The great outdoors

September 5-6, 2010

I didn't charge the camera battery yesterday, so we didn't have everything we needed for the blog. So, here is a summary of the last two days.

Since it was such great weather over the long weekend, we spent much of our time working on the yard. First, Alok finished gutting the apartment bathroom on Sunday. Here it was when he was finished. He doubted his ability to properly pull out/cap the fixtures, so we're leaving that for Craig on Tuesday. Here it is now:







I worked on power washing the house, as seen here:
















Alok is meeting with another potential painter tomorrow regarding painting the house.

My mom worked managing the ivy that is covering our property. There could seriously be bodies under the ivy and we wouldn't even know. She was able to get some of the front under control and uncovered some pretty cool sides to our front sidewalk. Here they are:



Here is the rest of the front at the end of Sunday:



We are trying to get rid of all of this ivy in the front. Basically, it is full of bugs and impossible to control. We have a call to a nursery in town to get some idea as to what to do in the yard here (and everywhere).

Today, all three of us worked on uncovering what turns out to be a pretty massive patio in the backyard. Here it is when we started:











Here was the process:














Here it is after a lot of pulling/digging/cleaning:
















We obviously have more clean-up to do, but it's a good start.

The patio is literally about twice the size that we thought. Unfortunately, the ivy ruined parts of the flagstone, but it's still in fairly good shape.

Here are some other pictures of our horribly messy, out of control yard at the beginning of the day today:




pond covered up- I failed to get after pics... oops!










Alok uncovering the patio


lovely Christmas lights I cut down


random plastic swan, anyone?




Alex stuck in the door, trying to escape; these steps are off the room that had the massive bookshelf that we tore down and go onto the flagstone patio





I also cut Christmas lights off of several of the outdoor trees. Those were interesting.

Alok also worked on filling in the small pond. He pulled out the liner and realized that the pond is actually concrete. Hmmm.... what to do about that one? We really don't want a pond there (maintenance/safety/having your dog jump in it all the time issues), but we're not sure what we're doing now.

Oh, I forgot to mention that the Brown ladies told us that they had buried their pets next to the wading pool. Pet Cemetery anyone?

Jessica