Another Fine Mess I've Gotten Them Into

I keep getting these cockamamie ideas. Today, we took up the lawn which we'll I'll reseed tomorrow.

Thanks to Todd, Jersey, Sissy, and the dude for putting up with my stubbornness and idiotic ideas. And for doing the heavy lifting.

Clear Path

Yes, we still have to get rid of the quarter ton of stone on the lawn and the leftover pavers, but the path itself is complete! The dude put in another long day on Saturday. (I couldn't get good photos until the sun came out on Monday.)

Look at those fine curved edges!
(Ignore the gravel and the pavers all over the lawn. In fact, ignore the lawn all together...and the rose bushes...)

This part is the path from the driveway; it used to be cement. Yay for young men with sledgehammers.

Making the path curve out to the width of the step was my neighbor's idea. Now the path, she has a girlish figure.

And I am so damn happy every time I walk on it! That dude, he is something special.

As are you all. Thanks so much for your encouraging comments on my finishing. It is indeed a relief to have them done, though the finishing pile runs deep.

Garden Path

Let's start with the dude. One of the reasons I chose that as his nom de blog is that he loves the movie The Big Lebowski. And in The Big Lebowski, the dude (played by Jeff Bridges) is described thus, by The Stranger, played by Sam Elliott, the best voice in all the whole wide world: 

Sometimes, there's a man, well, he's the man for his time and place. He fits right in there. And that's the Dude, in Los Angeles. And even if he's a lazy man - and the Dude was most certainly that. Quite possibly the laziest in Los Angeles County, which would place him high in the runnin' for laziest worldwide. 

Many people associate this particular attribute with my dude, mostly because when he first came into our lives he had a penchant for sleeping twelve hour nights.  He's also a thinker, and there are many who don't believe that thinking is work.

Today, the dude worked a ten hour day. Today, Sunday. In fact, when I told Sissy he was out there working at 8:30, she said, "The Dude?" (She called him by his real name, of course.) He was directed by our neighbor who we called the foreman (though he did a lot of work for a foreman). And eventually he was assisted by Jersey, Sissy, and me. (I had non-path building tasks to attend to like dog walking and lunch fetching.) Anyhoodle, we laid gravel, and tamped it, and shoveled sand, and path built and ten hours later, this is where we are. There's still brick cutting to be done, but essentially, we have a garden path. Bravo, dude!

Path to Enlightenment

The dude and I spent several hours working on the path today. I can't lift my arms higher than my elbows. I'm like a little penguin. Tonight as we were driving to dinner, Pete opined that we're going to start a trend in the neighborhood. The only houses with paths from front door to sidewalk are the ones that have driveways in the back. (And they are all stick straight and made of cement.) But it's so practical and ours will look so great, soon everyone will be digging garden paths. I responded that it's possible but they won't be called garden paths. He looked at me with mild horror. "They'll call them front walkways." In Britain, your yard is called a garden whether it is planted with flowers or vegetables or not. So the walkway in your yard is the garden path. (Which makes sense of "leading someone down the garden path.") He does call a yard a yard, fwiw.

We've called in the cavalry tomorrow. With any luck this project will be a lot closer to done because I'm pretty sure my arms are going to fall off if I have to lift another shovelful of dirt.

Family Business

This is what I have been working on lately. It's Hinzeit's Family Matters. My aunt is worried that once my dad sells the family business, she'll never see us again. Granted, we're not very good at keeping in touch with people, but we always fall right back in once we have the opportunity. We're easy going people. She does have a point though, because when the shit hit the fan, she ended up with us. (Her petty, petty sisters chose sides. It's one of those family business things.) Anyway, she wrote me a note telling me that her family matters to her, so this is perfect. She'll cry. My aunt has also recently been diagnosed with breast cancer. (Don't pink me.) Her prognosis is excellent at this time, but you always like to let people know you are thinking of them don't you? (Apparently I'm crap at that too because I only sent my great aunt two notes while she was being treated for ovarian cancer--and I asked her to find the fudge recipe just before her last chemo treatment. So thoughtless.)

I've been kind of down lately. There's the work situation. There's this club I'm involved with that is a mess. People want me to take over but I just want out. I want to go back to camp right now. Really, really badly. Let's try to cheer up. Here's the front door. Look at those happy daffodils! Look at those little pufferball PJM rhododendrons! See the fauxforsythia (fauxsythia) wreath on that beautiful pea green door! Happy, colorful spring!

Hummingbirds, Deer, and Rabbits, Oh My!

Last night was landscaping class again, so I'll share the bunny story: Last week, I asked about planning for the rabbits that run rampant through my neighborhood. The one guy in the class says, "you need a shotgun!" Then the teacher and he start listing the things I can use to repel rabbits: marigolds, pepper spray, liquid fence...at which point, I break in, "I was hoping I could peacefully coexist with the bunnies." The teacher sort of gets it and says that we'll go over plants that are unattractive to rabbits. Fortunately, some of them do seem to be attractive to me. I can tell shotgun-man and I are going to get on real well. As we were looking at photos of landscaping, I was writing a list called "concerns." In addition to peacefully coexisting with the rabbits, it included

• xeriscaping
• using organic products
• using native plants
• eschewing chemicals
• working around the mulch issue (not sure I can take that up with Mr. Mulch, the teacher)

Still, I am very excited to be starting my first garden and looking really hard at ways to make it virtually carefree. (Ha!)

I'm off to camp tomorrow. Full report Monday. Now be good!

Fifties Bush

Tonight I am going to my first class at the Haverford Township Adult School. I am taking landscape design. For the good of the landscape. Our tiny brick cape is being inundated with yew that was planted when the house was built over 50 years ago. In addition to the four great yew, there are two sort of sad, but relatively tall, rhodedendron; they are sad because the old owner used to crop them into cube shapes. There are a few mountain laurel, which I hope to transplant to the backyard because, well, all this stuff is crammed together and no one's happy, least of all me. On the other side of the entrance there is an evergreen bush that blooms with white bell-shaped flowers in late summer--I can never remember the proper name of that one, but I have let it grow wild and it's blocking one of the windows. But truly, this poor plant was so unhappy in its former life as a block of bush. Around the corner, where no one can enjoy it, is a forsythia. That one left behind its legacy of poor haircuts last spring. Now if I could only train it to grow where I wanted it, instead of having it wrap itself around the drainpipe from the gutter...We also have an evergreen azalea accenting the path to the door. It's been pruned so badly parts of it are nothing but wood. (Sense a theme here?) Then there's the Japanese maple that is dying. I think it just needs to be fertilized, but who knows? I hope the teacher does!

So I won't be stitching tonight. I am happy to report, however, this morning on my commute, I finished the alphabet on Tall Flowers. Now to make the flowers grow wild.