Skunk Back-to-School Party Hangover

A little nature in the city

There's a skunk who lives in the backyard/alley vicinity. There are also a few kitties and birds who pass through. So far, we have all lived in harmony and give each other plenty of space and respect. In general, Skunkie only comes out at night, so we watch out for him then. Once I was taking out the trash late at night and found him bumbling along by the Quince tree. He was cute and looked half-blind. I left him the hell alone.

Early this afternoon, the pup and I were doing one of our daily patrols and found something interesting (and disgusting). It was a pile of whole and half chewed worms, grubs, and berries, surrounded in something biley and jelly-like. If you think that sounds gross, just be glad I'm sparing you a photograph. Mattie was so entranced by the discovery, she tried to roll in it and got yelled at.

We found a few more piles of half-worm grossness that led to the big pile. Skunkie must have over-partied on grubs and worms last night and was feeling a little hungover this morning.

New Green Waste Bin Changes my Life

*photo credit: Fred

I was going to blog about our new green waste/compost bin from the City, but my neighbor beat me to it.

I was reluctant about the green waste bin - I don't know why. I didn't to pay for it, or have it take up room in the backyard. But now that we actually have growing things in the yard, it's been amazing. I've already filled it up the minute they've emptied it! I love it!

We have a compost bin already - but the last time I stirred it, a mouse and I scared the crap out of each other. So I'm giving him some space.

There goes the neighborhood!

Our neighbors have an amazing rose garden on the other side of our hedge/fence. We been making bouquets out of the little yellow flowers that bloom on our side, but they're nothing compared to this bouquet that Connie brought over today from their amazing rose bushes! Check out Fred's blog for a bit more on their garden, and a little bit of teasing about our dumb home renovation projects...

Backyard Planter Box Build & Installation

The last two weekends have been devoted to acquiring lumber, building, and filling a couple of raised beds for growing vegetables. A project like this always takes a little longer than you would think (and is not without its highs and lows!)

Weekend I

We found some great instructions on "The perfect raised bed" in Sunset mag online. I liked how the plan didn't involve a ton of cuts, which was great for 2 reasons: avoiding excessive math, plus minimizing use of power tools that can take off your finger in a fraction of a second. The raised beds are a couple feet off the ground, which will keep the pups from running afoul in the garden, and keep us from having to bend over so much when planting & harvesting.

We bought lumber & supplies at Piersons, got a little help making the cuts (thanks, Papa!) and were pretty amazed at how easy it was to put these together. Not super easy, like sitting on the porch drinking a beer easy, but easy like: wow, we constructed something useful out of wood using power tools, and it didn't take all day! In fact, I'm inspired to build a deck later this summer. But more on that later...

By the time we put together the frames and speced out the locations, it was sunday afternoon. So our 9-5 (or should I say 8-6) jobs demanded we abandon our hands-on project for a few days.

Weekend II

After the suprise ease and simplicity of building the boxes, this weekend, full of mindless manual labor (loading and hualing several hundred lbs of dirt) ended up being the "oh crap that was a lot of work" suprise weekend.

It started with pulling up to Wes Green Landscaping in my dad's truck (sans the dad). The cashier took one look at us smallish women and said, "You do know you have to load the soil into the truck yourselves, right?" Bitch, puh-lease. Do I really look like that much of a princess? or maybe more likely I look like a shrimp.

Then we backed up the truck and shoveled, shoveled, shoveled what seemed like a billiondy lbs of shit into the back of the truck. And the truck complained as well, as we struggled with the heavy load to reach 50 MPH on the freeway.

Then, we unloaded the compost to find out yep, we were about 1/2 way there. Good thing we were so good and shoveling manure and didn't mind another trip (or 2) to the landscaping supply yard.

And did i mention that when we installed the boxes, we had to rip out the grass by hand, and that it was $43 worth of greenwaste? (that's the last time I take greenwaste to the dump in Eureka!)

Fast forward to the end of weekend, and after all the building, positioning, shoveling, and hauling, you can see that we have a couple of lovely planter boxes! And those zuchinni, green beans, and strawberries might look tiny now - but just give them a couple months and we'll be begging people to take the zucchinis off our hands!