Operation Backyard Awesome : Private Parts

Normal people usually understand that someone's backyard is private property, for whatever reason there are a number of people in Lucan who are not normal; and don't understand this concept of private property. They apparently believe that all property belongs to them. Our backyard backs on to the back of a number of shops on main street, with apartments over them. Here's an old picture from last spring, before we took out the overgrown, useless raised garden bed pretty much smack-dab in the middle of our yard.

 It's come in pretty handy, since we basically back on to the only bar in Lucan, so it makes for a quick and easy walk home. Sometimes the neighbours cut through too, which we don't really care about. What we do care about are the crazy asses who come into our yard to steal our patio chairs after we only had them for three days. Or walk their dog around and through our yard, letting them crap wherever they want and not pick it up. Or my personal favourite (which happened the other day) biking through our yard. I was sitting in the van on the street, about to pull in the driveway when this lady on her bicycle came down it. For once, I was stunned into silence, although apparently the neighbour gave her an earful. She apparently thought there was a path there. Ok crazy, I can totally get how the vast green grass looks like a path, often people have dogs tied up to an umbrella stand, next to a garage, on a path; you're right. We're beyond frustrated with all these people. I suggested putting in landmines, but Jason says that's taking it a bit too far - really, it just comes down to we don't know where to get them. So we'll settle for a fence.
   That chain link fence on the right is the only fence we have, it's clearly open to the back, and it's open to our other neighbours as well. We get along splendidly with both sets of neighbours, so we never really cared about fencing in the yard. Until we got Kai. She wouldn't go anywhere, she's a great listener and stays when you tell her, but if she sees a squirrel she has been know to chase them...far. So last summer we started talking about fencing the yard. But then we discovered if we used the heavy, cast iron patio umbrella stand and some old random tools from the shed (like a mini pitch fork and a large spade and some railway ties) to secure it to the ground, then tie a long rope to it, it was sufficient enough to keep her in place. (Even when she's trying to kill Cujo, the neighbour dog) We almost won an award for most redneck pet corral, but the dog who lives in an old dryer won.

So now that we're actually having to be serious about putting a fence up (at least at the back) I've been searching for some nice looking options. I don't want the basic wood slat fence, if we're going to have to put one up, we might as well make it look as nice as possible. We're not sure if we're going to put a gate in or not. Here's some of my favourite "modern" fence ideas I've come across...

(1)

 (2)

(3)

 (4)

 

(5)

(6)

(7)

2, 3, and 7 are our favourites, although number 6 is pretty freakin' awesome! 2 and 7 are pretty similar, and would be the easiest to build. Regardless of what we're going to do, we're planning on doing some landscaping back there too. We've got to get a move on with this fence because we've put our awesome sectional outside, and we really don't want that stolen.

Which options do you like best? Have you ever had any issues with people coming through your backyard, or people stealing your things?

Operation Backyard Awesome : The Initial Plans

So, I mentioned that we were planning on tackling (at least part of) the back patio this year, and we're hoping to get started now that the weather's nice. We already ripped out the big bush, and cleared away a lot of other dead or dying plant life that would be in our way, so we're ready to think about the layout, and finalize a few things so we can dig the gas lines. This was my initial (super rough) idea that I came up with last year, more of a way to play with sizing. How, long and wide could we go, and all that jazz.

This idea doesn't work for a few reasons, but mainly it's just too small, and cramped. Here's a reminder of what the area looks like now. (minus Bertha the bush)

There are only four main things we're looking for with the patio:

1. No more brick. We really don't like the brick. It's got copious amounts of weeds growing in between them, they're oil stained, and have massive dips in them from where the previous owners parked their cars. We'll be keeping the brick for the driveway for now, but it is our goal to eventually get rid of it, to put in something else.
2. A dining area big enough to seat at least 8 off the back door.
3. A designated "cooking" area close to the eating area. An outdoor kitchen if you will. (Since we plan on upgrading to a bigger badder gas BBQ down the line we'd like to run the gas line for it now so we don't have to make a mess of our pretty patio later)
4. A lounge area with patio flame. We have a large outdoor sectional that will go around the patio flame making it like a conversation area.
5. Must be made of wood, and must be pretty.

