Another weekend of forming the gardens…and follow me on Instagram

This time we used native perennial seed, compost, pretty gravel/rocks and mulch. Some of the spaces will be filled with transplants and others will wait for plants to sprout from seeds.

These photos show how the areas on the west side of the house turned out.

View from the front porch

View from the parking area

The dry creek bed (drainage ditch/stream)

I could go on and on about what is/will be planted where - and I will. For now, there's only time for this quick glimpse of the progress.

For more frequent glimpses, I've started posting photos on Instagram. There won't be details there. But I have a lot of fun with snapping quick photos of the happenings around the farm. You can find me @gardenrambler or by searching for Patti Ragsdale (I think - it's all pretty new to me!).

Here's a photo from a recent Instagram post about our new neighbor :-)

More gravel and garden sculpting

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This was the second of three truckloads of gravel that Brent and I spread. We ordered a whopping 45 tons of gravel to finish out the our drive, walkways and a guest parking area. That's on top of the 40 tons that we spread earlier this past winter.

Luckily, without 2 mortgages we can now afford to rent things like this Dingo to help :-)

Amazingly useful Toro Dingo (loved it!)

Before we spread the gravel, I used the Dingo to finalize the layout of our gardens on the west side of the house. The smaller bucket attachment with the teeth was perfect for digging and moving dirt.

Here are some photos of the new lay of the garden space on the west side of the house:

We included a low "bridge" made of limestone slabs.
(There's my favorite landscaping partner posing to give it some scale.)

This view of the "bridge" shows the beginning of the gravel path from the front porch.

Here is the finished path from the guest parking to the front door.
The soft swale that will drain water down the hill is somewhat visible on the left side of this photo.

And this is the finished rock wall. The "bridge" with the drainage "stream" is to the left.
The stream will drain into a water detention depression that is below the rock wall.
The swale mentioned in the previous photo caption also drains to the depression.

With any luck, this work will give us a lot of different habitats for our native and edible plantings. It along with some well-placed and carefully chosen plants, will also mitigate any erosion issues on our rather steep sloped yard. Some of the plantings will start today - in the form of rapid spreading of seeds. It's supposed to rain tomorrow so I need to work fast to get those on the ground!

More to come...

HVAC and Sun-shades/eyebrows

It was a long road. But we settled on a great solution for heating and cooling our new home. We wanted to avoid the typical central air/heat that would require ductwork throughout the house. So Brent worked with a contractor to design a high-efficiency "split" system with minimal ducting.

The installation is happening this week.

Lower level work area for HVAC. Notice the units hung on the ceiling?

2 of the very few ducts installed in the walls of the master.

It's quite a relief to have this very important work getting done so quickly. With this hurdle cleared we can begin the finishing of the interior.

Meanwhile, outside the huge retaining wall on the east side of the house is nearly finished.

Greg Wheeler with Brent admiring the fit of this massive structure.
Our deck will integrate with this wall and the positioning is perfect.

Greg is working on our walls on the side (in his spare time) and is doing a fabulous job. The east side is the most difficult because of the deck, the slope and the cistern placement. Once this is finished, Greg says the west side will be easy. It's just 3 short walls, each being only a couple of rocks high.

For the last two weeks Rick and Dave have been working on our "eyebrows." These are the structures that will hold corrugate metal roofing material and serve as shades for the windows on the South. There are several others to be built over some windows on the east and west side and one on the north over the garage doors.

The most important eyebrow on the south side. It provides shade to the lower level
windows and the sliding door for the Sunspace.

Here's a shot of the eyebrow on the north side. It's the same construction as the once on the south.
It's included only to carry the look around the house (since we won't have need for shade on this side).

We are spending most of our time these days trying to wrangle showings of our house in Shawnee. It's quite a trick to manage random showings with 3 teenagers home from school, a dog and both of us at work. Hopefully, it will be a brief struggle with a big payoff. The house really looks beautiful and will make a great home for some lucky family. Here's a picture of the wonderful patio and terraces that Brent and the boys built.

I know our new place will have charming spaces to rival this one,
but it's hard to imagine.