Mid-Summer Projects Outdoors

It is amazing how time flies and that summer is already half way over....especially because summer weather only started  a few weeks ago and our garden is just starting to give us a few veggies but tons of lettuce (some things died from all the cold weather & hail and we were lame on what we planted this year).

Anyways, here are a few pictures of things we have been working on.

Steve has been back to stripping paint.  He is currently focusing on the garage which I did two sides of 2 years ago but did nothing last year being that I was preggo and all.  Steve just finished stripping that paint off of the back of the garage last weekend but now needs to sand, prime and paint.

Now to finish the other side and the house rafters.  

Mulch.  Has been on our list since spring but we wanted to finish planting the front yard plants.  Well, just 5 plants left and no motivation to plant so we mulched-a whole yard worth-this weekend and we think it looks great and better yet, we hope it will keep the weeds away.

Three weekends ago, we sifted what seemed like 18 million rocks using our neighbors rock sifter (chicken wire mounted between 2x4s and had a pile big enough to fill the back of the pickup.  After two weeks of having an ad on craigslist, the last load was picked up over the weekend.  The result is some awesome dirt and a more built up look in our parking strip area....plants probably won't come until next summer unless we get super ambitious and can get a plan from my brother on what to plant.  We are thinking some low maintenance plants, including bulbs (I am hoping to add some yellow so maybe with bulbs), evergreen shrubs and grasses...maybe some more roses to carry on the theme.   And yes, our elm is finally taking off after 1 1/2 years of almost no growth-it has already sprouted over 3' this summer!

Other outdoor projects include tending to our tiny garden, finding a pot for our half column and the general never ending clean up.  We also had some water drainage issues with our new stairs due to the house re-settling after being lifted last summer so our contractor Ben was nice enough to come back and cut 1/8" slits in the back of the stairs as well as prime and paint to avoid the water pooling...however, it hasn't rained since he did it so we have yet to find out if it works (yes, we could hose it down but in doing that it would make sense to clean the porch and well, that is a lot of work).

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.