Update on the Landscaping
I’ve been so busy I hardly have time to update this website! We’ve been very yard-focussed this past month. So much has been done since the last update. Our yard looks awesome now. I can hardly believe how hard we’ve worked.
There are lots of nice detail and flower photos on my flicker stream.
- Our grass is lush and healthy, and it needs a mow, but we don’t have a lawnmower.
- I haven’t finished planting everything yet, but will hopefully in the next week or two. I needed more topsoil and had some delivered last Friday. Seven yards! We need a better wheelbarrow too.
- We had Rick, our tenant downstairs, build a set of stairs from the driveway up to the backyard. They look great and I’m so pleased. (We’re going to have him build a pergola outside the suite too.) I have to finish leveling out the topsoil from the stairs out to each side, and then I’ll be planting some shrubs and ground cover. There is some grass and weeds on the right side that I need to deal with as well.
- I put up a short stone wall on one the side of the driveway up to the front stairs. I was going to just plant a few flowers at the front of the yard and put in some rocks, and we had intended on putting up a picket fence too. So from the road, you would see the plants and then the fence behind it. Once I began planting, I decided to put in a path of round pavers in order to get in there to garden without sinking in the mud. The rock garden ended up being a lot more work than I had planned. Two weekends ago, we also decided against the fence. There are a lot of lines on the house and the stairs, and we thought it might look too chaotic. (We had already bought the pickets too, so we returned them.)
- A month ago Tyler used all the limestone (which we scored for a super good deal from a local landscaper) to make a rock wall around a part of the driveway. Last week, I “finessed” it, backfilling the wall and adding smaller rocks in the nooks to make it a bit more substantial. I think it looks awesome. I also planted some ground cover above it, and behind that will be a row of low, bushy junipers.
- A few weeks ago it was our last burn weekend in Sooke, and we spent a whole day cleaning up the east side of the yard and throwing it on the fire. Ty also cleaned up under the front stairs and spread gravel there. What a difference that made. He made a little path behind it too, and a place to put our garbage bins, out of sight.
- This last weekend I spent half the day on Saturday at a workshop on ethnobotany. We walked through the forest at the Beecher Bay reserve, learning about native plants. Very interesting! On Sunday, we started priming the front stairs and railing. Ty also finished installing the cedar decking on the floor of the front patio. The deck looks great, and just needs a clear coat. The weather is fussy, very spring in Victoria, but I did manage to paint some more of the railing today. It’s just primer, and the stairs look better already!
- We had four or five roofers come by too, to look at our roof and give us an estimate. We had quotes from $8,500 to $16,000! One roofer found FOUR layers of shingles on the house. The roof looks horrible and really needs to be replaced, but the $ is a big ouch, especially since I’m not working. Our gutters need to be fixed or replaced too. One is falling off the side of the house. We’re thinking we’ll bite the bullet and just get it done.
- Still to come: a stone wall for the OTHER side of the driveway, perhaps a stone wall for where the picket fence would have been, clearing out the ditch and encouraging just grass to grow, maybe a gardening shed at the front west side of the property, fill in and spread wild flower seeds on the west side too. Inside: paint the walls, paint our funky old wooden ladder, paint the hardwood floors upstairs a high-gloss black, 1/4 round edging, install new baseboard heaters, rearrange the living room. And so much more…