Not too big of a list of must haves. The first idea kind covered some of those needs, but not all of them, and it just seemed too small. We have a large back yard, so we want to patio to look like it belongs, and not be dwarfed. Here's what we  have in mind now...

It's got a little more oomph, and seems to hold it's weight better. See what I mean by we have a big backyard haha. And the blue spruce by the house is the only tree we have in our South facing backyard, so there's not much shade goin' on back there. You can also see, that this is why we need the help of a landscaper. We have a vast open space and no idea what to do with it. We need to put a fence up at the bottom of our yard to stop the crazy people from the stores and apartments above them walking through our yard. And we want to plant a few trees (we plan on planting one for every child we have) Anywho...lets take a closer look shall we?

 

Talk about a deck! This is definitely more of a statement, and definitely more our style and taste. Since we spend as much time as possible outside this idea covers our wants and needs better. It takes care of getting rid of the brick, it has a large eating area, under a pergola to provide some shade so our pasty necks won't get burnt (who am I kidding, we'll still get burnt - true story I got one of the worst burns of my life while sitting under a tree in the shade...I'm cool like that!) The pergola is attached to concrete pillars one of which turns into a bit of a bar area beside the barbeque. It's got a built in area for the BBQ, which is our designated cooking area. This area of the patio will come directly off the house, which means it'll be just over a foot off the ground, then we'll have a step down to our lounge area. This area has our sectional and the patio flame, and makes me want to sit there and roast marshmallows haha (and I don't even like marshmallows). We pulled this area away from the house so we're not blocking the basement windows, which we'll have to egress when we get to the finishing of it. It definitely covers our last point...it's pretty and made of wood! I think this is a winning idea for us, Jason is wholeheartedly on board with it, so I look forward to getting started.

  Just for comparison sake, the first mockup I came up with was 29' x 9' (although I suggested bumping it up to 11') whereas this one is 36' x 27' considerably bigger. We're not sure how much we're going to be able to get done this year, since we still have a bunch of things inside to finish, and we're hoping to get a baby by the fall. We plan on starting with the lounge area, since we already have everything for that, so we'll run the line, and set up a temporary situation, and we'll likely stake everything out, and plan our all our materials so we can have a budget in mind. We'll set things up where they would go, to play with size and layout, and make sure it does work well, because we learned the hard way that things don't always fit as nicely in real life as they do online or on paper. The best part of having a giant backyard, is you can decide to build a 900sq.ft. patio and it doesn't cut into where your imaginary massive pool is, so we can still go pretend swimming. I look forward to hearing what the landscaping company I talked to has to say about what kind of plants and trees to plant and where.

Operation Backyard Awesome : Destructive or Productive?

Jason posed the question when we were digging out, and hacking up, and chopping down things in the backyard if we were being destructive or productive. Actually he was in the middle of beating apart a large chunk of roots when he asked, so he was probably being destructive haha. But I'm pretty sure when it comes to yard work it's a combo of both. I mentioned before about our plans to create a back deck/patio. We weren't able to get to it last year, but we really want to use our outdoor furniture and our patio flame this year, so we have to at the very least hash out our plans in enough detail and certainty to run the gas line for the patio flame (and probably the BBQ at the same time.) We're planning to have someone come out from a landscaping company to take a look at our space, and help us brainstorm some ideas for the space. I know what I want when it comes to the patio (and we've pretty much nailed down how we want it to look) but neither of us know much about gardening, or landscaping so we need some help with that aspect of things. We decided to initiate phase one of "Operation Backyard Awesome" with that massive bush (seriously it's got like a 7ft diameter) we've got just chillin' right in the middle of where our patio will go.

Since it was such a nice day Sunday, we didn't want to be inside, so we got to ripping out the giant bush (And by we, I totally mean Jason, I didn't even have to ask him) He had fun, don't let him tell you otherwise.

He made short work of it, especially since he had these rinky dink little shears, he couldn't find the big ones on his first glance so he stuck with the little ones. Then the dog distracted him...

Until she was done. And when she's done she lets you know...

