brandon.  This was fantastic, as it allowed me to combine several of my favorite things all into one trip: traveling, family, weddings/receptions, and most of all, PLANNING!  See, since there were going to be 7 of us (Chris and I, Mom, Jim and Leigh, and Uncle Jim and Aunt Kim) traveling from different areas, and we all wanted to stay close to one another plus see the sights of the city while we were in town, I got to have a blast finding a place to stay and organizing where we'd visit and eat.  Each one of us seemed to take around 8,000 pictures, so I have no idea how many blogs I'll end up with about the trip - I may have content until Christmas!  Hooray! Let's dive right in.  Most of us started to the airport early in our respective cities - Jim and Leigh n

When we lived in Arizona, both of our houses had great patios, and we spent a ton of time in our back yards as a result.  Given that we often did so when the weather was in the triple digits, we knew we'd be getting even more use out of our back yard here in the LBC.  As you've seen on the previous 7 yard work blogs, things were coming along nicely, but in late May, we finally saved up enough pennies to afford the patio and other concrete work we'd been wanting since we moved into the house last August. While we're decently handy, we knew we weren't up to attempting this on our own, and after getting quotes from general landscaping companies (ranging from merely expensive to ludicrously ridiculous), we had the bright idea to call the folks that put up our block wall , Coastline Masonry, to see if they might be interested in the work.  They absolutely were, and they were also willing to give us a small discount due to being repeat customers.  Seriously, these guys

Three whole yard blogs in a row!  Call the authorities - we're obviously having too much fun over here! Okay, so last week, I blogged about our cute little leafcutter bees, and in that post, I dropped in a "spoiler" picture of another project we worked on earlier this summer, adding planters on the west side of the yard to mirror those along the back wall and eastern border.  Much like the other borders, we set things up with pressure treated wood beams, securing each to the ground by hammering a small piece of rebar through each end.  Unlike the other planter areas, Chris also took the time to connect the beams together on this project, using 2-3" deck screws; this way, if the beams warped over time, they wouldn't separate from each other as much (one of the top beams on our back wall is doing this, and it has become a teeter-totter for the dog and myself - we enjoy it). After the beams were fastened down, it was time to fill the area with mulch.  Back to th

Two yard updates in a row?  This has to be some sort of record! Okay, anyway, last week on the blog, I talked about fending off weirdos at the mulch yard and moving the garden to a new spot, both events occurring in the springtime.  As spring transitioned into summer and the rain finally cleared up for good, I started harvesting tons and tons of tomatoes, as you saw in the last blog.  I was also continuously pulling gigantic zucchini out of the garden (as seen in this blog ), and the basil and jalapenos were also humming happily along.  What wasn't producing much, however, was the set of tomatillo plants.  I learned in our Peoria house that you can't just plant one tomatillo, as one can't pollinate itself; to be safe, I grabbed two for our Long Beach garden; after a few months in the ground, they were growing like crazy, but they still weren't producting very much fruit.  Enter the bees! Later in each summer season, our pepper tree brings all the bees to the yard, a