Is the Grass Always greener on the other side?

some siding appears but still so much to do

So Steve and I spent part of our weekend shopping for rocks-never realized just how many different shapes of rocks there are at a small little rock quarry just outside of Portland. Anyways, we settled on Columbia River Boulders from Heritage Rock. After purchasing 3/4 of a ton of rock (super cheap), we hauled it home in the trusty rig and then I dashed off to a girlfriend's birthday while Steve took it upon himself to unload the mother rocks on his own and try to "roll" them to their resting spots...after unloading the lighter weight ones (several hundred pounds each), Steve went for the 500-600 lb. mother and finally had a neighbor come offer to help (or more like the neighbor's wife offered her husband's help) when he almost had it in place and they got it in. Anyways, we spent part of Saturday placing and planting the rocks=burying the rocks....they look awesome and really light up the yard. 7 were from the rock yard and another 4 we dug up in our yard.

our mother rock
(wooly thyme in foreground which we want to grow so it looks like sod)

Sunday brought the start of lap board siding (we had hung the Tyvek the previous week) which is not a treat to say the least being that the siding is not ridiculously difficult to put up but the corner 1x1" pieces threw us for a ride...we got a small front section done before Steve about crashed. We spent the remainder of the day shopping for grasses...we chose Hamelin fountain grass because the grass that Ryan chose is not sold in Oregon. It really resembles the deer grass Ryan initially chose. When we got home I took a little rest while Steve dug 19 holes for various plants and our house is really starting to look more complete. We can't wait to have the siding done so that we can get the plants in close to the house!

a sorry attempt at a full landscape shot....
but can you tell how the rock blends nicely with the quartzite path?

Portland Potatoes?

Did you know that Potatoes are native to Portland? at least on the Alameda ridge. We have found hundreds, if not thousands of these puppies in our yard and man, they are not fun but we have learned a few tricks along the way. Best to first water the soil, wait a bit and then dig (also helpful to have a husband who is all about removing every possible potato he can get his hands on).



Our very own Native potato

Still confused? ....potatoes=rocks. Some guy came by when Steve was potato hunting one day and goes, "oh, I see you got some Portland Potatoes there" and Steve was briefly confused before realizing what he was talking about. Anyways, we have found that they are actually quite pretty when clean and have placecd numerous ads on Craigslist to let people know that free rock is available and it always goes within an hour or two. We plan to use some of the latest harvest for a small rock bed or two that my brother worked into the plan after digging on some potates himself.
In the last ice age, there were Missoula Ice Floods and with that, an ice dam in glacial Lake Missoula broke and sent rock tumbling through Portland and over the Alameda Ridge (where we live) and therefore, we have great draining soil but dirt that is a b****h to dig. Our rocks range from 1" to 2'. We have already placed a couple of the big ones in the yard.



Our last weekend (besides a little brew fest) composed of hunting for plants, hunting some more, hunting more and not having total but lots of success. I find it pretty amazing that the first week of August is already considered the end of the nursery season in the Pacific NW...yikes! Many of the nurseries (we went to at least 8 this weekend) has one or two of the kind of plants we needed but usually not enough so we nursery hopped (not as fun as bar hopping but the car A/C to get a break from the heat was a treat) and found that we will probably have to wait until spring to finish planting.

Learning to take Breaks from Hard Work

This being the third summer of working on our house, Steve and I are finally learning how to take just a few breaks from work and getting smarter...and poorer in the process. While we still do the majority of the projects ourselves and at least part of every project we hire out to cut down on costs, we have learned that we need to leave some time for fun as well as work. In addition, we probably would have truly killed ourselves by now due to amount of work and 107 degree heat over the past two weeks if we had not hired a wonderful contractor to help rebuild our front porch...did we say that it's over half way done and we've only done a couple hours of demo work?

At Stef and Marc's wedding, July 4, 2009


Cannon Beach for Mitch and Erin's wedding, July 18, 2009



Ben grandma's lake house on Mason Lake, July 24th, 2009
*note the cute wet dogs and Porter's silly little life jacket (he is not exactly fond of the water)


Bones and Brew Fest August 2, 2009
August attempting to get his first taste of beer (John & Jess' adorable baby boy)...he already recognizes a good beer