See, this is her, "I'm done, leave me alone now" look. She always just lays down and ignores you when she's done or bored...and she's usually done or bored after about two minutes. She's a lazy player.
    We took that as a good time to take a breakfast break, before finishing it off.

Huzzah! Bush-be-gone! Look at that giant circle of death. We couldn't get the roots out because the ground was still too frozen (maybe having something to do with the fact that the ground hadn't seen the light of days in years). We'll leave it for a few days, then dig them out. Upon removal of the giant bush, we found some treasure...

And by treasure I mean gross old flower pots, some of which had frozen to the ground, and the bottoms were completely eroded away. The giant one Jase is trying to pry from the grips of the cold, dead ground had so many snails in the bottom of it, I gagged a little. I don't mind snails, they're kinda cool, in a grotesquely weird way, but it was like the mother ship of colony's. Hundreds of the nasty little buggers. We also cleared away all the dead clematis and other junk that was against the house, as well as trimmed the tree that was hanging way over the fence from the neighbours'. You had to almost crawl under it if you were walking there. So phase one is complete, we've cleared away everything standing in our way, now we can get to the fun stages. It was such a productive morning outside, that we decided to bring the fun inside. We also got the dining room painted, and I sprayed the chandelier for the dining room as well. All in all, Sunday was a very good day on the home front.

Big Backyard Dreams

Since the weather has been nicer and we’ve been spending more and more time outside, BBQing and puttering, and what not, we’ve been thinking more and more about what we’d like to do with the back yard. Remember back from this post, where I showed a bunch of eye candy, and some rough ideas of what we wanted...well now that it’s hotter, the weeds are attacking us with a vengeance, my love for all things backyard pretty has been renewed. Our driveway (which turns into our “patio”) is bricked; now, not only are the bricks ugly, but they’re being overrun with weeds, and we just can’t keep up with them. I have a few plans kickin’ around inside my head that I wish we could do out back, but we both decided that we’d wait until our second spring/summer here before we do anything too major. That way we have time to figure out exactly everything we want and need, and what a good size will be.

   Then something happened that sort of jump started our plans. We won this!

After winning this bad boy from Mike & Steph's stag & doe (donated by Patio Palace) we legitimately had to start thinking about the back patio. We won a natural gas "Patio Flame" which is basically a fire pit that no one can yell at us for having because it's a controlled flame. Since it's natural gas, we have to run a dedicated line for it, so we need to know exactly where we want it so we can have the line run. Here's what the yard looks like now...

A back yard shot from the side of the house 

Again from the side of the house, this is about where the patio would span.

Overgrown myrtle and clematis...you can almost see a basement window trying to peek out in the middle of the jungle.

From the other side of the house. You may notice the pile of bricks leaning up against the garage that we still need to stack back out along the front garden boarder...someday.

We need to remove that giant bush...which is pretty much where the fire pit will go. It's a monster, it probably has an almost 5ft diameter. So we're going to have to do some digging, and some pulling with the truck to get it out. Our lawn is already filled with holes, so what's one more gigantic one eh?

 

I know you're all jealous of our amazing "patio eating" set up, it's pretty pimpin' I'm not gonna lie! You may also be jealous of all the weeds, and this picture doesn't even show how many there really are. 
   So now we've got our thinking caps on, for all the amazing things we could/can do with the back patio. There are a few things that are must have's for us, and the rest is just fun "make it look pretty" 
The things we have to have are pretty simple:
   1. No more brick - we'll keep the bricks on the driveway portion for now, until we figure out what we want to do to the drive.  
   2. An eating area (enough to sit at least 8) - which will probably go roughly where our pathetic one is now
   3. A "conversation" area, or just more of a loungy area - that's where we'll be putting the patio flame
   4. A designated "cooking" area, most likely close to the eating area - because in the future we plan to upgrade to a natural gas BBQ, and it's                   just easier to plan for it now, than try to figure out where to put it in the future.


