Some of you may recall the old thread from last year where I was planning out my backyard makeover and was soliciting ideas for landscaping. Well, here's a progress report:

Here's what it originally looked like. (Actually, the boarded up windows were also that ugly brown, but I had already painted them white before I thought to take the "before" photograph.)


Here's the photo-shopped plan:


And here's where we are today:




As you can see, we still need to redo the landscaping, but the garage looks like something interesting now. Hopefully I'll be able to get that green fountain this year.

Looks like some sort of hippie love temple.

Have fun

Clean out the gutters

Easier said than done. There is no downspout, so they are full. I went up there with my shop-vac on "blow" and it was infested with tiny bugs. i wound up covered in tiny bug and nasty debris. Very nasty. You can see the empty spot ij the middle where i started to blow them out.

Tiny Bugs????

Oh well no wonder! Better leave it alone then!

Delicious treats for the birds, dontchaknow? I'm going to fashion some kind of curvy stick to clean them out.

all that crap you see in the gutters is the same crap that's all over the ground. Those damn helicopter seeds.

For some reason the sycamores produced an unheard of crop of seeds this year. They come from my neighbor's tree and land in my yard. They are literally everywhere and inches deep in some places. They carpeted my garden and are already taking root. If I put lawn clippings down as mulch this year, as I had intended, I'll have a lovely forest instead of a garden. Needless to say, I am far less than pleased.

It's lookin good TJ.
I wus jes teasin the city kid about them bugs.

Funny you should say that. Ive noticed a lot more sycamore seeds around than usual. I'm wondering now if there's maybe a link between the overproduction of sycamore seeds and global warming in the same way that great tits are said to be thriving here in the UK because of it..?

A few of the seeds took root in some of the containers and raised beds in my back yard. Being the greenie that I am I've transplanted them all to the same container and later this summer I'm going to indulge in a bit of guerrilla gardening. Sssshhhhhhhh! Scouting round for a good place to plant them where they can grow undisturbed.

English tits are known to come out in warm, sunny weather. I'd suspect the sycamore seeds are more along the lines of the cicadas, which come out en masse every 17 years to overwhelm predators.


As long as you're guerrilla gardening, the countryside could use some more of this:

Oh Oh Oh look what I found!

Copper rain gutters:



with cool rain gutter hooks:


and instead of a downspout, a cool copper "rain chain":




If I was rich, I'd have the coolest back yard.


This is particularly clever:

Them are maples.

Edit: Did we already argue this? The fruits are definitely genus Acer. There's an Acer pseudoplatanus (Sycamore maple) as well as a Platanus acerifolia (Maple-leafed sycamore). But any tree with a double samara is a maple, dammit.

There's also a gazillion different varieties of Maple, including the Sycamore.

Who cares what the damn thing is. How can I kill it?



/kidding... Sort of.

Gutter covers



http://www.sho-proinc.com/guttercover.htm

Lots of people make these. Check your local hardware. I'd imagine some narrow mesh chicken wire would keep out the bulk of the leaves, for a lot cheaper. Just slip it up under the bottom row if shingles and let it hang out over the gutter.

I'll be doing that.

BTW, I just thought I'd mention that I'm going for a Moroccan/Mediterranean theme. Just in case anyone was wondering about the crazy color scheme and what-not.

I thought it looked rather Indian Hindu.

Fire.

update.

Changed some colors. Finally was able to put aside ten bucks a month long enough to get the fountain.

the squash are lookin good too!

I think it looks cool TJ like something out of the Arabian Nights!!!