Landscaping and hardscaping the back yard

Ever since we bought this house several years ago my wife and I have been trying to come up with a plan to fix up the back yard into a showcase lawn that would rival anything you could see in a Better Homes & Gardens magazine.

We’ve been thinking about putting some patio pavers on the ground right outside of the sliding glass doors in the basement to make the area look like an outdoor living room/lounging area. I am even thinking about turning the area out there under the deck into a screen room, but first we want to take care of the yard. We’d like to make a path with paving stone that winds down to the platform at the pond’s edge from the back deck.

For now we need to come to a decision about whether to set the stones in gravel, concrete, or go the more natural route and simply have them set in mulch. I’m inclined to go with gravel or mulch because concrete does not fare well in this area. I’d like to do something in the back yard that will reduce the amount of mowing that I have to do back there; there are several steep hillsides that need to be terraced. I think that with a little bit of elbow grease that we could have this yard ship-shape in no time at all!

Doing business with family

On the surface, one would think that doing business with your own family would be a good way to get started in business. After all, families are supposed to be supportive of each other, right? There is another saying, though, that the prophet is scorned in his own village. I’m sorry to say that my wife’s family appears to be the type of family where they will not be supportive of each others efforts and will not do anything to give each other a break. That is really sad, and makes it very difficult for anyone to become successful. Family members should not be haters, and yet it seems as if that is exactly what is going on here. Very sad, really.

Amazing Grapes

Celebrations are steeped in tradition, depending upon the occasion. I like the ones that involve a toast, like at a wedding reception. The last time I had a Champagne toast was at my parent’s anniversary party. It is always good to toast a happy couple, whether they are starting out on their life together or celebrating 40 years of marriage.

The Internet makes moving so much easier

How many times have you had to move from one house to another in your lifetime? Two, three times? I don’t know about you, but I think that moving from one house to another is a huge pain in the you-know-what! When I was a young child our family moved three times, and to be perfectly honest they didn’t involve the kids in the move at all. They just sent all of us kids away for a week to a friend’s house or to a sleep-over camp and at the end of the sleep-over when our parents picked us up they just took us to our new home. Matter of fact – oh by the way, while you were gone we moved. This is our new house, and this is your new bedroom.

I guess we should be grateful that they came and picked us up! We never would have found them if they had just moved away and left us there! Wouldn’t that have been a nightmare for the camp owners and/or family friends! Anyway, the point being we never saw the work involved in moving, all of the packing and unpacking, none of the negotiations with removal companies, none of the headaches.

Since I’ve grown up and been on my own I have had to move five times. And they were a pain. Especially the first four – prior to the invention of the Internet. I found it very difficult to locate the services that I needed to make the move go smoothly. Thank goodness for the Internet and all of the resources that I’ve been able to use to find the right companies and services that I needed to make the last move as easy as possible. It even helped me find the house that I wanted to buy!

Just when we thought spring was here

We woke up to snow flurries this morning. I was rather surprised since it was quite warm out yesterday and I really thought that spring was well underway. I didn’t listen to the weather report yesterday! I was quite surprised that it continued to snow all morning long, too. Usually when it snows around here it is only for an hour or two. I had to drive in to town, and the roads were just icy enough to be dangerous. The roads had not been sanded or prepared for the weather at all, so I guess the DOT was caught by surprise too!

There were several cars off of the road, having slid into the ditch. Whenever I see that I think to myself that the people were very lucky that they didn’t lose control while they were driving across one of the many bridges on that road. That is always something I worry about with my family when the roads are slick like that. The bridges around here don’t even look like bridges – they just have guard rails on the side of the road, and I worry that any car going at the posted speed limit of 55 could easily crash through the barriers and end up in the river or the bottom of the ravine. I don’t trust those guard rails much at all.