What else is new?
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No renovations to report but Mayla’s turning our back yard into the Peruvian Amazonia.
The patio:
The view of the backyard sitting areas from the patio. If you look way back where the table and two chairs are, that’s designed for a fire pit but I can’t really have one of those.
@jon-nyc Beautiful, Jon! That's a good use for entertaining and for the family. I was just thinking about posting the plan for our backyard. It won't get started until next year, so there is time for collecting more ideas. We have brilliant people here, and I know they will have great ideas.
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Let us know more about the canvas we have to work with @brenda!
@jon-nyc beautiful. I love my wife, but appreciate having someone in your life who has the vision and style for that sort of thing. I am mediocre best at, but certainly lead the design (indoor and outdoor) and furnishing efforts here. My wife fully would admit she doesn’t have the creative or vision talent so is usually there to help make a decision between 3 options I’ll give, but how nice it is to have Mayla’s talent around!
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@brenda said in What else is new?:
@Mik
Oregon. The Pinots are so awesome there!Closest thing to fine Burgundy, very consistent quality and a whole lot less expensive. Fantastic stuff.
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@brenda said in What else is new?:
@Mik
Oregon. The Pinots are so awesome there!Closest thing to fine Burgundy, very consistent quality and a whole lot less expensive. Fantastic stuff.
@Mik
We get some every time we drive home from Oregon. Last time, we had five cases of various wines, and our return trip was over Thanksgiving weekend. It got cold, really cold, especially overnight as we went back through Nort' Dakota, don'cha know.Told hubby we could NOT leave the wine in the vehicle (a Suburban). He said it would not hurt the wine. I said, "Yeah, but the bottles won't be happy! They're going to break."
He hauled five cases of wine into our hotel room every night, and out every morning, the entire trip from Oregon to Minnesnowta.
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Let us know more about the canvas we have to work with @brenda!
@jon-nyc beautiful. I love my wife, but appreciate having someone in your life who has the vision and style for that sort of thing. I am mediocre best at, but certainly lead the design (indoor and outdoor) and furnishing efforts here. My wife fully would admit she doesn’t have the creative or vision talent so is usually there to help make a decision between 3 options I’ll give, but how nice it is to have Mayla’s talent around!
I'll need to post my drawing that shows some of the design. It includes the retaining wall that will give some perspective on the grade change and such.
It will be interesting to get others' ideas. Our landscape designer thinks it's great, and wants to hire me. LOLOL
I think it's easier when you know the site and the style of the house. Also, we have been thinking about this for several years, visiting various public parks and such. We have been working on the plan in our heads for long enough to have many ideas, but more are welcome!
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@Mik
We get some every time we drive home from Oregon. Last time, we had five cases of various wines, and our return trip was over Thanksgiving weekend. It got cold, really cold, especially overnight as we went back through Nort' Dakota, don'cha know.Told hubby we could NOT leave the wine in the vehicle (a Suburban). He said it would not hurt the wine. I said, "Yeah, but the bottles won't be happy! They're going to break."
He hauled five cases of wine into our hotel room every night, and out every morning, the entire trip from Oregon to Minnesnowta.
@brenda yeah, sadly I would too. Too much invested to chance it.
We took a trip to Champaign IL a while back to go to Binny’s, my fave wine place for that last 20 years. They had MFR’s fave chard for about half price so we bought six cases and another three of miscellaneous Bordeaux and Rhône’s for me.
If in Portland, check out Great Wine Buys. They have an outstanding selection of all sorts of Oregon Pinots and they ship. I still buy a case or so a year from them.
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@brenda yeah, sadly I would too. Too much invested to chance it.
We took a trip to Champaign IL a while back to go to Binny’s, my fave wine place for that last 20 years. They had MFR’s fave chard for about half price so we bought six cases and another three of miscellaneous Bordeaux and Rhône’s for me.
If in Portland, check out Great Wine Buys. They have an outstanding selection of all sorts of Oregon Pinots and they ship. I still buy a case or so a year from them.
@Mik Thanks for the tip about where to look for some good stuff.
While it was no fun hauling the wine every night and morning, we are sure glad we did. Those are really lovely wines, and we (now) enjoy the story of hauling them home. Between the wines, our luggage, and our froggo, we had a lot to bring into the hotel every evening.
When it gets closer to November, remind me to tell how we celebrated Thanksgiving last year on our way back to Minnesota. We still laugh about it, and it's all just fun, no carrying of heavy wine boxes.
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I'll need to post my drawing that shows some of the design. It includes the retaining wall that will give some perspective on the grade change and such.
It will be interesting to get others' ideas. Our landscape designer thinks it's great, and wants to hire me. LOLOL
I think it's easier when you know the site and the style of the house. Also, we have been thinking about this for several years, visiting various public parks and such. We have been working on the plan in our heads for long enough to have many ideas, but more are welcome!
@brenda said in What else is new?:
I'll need to post my drawing that shows some of the design. It includes the retaining wall that will give some perspective on the grade change and such.
It will be interesting to get others' ideas. Our landscape designer thinks it's great, and wants to hire me. LOLOL
I think it's easier when you know the site and the style of the house. Also, we have been thinking about this for several years, visiting various public parks and such. We have been working on the plan in our heads for long enough to have many ideas, but more are welcome!
Fun stuff. Like you said, you know the property and you've been thinking about it long enough. Trust your gut. That being said, today I saw in the hardware store a real-wood (but connected) garden edging that I thought might be a cool idea in the future to really frame a nice garden area. (See below) We also are putting in some emerald arborvitae to replace some old shrubs we removed near the fence line. I was going to put in Hicks Yews (or Japanese Yews) because they are so shade tolerant, but the online warnings about how poisonous they can be to little kids and idiot dogs that eat them made me go back to the arborvitae.
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This is the edging I use with brick to create a mowing edge. I dig a base for polymeric sand to place bricks vertically on their side with additional bricks laid flat as the mowing edge. I sweep additional polymeric sand between the bricks.
Hubby loves this type of mowing edge, especially because I install it.
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This is the edging I use with brick to create a mowing edge. I dig a base for polymeric sand to place bricks vertically on their side with additional bricks laid flat as the mowing edge. I sweep additional polymeric sand between the bricks.
Hubby loves this type of mowing edge, especially because I install it.
@brenda said in What else is new?:
Hubby loves this type of mowing edge, especially because I install it.
I find that weeds and random bits of shrubbery provide a very effective mowing edge at a fraction of the cost.
Arguably mine don't look quite as nice as those.
