New irrigation has been installed. Well at least, most of it. I have no idea what the vertical white pipes are for or what the colored flags indicate. Since I have never attempted to learn Spanish, I couldn’t exactly ask the crew to explain it to me.
Tomorrow the Hadden Landscape crew will be ripping out my old deck and steps, and then on Wednesday and Thursday the forms will be built for the new back steps and the entrance pad to the garage. Friday is concrete day.
NOTHING. Nil, zero, zilch, zip, nada, diddly-squat. After getting up at the crack of dawn to move my car out of the driveway to make room for the crew’s equipment, I discovered – after a phone call, of course – that this team works ten hour days four days a week. What a blessing for them, because Friday turned out to be the hottest day of the week with temperatures hovering around 105 degrees.
I will only post photos on the days that something actually happens, and Monday the irrigation crew will start their thing. Then we will have to wait until the concrete contractor is available to do his portion. We are at a standstill until then. It could be two days this week or three weeks from now, so I will not be holding my breath. I have asked the landscape crew not to tear out the old wooden deck until the concrete guy gives us a definite date and has actually shown up to build the forms.
It’s 102 degrees in the shade, and the guys are still here toiling away on the surface of the sun. To the right you can see that a ditch is being dug. It was determined yesterday that because of a low spot close to the southeast corner of my house, two existing downspouts would need to be connected to a sub-grade drain pipe that would run from this corner to the alley between the garage and neighbor’s fence. I know… you’re probably thinking that it would have been easier to raise the grade. This isn’t possible, because we are keeping the existing original concrete and brick paving. So there.
Elsewhere, you can see the steel edging outlining the different beds and paths. This is being done prior to amending and tilling the soil so that the irrigation crew can start their work.
Looks kind of hopeless. As I post this, the little shed you see to the right in the above photo is being dismantled, and that big pile of concrete is waiting to be loaded onto a dump truck that has yet to arrive. If you’re wondering what that white pickup truck and trailer are doing in the alley, all I can say is that I hope that Mary and John understand that furniture is either being moved in or out of their house.
And say goodbye. Tomorrow morning the crew, Hadden Landscaping, will start the process of converting my backyard into a sun garden. Tomorrow’s agenda includes busting up the old concrete driveway, removing the small shed, and then spraying something on the St. Augustine to kill it. Killing the grass makes me unhappy, because this is the only location on my property where it has thrived. Michael Parkey, my landscape architect who is very environmentally conscious, tells me this is a necessary evil. If we don’t do it, the grass will grow back and become a nuisance in my perennial beds. I find this hard to believe because I can’t get the grass to grow very well in my front shade garden.
I plan to blog all the phases of my backyard’s transformation. The first phase will be the demolition, second phase will be the hardscape installation, and then the final phase will be the landscaping. Stay tuned.
The Texas Spider Lily. At the end of June, this container plant sends up five bloom stalks just in time for our Fourth of July holiday. Next year I plan to repot it into a bigger container. Unfortunately, once in a bigger pot it will not bloom that summer. For some reason this true Texas native likes to be root bound before it blooms. You can purchase the bulbs from The Southern Bulb Company.
Update! As of the Fourth of July, there are seven sparklers! Not five.
Those pink things you see are my first rain lilies of the season. Here in Dallas we had two days of heavy rains early last week, and look what they left behind. The one in the top photo is called Grandiflora Rain Lily (Zephyranthes grandiflora). It’s the biggest and pinkest one of the three varieties that I have planted. The bottom photo shows a variety called Habranthus Pink Rain Lily (Habranthus robustus). Both of these varieties and the third version that has yet to bloom were purchased through The Southern Bulb Company. The man behind The Southern Bulb Company, Chris Wiesinger (also know as The Bulb Hunter), has a great story on how he combined dating and bulb hunting into one event. Check it out.
Except for the caladiums, all summer annuals have been planted. I wanted to wait another week before planting the bulbs, because they have a much shorter life span than the other annuals. I take photos at the beginning and at the end of each season to keep as a record of the placement, size, and quantity of my seasonal choices. So keep in mind while viewing the photos in this post, that you are looking at plants that have yet to grow to their full potential, and those unsightly bare spots will soon fill in.
A pig with attitude has finally found his permanent home after three years of collecting dust on my work table within the garage. He had to wait until my general contractor returned to finish up my home’s final phase of restoration. Of all the fun weathervane options, he was by far my favorite. The website that I purchased him from is no longer up and running, but I did manage to find another site with the exact same pig and many other well-crafted options. Eventually I will take a photo from the front of my garage. Today the doors were dismantled and hauled off to be repaired causing the front view to look rather pitiful.
The backyard garden’s construction documents are complete and my landscape architect, Michael Parkey, will now send them out to bid. Perhaps in two weeks the construction will begin and my poor neighbors will no longer have to deal with the view of my trailer-park-of-a backyard.
I have also ordered the fancy lace chain link fence that I wrote about in a previous post. It’s due to ship from India next week. Trying to find someone to deal with all the paperwork involved with getting this chain link fabric cleared through customs has been one giant pain in the derrière. This product has been designed in the Netherlands, fabricated in India, and will be shipped by sea. The Dutch design firm informed me that I would be responsible for locating the nearest deep sea port and arranging for its unloading, customs clearance, and shipping to Dallas. Three weeks later I now have the knowledge and skills to import anything from anywhere. Skills that I could add to my résumé, but won’t, because I never want to do this again. Ever.
I will be posting the different phases of my backyard’s transformation throughout this summer. So stay tuned. If you can’t remember what the hardscape plan looks like, refer to my past post found here.