Brooke here: After the last two weekends of pulling ivy, I’m fairly positive Lovecraft was nothing but a gardener with a poor imagination and a good friend who told him to add teeth and tentacles. This is a dark and malicious plant. We have a pile of ivy roots taller than the dogs and we […]
Brooke here: I have discovered landscaping brushes for Photoshop. This post is more of a public service warning than a real status update, so be aware I’ll be going quite mad with these tools over the next few weeks. We needed a schematic to decide how the path should be laid out and where the […]
Brooke here. Some landscaping projects have begun, but mainly in the areas we need to destroy before we can rebuild. The first goal of the year is to replace the fence, but the more we look at it, the slope of the front lawn is such that the smrt smart idea is to do the […]
Brooke here. The title isn’t in bad taste as this post involves nothing but misshapen slabs of concrete. Brooke: Look what I found! Brown: … giant molars? Brooke: Concrete birdbaths! They’re for the lawn! Brown: … so it can eat roughage? While prepping the area for the moss garden, I removed the red ceramic cover […]
Brooke here: The ivy removal continues, but slowly. Things hit a snag yesterday when I went after an enormous tangle of ivy and wisteria on another section of the fence. I was making some decent progress until the fence started to wobble and I realized the ivy was structural. The metal poles on the right […]
Brooke here: More ivy removal progress shots. These shots are of a 3″ by 5″ alcove between the porch stairs and the chimney. I was able to get out most of the surface roots but some seem to go straight down, so I left those exposed. When spring comes, I’ll cut down as far as […]
Brooke here: I have to keep reminding myself it’s January. Sixty degrees and sunny, but still January. There’s at least another month before frost season passes and we can do some serious landscaping, but we’ve started to price out the projects. The first is the section of the fence closest to the house. Most of […]
Brooke here: There’s one day every winter where the earth remembers what it wants to be doing. It usually takes another couple of months to shake itself awake, but there’s always that one day when the ground twitches. I love that day. Today is that day. I have to keep reminding myself that while it’s […]
Brooke here. The ivy is invading my dreams. So the zombies were attacking, like they do, and the generator kicked on so I knew that society as a whole had collapsed and we were on our own. The Baroness (now middle-aged and had really let herself go, but still wearing the same glasses and latex […]
Brooke here: Last weekend, I sat in the garden of the Orange County Social Club and talked with a very pleasant woman who keeps goats. Based on her experience with the finer points of keeping goats, the whimsy of the Rent-a-Goat ivy management option has wandered off down the road, bell a-ringin’. I described the […]
Flying by night 