Butterfly Garden

If it looks like it needs to be watered, I did. However, it's literally 100 degrees today.

Pizza Oven

Fully functional (May 2012), not quite complete.

Backyard Fort

Completed summer 2011

New Laundry Room

Completed Fall 2011

Mobile Uploads!

Here is the first of many pictures as I attempt to highlight the last two years.
Here's the new basement bathroom completed during the fall of 2011.

I Win

This week has been a test of wills and determination. Today universe I am the winner. I win, suck it. Yes, you leaked my toilet in the basement, the same night that we discovered our central air was leaking. I did not despair. I tackled the toiled with an arsenal of weaponry to leave Genghis Khan quaking in his boots.

Alas the weapons would not prevail. The frequent douses of urination had corroded the bolts. But the next night I came at you with a locking wrench and WD40. Yay, you gave way to me, after much grunting (which is usually reserved for sitting on the toilet not laying on top of it wrenching our the bolts). I wrestled you free and replaced the weakened seal broken by large arses such as mine. I prevail, not leaking and believe you me I put that toilet through it's paces.

I next tackled our leaky central air and we soon discovered the output nozzle was blocked. So we removed that only to have the unit belch out the contents that must have been gathering for quite a number of years. There were some problems with the seal of the nozzle as it's plastic and the output pipe is metal. I could not seal this thing for the life of me, and I really couldn't seal it once it cracked off in the pipe. !@#$. After a couple of minutes, I was able to remove the contents of the broken nozzle. Off to The Home Depot where I found a replacement part. This part was still not going in straight and I didn't know what to do. Until I had an idea. The output pipe is dripping into the Ale Pail, which is hooked up to the output hose draining into our sump pump.

Screw you universe, I win.


P.S. - Universe if you could see to it that you don't mention this to Brian and Patrick R., I would greatly appreciate it. I think this is somehow against the law of beer gods, but I'm not sure.

Backyard Renovation

Last year I was somewhat rushed to get the backyard completed before the NARI tour (first weekend in May). The landscape designer waited until the VERY last possible moment to do any of the work in the back because it was so cold there was a fear our plants would be given a death sentence just so we could have a completed backyard for the tour. Trying to plant anything the last week in April is tough in Wisconsin because there really isn't a whole lot of plant matter available. Kudos to my mother who was able to locate almost all of my perennials needed. The day that we did the flower install (I did the flowers, the landscapers did the bushes and prepared the beds - basically all the hard work) I still needed six grasses to complete the design. For the sake of time we went to a local nursery and were able to get the six grasses. Since they were the only six grasses in stock (left over from a job recently done) I wasn't too picky. I'm guessing that I didn't even read the tag. Last year the grasses were perfect, not too big or full, just perfect.

There is a saying amongst gardeners about perennials: the first year they sleep, the second year they creep, the third year they leap. Well, I think my grasses skipped year two and did their leaping last week.
This needed to be dealt with, and fast. There is a lot of pretty stuff back there you can't even see!
So, the question then became what exactly to do with these Jurassic Park sized grasses. I had about a dozen different ideas but finally settled on tearing up the side of the house that faces Jake and Tonya. This bed really doesn't have a focus or purpose. We used to have a really pretty vine on the trellis called a silver lace until the Japanese Beatles ate it all. There was a small hops that we had going but as soon as I had Brian's blessing to dig it up the bed cleared out. Since I don't really do a very good job of maintaining this bed, moving the grasses here seemed like a good idea.

Another "before" shot

Turned out this was a much harder job than I anticipated and needed the help of my three men.

Here's where the grasses ended up. I hope they take, Tonya is thrilled with how it turned out. Plus, it covers our strange, ugly, yet necessary sump pump set up. This is for our old, or original, sump pump.
Now we can actually see the butterfly garden! I hope to fill in vacated areas with appropriately sized grasses this week yet. One large grass remains for two reasons. 1. We only needed five plants for the side of the house and 2. We couldn't get it out. I'll deal with that problem another day...
The next plant on the chopping block may very well be my bee balm. While I think this plant is pretty I just have never had much luck with it. I'm already treating a nasty case of powdery mildew and it's only the end of June. This is the story of my relationship with bee balm. I'd like to replace the whole patch of it with pink coneflower. However, it's starting to bloom and I'm feeling guilty so maybe it will come out in the fall or as soon as the powdery mildew becomes too much to keep up with. The bee balm is directly behind where the grasses were so now with an increased air flow back maybe the mildew will be done for a little while.

Finally, here is the bed affectionately referred to as, "the Compromise." It became the recipient of a couple of plants that I didn't want to give away that were aside the house.