Catching Up

Last week I had too much stuff for one post, so I'm starting off today with something that happened over a week ago -- a brush fire that threatened one of my favorite walking places!

I'm talking about Columbia Point, a natural area (meaning "lots of sagebrush") where the Hounds and I enjoy a lovely loop trail leading to where the Yakima and Columbia Rivers meet up.  The fire burned 85 acres nearby.

We went for a walk there a few days later, and you can see the burned area from the farthest point we reach before heading back:

The fire did try to get up the hill to the walking trail we use.

And it did get over the trail in a few small areas.

I was sad to see the burned area, where there were a lot of trees, but also glad that it avoided our walking trail for the most part.  

I spotted some more wildflowers in bloom -- this lovely lupine:

And this Desert Globemallow:

The Hounds cooled off in the river afterwards.

Truman went out quite a ways!

Meanwhile, back at the ranch (home), I finally figured out what to paint on the new gate/fence.  My first idea had been to paint a fancy faux gate on it with lots of flowers intertwined in and around it, but that seemed too complex.  Next, Devon the mail carrier suggested painting colorful fish, which did seem simpler, but somehow it failed to inspire me.

Then one day two thoughts collided in my brain and the light dawned.  I was looking at the mural on my living room wall, where I depicted a Great Blue Heron by a pond with reeds, and the first thought came:  I could paint a heron on the fence!

But herons are nowhere near as common here as are Great Egrets, and I had recently taken some fabulous photos of an egret catching a fish, and the second thought came:  I could paint an egret from my own photo!

It definitely inspired me, because I painted this in about three days:

Slightly closer view without the surrounding distractions:

I even got in the fish that it caught:

 So that made me quite happy, although it also made me quite stiff and sore and tired, what with getting up and down on my knees to do the bottom portions (my knees and back do not spring back into fine fettle the way they once did, alas).  It really ought to have a few cattails or a turtle or something, but oh well.  It will do for now.

And now for a report on my landscaping woes.  Not sure what I reported in the past, if I did, but in any case, the basic idea is that I wanted some sort of garden in the back yard, and decided the 600sf lawn space between the patio and the outbuilding would work well.  Having dug up a lawn before, I very much wanted to pay someone else to do it, along with bringing it lots of good garden soil, and changing the underground sprinklers from lawn to garden heads, and maybe putting in some nice level paths.

Well, Landscaper #1 came out 8 weeks ago, promised a bid in 2-3 weeks, failed to do so, told me he'd have it in another 2-3 weeks, and failed again due to not having enough workers at his nursery/landscaping business.  Sigh.

Landscaper #2 came out 7 weeks ago, failed to provide a bid, and failed to return my follow-up message.

Landscaper #3 was more promising (suggested by my lawn mowing service guy).  He turned up promptly, and said he could do what I needed. But then I made the tactical error of asking about the faux cobblestone path between the lawn and the would-be garden -- it had grass growing between the stones, and I thought perhaps a weed block or some sort would be good, or even better, take the path out and just put in a bark mulch one with some stepping stones.

Well, he explained why a concrete path, stamped with a pleasing pattern, would be ever so much better, and under the influence of his enthusiasm and his confidence it would do the job of keeping grass out of the garden, I said, sure, put that in the bid.  Wrong.

The bid came in three days later at $7,000.  Oh, dear.  $3,000 of that was for removal and replacement of that danged path.  Suddenly the faux cobblestones looked ever so attractive to me, even with the grass growing between the gaps.

There were a couple of confusing items in the bid, so I replied via email asking for clarification, and for a new bid without the concrete path.  That was 8 days ago, and there has been no reply.  I suspect he now believes that I am a) trouble and/or b) too small a job to bother about.  Sigh.

You know, when one landscaper flakes out on you, it's probably nothing more than an anomaly.  When two landscapers fail you, it might suggest a trend.  But when three landscapers opt not to work with you, then it's just possible that the universe is trying to tell you something.

Such as, It's not the right time and/or place for you to put in a garden.

I decided the Universe was trying to tell me to hold off on that particular plan, and to do some gardening elsewhere instead to see how dedicated I was to the whole notion.  Which brings me to the Back Forty:

There is a planting strip against the back yard fence which I call the Back Forty though in fact, it is only 38 feet long.  It's five feet wide, and the previous owners put in a lilac, two barberry shrubs, two hostas in containers, and then covered the rest with weed block fabric and a million rocks.

They are horrid rocks.  Big (average 4 inches), sharp and chunky, and utterly impossible to work around.  But, this is GARDEN space, with GARDEN sprinkler heads.  So a few weeks ago, after getting tired of waiting for landscapers to give me bids, I went ahead and started planting things in it (after laboriously yanking out those two barberry shrubs).  Planting new stuff required removing the rock and the weed block. 

I've managed to clear enough room for, and to plant, three roses, a penstemon, a geranium, and some peppermint.  I want to plant tons more stuff, but the rocks are EVIL, and perplexing in their abundance.  I've been dumping them into the dog run area, which is never used, where the rocks seem to multiply by magic.  You see, so far I have cleared off areas that amount to around 45 square feet.

Yet this is what the dog run now looks like.  Clearly this is much more than 45 square feet of rocks!  How do they do it?  The depth is the same as that in the garden area I cleared out, and in fact, the rocks are actually piled deeper in some parts of the dog run.  

How is this possible???  How can I have removed all the rocks you see above in the dog run, and yet have only a few small areas of the planting strip cleared?  Where am I going to dump the rest of those rocks -- I have to keep the middle of the dog run open for access to the heat pump.  

Oh, dear.

Well, I shall just have to keep shoveling rocks, and perhaps build a wall with them somewhere, or perhaps the yard needs a rock mountain as a focal point.  

Meanwhile, the roses that I inherited are looking ever so lovely:

Unfortunately, they're in the front, where I only see them when I come or go.  My main living room window looks out on the back yard.  Sigh.

Well, I am plowing ahead, so to speak, and will continue to post updates as I go along.

So that's it for last week and a bit of the week before that, and I am caught up!  Whee!

Have a great week, everyone!