Those are pretty much our only stipulations at this point, I'm sure as we get the ball rollin' there will be more that crop up. But for now, our goal to spruce things up is to rip out that bohemouth bush & put the patio flame in, and power wash the bricks to clean them up (which will hopefully also help get rid of the weeds). I heard that baking soda is supposed to work well for killing weeds because of it's pH level...so we'll have to give that a try, see how it pans out. 
  Here's my "had-way-too-much-fun-screwing-around" computer rendition of what it'll look like when all is planned, said and done.

Isn't it just so pretty! Hooray, I know it's going to be a while before it actually looks like this, but it's exciting to just look at this, plus it helps me get a good idea of what a good size is. (this is 9ft by 29ft) It looks like maybe 11ft would be a bit better, no?

My Milkshake Brings All The Boys To The Yard...

Maybe not my milkshake, but my mad gardening skills for sure! We've actually done a fair amount of work outside, and it's starting to look significantly better.

Here's where we started...

 These two are from when we first looked at the house...look at how lush and nice the grass looks haha - no weeds!

 

 

 This is a more accurate rendering of where we started when be began removing stuff. We had no idea what any of it was, we knew we just wanted it gone. It was basically just a bunch of over grown crap, so we just started hacking away. After about an hour or so of labour we were left with a slightly less ugly front area - a stretch of dirt. (I know I took pictures of what it looked like after but they're obviously on another memory card - which is hiding in a missing camera - because I can't find them)


The stretch of dirt sat for about a month before we decide to take up the bricks. We are planning on putting a large porch on the front in a few years, so in the interim, we decided to put a garden in so it doesn't look so pathetic there. As most of you know, I am not a gardener. I don't know the first thing about it, so I called in reinforcements...I brought in my mommy. She's a great gardener, and she's like a plant savant, she knows what pretty much ever flower is called.  It was a perfect pairing, I knew nothing, and she in totally in her element when gardening. She got all excited when she saw this clematis at the back, and she kept offering to buy plants for me when we were at the nursery. Now I know where to take her shopping if I want her to buy me things hehe.

We started in the back yard investigating what some mysterious plants were, and figuring out what we could dig up to transplant in the front. We have a big area out front (17'6" long, and 6'6" at it's narrowest & about 9'6" at it's widest) so I was hoping to be able to transplant as much as I can to save some money.

 We started by taking a look at this bushy ground cover thing, it had pretty little purple flowers that those lovely red arrows are pointing out (you still can't really see them very well - sorry). Mama didn't know what it was, but when we were at the nursery we discovered that it's Myrtle. Sweet...and it's clearly been there for quite a while haha. To the left (in front of the lattice thing) is the clematis, this is where she was sucked over to it as if by a magic force-field, waving her arms like an excited little school girl seeing the Beibs in the flesh! Unfortunately we weren't able to dig up any of this - because the clematis was all woven in the dead hunks, and we just never really got around to the myrtle.

 This is an older picture (from March I think) of the rosebushes we thought were dead...not sure what the rest of the rest of the flowers are, (or if they're even flowers) as they're sadly no longer with us...Jason hacked over them with the lawnmower. We pruned back and dug up the rosebushes, and found some baby rhubarb being choked out that we're not really sure how it got there. There was also a small little euonymus shrub growing not to far off that mom sort of hacked up when she transplanted it haha.

 Then there's this bohemouth, which is a mixture of a couple different euonymus plants, and something else that I can't remember of the top of my head. I'm not really sure what we're going to do with this, we don't want it where it is, that's for sure, so hopefully we can find a way to use part of it up front, and maybe give the rest to our landscaping friend? It's huge though, probably about 6.5-7ft around. Yeeshk!


Then the fun part happened...we went flower shopping, mom had a blast, and we came home with a bunch of things for a fairly reasonable price, and we got to diggin'! I still wouldn't say I overly enjoy gardening, but I did have a pretty good time, and the best part was no arguments broke out! Here's what we were left with after about 3 hours of work.

  Here's a couple larger view shots...it looks a little sparse right now, but about half the flowers haven't bloomed yet, and there's still more to be added (from the back yard, other people's donations, and some more purchases) plus we had to leave room for some tulips, and daffodils that I'll be planting the the fall for next spring. Even just this little bit makes me happy when I come out the front door.

