the slow exterior beautification continues.

we needed to remove the two trees on the side of the house, as seen above. the one further down, that is in its own little circle, was pretty diseased. the one closest to camera was doing just fine, but right next to the house and foundation, which made us rather uncomfortable. we were sad to remove the trees, especially since our back and side yard is basically all concrete otherwise, but we really felt like we had to.

with the trees gone, the side looked sad with its little dirt patches, so we decided to do a little bit of cleanup.

we started by just tackling the patch right up against the house. knocked out those brick liners, raked the dirt clean of roots and other big pieces of debris, and used a cement block to tamp it flat.

then we put down landscape barrier and covered the whole thing in red desert rock.

tada! much cleaner right?

we have big plans to deck over much of the concrete you see, plus put in some raised garden beds over the red rock. it's been awhile since we've really done any hands-on house projects of our own, and this really got our juices going! we've already finished up another project that i haven't gotten around to blogging yet, but look for that soon!

the return of an unwelcome houseguest.

what an exciting evening we've had! after eating dinner and watching an old episode of doctor who (we're avid fans!), we were finishing our last blog post when we started hear little taps and other weird noises behind us, about where the front door is. there are definitely lots of cats in the neighborhood, so we paid no attention, until we noticed it was above us. and remembered that a few months back, we had a raccoon problem in the attic...!

so we rushed outside, flashed our light up there and saw.. nothing. we had previously figured out how he was getting in: a few missing pieces of wood in the attic gables allowed enough space for a pesky little raccoon to enter. except, he's not so little because we saw him last time, right after we sealed it all up, and he had tried to enter but couldn't. he was at least 30 lbs. big raccoon. but we thought our problem was solved, and haven't heard a peep in the attic for months. until tonight. and the wire mesh we had used to block the entry still looked intact, which was awfully confusing.

james is a trooper.

we knew the raccoon was definitely back though, because he tore up our side garden, which is something he did the last time:

raccoons are jerks.

anyway, while james was still scouring the outside of the house to try and see where it was coming and going from, i went back inside the house and was able to confirm it was definitely still inside the attice. james took a ladder into the front yard, stood on it, and shined a light at the entry, while i knocked our ceiling with an umbrella to try and scare it out. and it eventually worked. james then used the ladder to get onto the roof, went to the spot the raccoon had managed to get loose and tied the lattice-work together with 10-gauge steel wire and put a cinderblock on top. fingers crossed that holds.

a cheap DIY place for plants.

sanford says this part of the yard is UGLY, mom and dad!

we have to agree, so we decided to do something about it!

we don't really have a back yard so much as a big, covered concrete area that is used for storage of things. and recently, because of all the plants we bough, a lot of the plants ended up sitting back there until we could find a place to plant them. we spend a little over $10 at home depot on a bunch of cinder blocks, and combined them with a couple pieces of lumber that were left by the last ownders of the house (plus some ol' fashioned sweeping) and voila!

it's still got a long way to go - we have plans to update this space to make it more open and airy and green - but in the meantime, we have an organized place to incubate plants until we plant them!

it's especially great for plants that like morning sun (which it gets lot of, below) but like shade otherwise.