Stuck in the Middle

It seems like we have been stuck in the middle of a few projects lately. Like the patio. And the sprinklers. And the basement. And other stuff. Why does stuff take so long?

Our patio guy was in a huge hurry to get the forms set up. {This was taken before the trenches were added to the mix.} Then it was supposed to be poured last Monday. Then last Saturday. Now this Saturday...And our basement was going to have beadboard on the bottom to avoid having to deal with the putty. Obviously we changed our minds. After we cut all the beadboard...{don't worry I'll use it eventually.} This room will be for my little sister. {She already moved in.}

And the sprinkler parts came on Saturday. But someone ordered a few wrong parts. So we will wait again. No hurry.

In the meantime, we decided to seed the yard instead of sod. {I always wanted to do seed, I was just patiently waiting for someone else to decide it was *his* idea.} So there are some advantages to being "slow and steady."

My taxes at work

Our water conservancy district has a test garden nearby where they show you different plants that don't require much water. Tonight we went to visit and I was surprised with how many plants there were that I really liked.

Mostly we were going to check out a couple of different kinds of lawns. We really liked the bio turf, which is supposed to use 25% less water, and the liesure grass we might use in the back yard. I didn't like the look of it as much, but it has really skinny blades so it was nice and soft to walk on in my bare feet. They also had some RTF fescue grass that is greener and self seeding, but costs twice as much as the others.

We saw a hummingbird there, which the kids thought was fun. I thought it was fun too. Unfortunately, at that *precise* moment my camera battery died. Seriously.

But these are some of the pretty ones I did get pictures of before that happened:

that one looks almost tropical

Buttered Popcorn Daylily {he he he}

{Desert Willow}

Not a great pic of this one, it was not really in its prime at the moment.

I want to use the Boxwood to make a small hedge that borders our planting beds/lawn.

{Maybe I will find a picture to illustrate that later.}

The name of the flower that the hummingbird was drinking from is the rupestris hyssop. {however in the world you say that! Yeah, and that's not even the scientific name.} I did not see it drinking from the hummingbird flower, go figure.


Oh, and the lily at the top I am pretty sure is the Bama Music Daylily. But the tags were kind of askew.

Then you take the gravel and you spread it, you spread it...*

This is how we spent last night and this morning:

Here is the patio and over there is the driveway extension/basketball court.And this is what's left of our gravel pile. I missed getting a "before" shot so just imagine it much bigger. We used up more than half. And of course the pile is in the front of the house and had to be moved by the wheelbarrow-full to the back where it will be used. The delivery guy didn't want to crack the driveway. It seemed like a good idea at the time, but man I wished he had dumped it in the back...

*Alternate title: Oh, my aching back

This was not a test

Just out of curiousity, how many of you can tell me what this is for?


Because I had to learn real quick on Wednesday.

Here's what happened....

A friend of mine from Kansas was in town {on her way back from living in Denmark and Germany for a few years} and came over for a visit. It was great to see each other, since it's been like 4 years. Our kids were playing together as kids can do when they don't really know each other but just play anyway. And we were chatting and catching up on things as two friends who haven't seen each other in 4 years do. It was getting toward dinnertime. The kids were out on the trampoline with their popsicles.

Then the kids came inside in a hurry. Amid the shouts of "It's broken! It's broken!" I noticed that the sprinklers in the front yard were on. {We had been out in the front yard the night before scraping off all the dead grass to prep for our new grass. And in the process Cuddles had observed his Dad turning on and off the sprinklers.} I shouted to Cuddles to turn off the sprinklers. Again they said, "It's broken!" Hmmm....what, I wondered could be broken??

As soon as I stepped out of the door I noticed *all* of the sprinklers were on and there were two conspicuous streams of water coming out from the little green control box. Mystery solved, I knew what was broken...And then I came to another startling conclusion: I had absolutely no idea how to turn off the sprinklers. Even non-broken ones.
And the panic began to set in.

The Professor was still at work, so I picked up the phone to get his advice. No answer. That man *never* answers when I need him to.
OK, think, think, think.

I went into the garage to try the programming thingy. {Yes, I am quite familiar with all the sprinkler system terminology} But the button was already pointing to off. I moved the dials around a bit just in case. But, no luck.


Back outside I went. {Well, somewhere in this story Cuddles was sent inside for a bath. And to "wait until Daddy comes home..." But that's a bit of a blur.}
And I'm still trying to reach The Professor at work. And he still doesn't answer. I'm hoping that means he is already on his way home. Then I take another look at the sprinkler control box and try to plug back in the little devices that seem to have been removed. But my strength is no match for the geysers that they have become.

Soon The Professor drives up and figures out what all the commotion is. He knows what to do! We just need to get the key thingy to go down the long skinny hole in the ground that turns off all the water. Minor detail: we ain't got one.
We try to borrow one from the neighbors. Nobody who is home at that point has one.
{Speeding up the story...} The Professor zips to Home Depot to buy one of those key thingys. Tiffani and her kids leave {after someone gets a car door closed on them} and finally some how the sprinklers get turned off.
My estimation is that the sprinklers were on somewhere in the vicinity of an hour. {The ground was still damp this morning.}

And that is why I forgot to take pictures of them coming to visit.

Natural Causes

My kids won't stop listening to this ever since I found it at the library. We have renewed it to the renewal limit and then renewed it some more. I wonder if it has to do with the fact that one of the stories is about Arthur losing his first tooth. At the ripe old age of seven.

Anyone who knows Cuddles knows how fond he is of pain. That is probably why it took this long for his first baby tooth to fall out {from forces of nature and not from those of the dentist}.
I can't remember how long this tooth was loose, but observe how the permanent tooth has already come into view. This was a long. time. coming.

The timing of the actual "fall out" was unfortunate for me, since I missed the look on his face in the moment. Turns out that the stars aligned today during Primary between the approximate times of 3:15 and 4:00 pm. {He had showed me his tooth during Singing Time just before class and I could see that it was dangling upside down and tried to get him to just pull it for crying out loud. But he would have none of that.} sigh. And I know that his teachers really appreciated the interruption to their lesson... At least the tooth didn't actually end up lost.

Since When???

Recently I saw these really cool barrels you can put under your rain gutters to catch the water and use it to water stuff in your yard. I thought that would be pretty sweet to hook up a couple of those in the back of our house.

But, turns out Utah is one of two, maybe three states where that is illegal. Illegal. Because the state "owns" the rain water.

Huh??? Now that sounds more like something I would have expected in Massachusetts, but Utah?? Seriously?? It's the *desert.*

So much for that idea...

Laying Out

So The Professor is bound and determined to install our own sprinkler system. I tried many persuasive tactics to get him to hire it out, but that man is . . . determined. And it will save us gobs of money. I just hope it doesn't leave us with more gray hairs. Luckily the front yard is already installed so we just have the back yard to deal with. And that is plenty.

I mean, if putting together this drawing is any indication of what a pain the rest of the process is going to be, then we are in for a *real treat*. I lost track of how many times we measured and remeasured and changed our minds about where the patio would go and then I would draw it and things wouldn't quite match up. That triangular side yard is a killer. {I know I took trigonometry. . .} Ugh! But it felt great to say, "I'm done."

And I've been sifting through Better Homes and Gardens and Sunset magazines and websites about butterfly gardens and growing raspberries and water conservation and lots of other fun stuff.

That will be the fun part.