 We went to Klomps (on Hwy 7 between St Marys and Stratford) and we picked up for $120:

• 2 weigela "fine wine" (they're the taller pink coloured shrub)
• 2 Asiatic lilies (the cool orange ones) (I think I might pick up another one)
• 10pks (of 4) allysum in white & purple
• 6pks (of 4) marigold (in different styles and colours)
• 1 Hydrangea quick fire - they'll be a pinky colour
• 1 large begonia in white (below)
• 2 Bidens in yellow
• 1 Bellflower in purple (although they call it "deep blue")
• 3 oriental poppy's in white

My mom also brought a few things with her:

• 2 segments of sedum
• 2 purple columbines
• some tall-ish yellow flowery thing that she couldn't remember what it was called

 We were able to transplant the two rosebushes (close to the front door), and part of the euonymus (by the old porch) from the back yard. When we dig up the myrtle we'll put it beside the porch to cover the ugliness (since we can't get rid of it, as it's the cold storage room) The clematis will have a home between the two windows when we get around to moving it - probably in the fall after it blooms)

Look at the pretty lily...it's so cute! I still need to get some ferns for along the back, and I want to get a red rhododendron bush, because they're gorgeous and humming birds like them, and I really want a peony (because they're my favourite) but mama wouldn't let me get one *insert sad face here* hehe.


I'm quite pleased with how the garden turned out, nothing died in the process so that's always a plus. I don't have a propensity for keeping things alive; I was always that pathetic kid who'd little seedlings died in elementary school, so we'll see how this goes. I'm hoping since they're already alive and all I really have to do is water them regularly things will go well. 


I'll leave you with the cute little butterfly fanning its wings from our back bohemouth bush.

Yard Crashers: Lucan Style

Everyone's seen the show Yard Crashers right? If not you should watch it...like right now. If you have seen it, (as well as Bath, Room, House, and the new, Kitchen Crashers) then you know that its crazy awesome! If you haven't...because well, perhaps you're living under a rock...the hosts (who are all contractors/designers/etc.) find people at a home improvement store who are in need of an upgrade. Then, they take them home and pimp their spaces beyond belief, all for FREE! While I would gladly take anyone of them home with me if they bombarded me in a store, I feel pretty confident we could pimp out the rooms in our home fairly decently ourselves. But we both lack, skill and desire to do a whole lot with the yard aspect. I am probably the laziest gardener there is...if I can remember to water a potted plant it's a good day. A cactus is my type of "flower". 
  Since neither of us have any bright ideas swirling around our head for the backyard - and since it's winter - and since we're clearly never going to have our yard crashed my Ahmed -
I figured now is a good as time as any to start looking for some backyard inspiration.         
  Naturally, I turned to Pinterest to hook me up with some awesome eye candy. 

So these are the high end looks I'd be asking Ahmed for. We both agree that we'd like a fire pit, and seating area and that we'd love a hot tub. Just look at that hot tub in the last picture...if I had a hot tub that looked like that, I don't know if I'd want to leave it. We don't have any immediate plans for the back yard (aside from putting up a fence), we plan to slowly work on it over time, but we do plan on incorporating all the elements we'd be asking Yard Crashers for...just maybe not quite so high end. Or, if we do decide on a few high end additions, they'll be spaced out nicely so the neighbours won't think we're too rich.


Our outdoor goals for the spring involve trimming a few trees (and removing one), ripping out a bunch of shrubbery at the front, right up against the house, and making sure nothing is sloping in towards the house. Power washing all the patio stones, so they at least look a bit more presentable until we can figure out what to do with them. If we get really ambitious we'll rip off the small front porch - or at least take down the awful awning. There's also a raised garden in the back, that I haven't decided what to do with yet. It needs a LOT of work to make it even usable again, so I may just scrap it. Although growing some fruit & veggies does appeal to me, (it'd bring back memories of running out to steal raspberries or peas from my Nana and Papa's garden when I was a kid) I have about ZERO gardening skills, so I'd probably have to call in my mom for reinforcements haha. I wish I had half as many ideas swimming around my head for the outside of our place as I do for the inside. Who knows, maybe come spring time I'll have some sort of idea in place.