Brick patio (part 2)

Ta-Da!

After we finished laying all the bricks we brushed some sand over everything to fill in all the little spaces. Fortunately, the weather has been great so we have been able to enjoy it before it's too cold.

We don't have any patio furniture yet so we just use our camp chairs. A couple Sundays ago we took our camp chairs out and had hot chocolate while we read, that was a lot of fun.

Brick patio (part 1)

During the summer we decided that we wanted to make a patio in our backyard off the back door. When we bought the house it came with a pile of old bricks just sitting in the back corner of the yard, which we thought was awesome. We spent some time cleaning and counting the bricks to see how big of a patio we could make. We knew that this was going to be a pretty big project but we thought for sure we would be done by the end of the summer just in time to enjoy the perfect southern fall. This picture was taken in July, and yes, it is November and we've just barely finished.

Dusty spent a lot of time digging and digging some more, I tried to help once in a while but wasn't as efficient as he was so I ended up just being the cheerleader. Those are all the bricks stacked up by the house.

This was the day we got gravel delivered, we thought for sure we would have some left over but sure enough it all spread out. After we tamped down the bigger gravel we added some smaller gravel on top.

Leveling...

This is the little stool I found at the goodwill for 5 bucks, and boy am I glad I found it because I spent a lot of time sitting here cheering Dusty on while he dug, and leveled, and tamped. I had been wanting to paint a chevron stripe pattern for awhile and this stool seemed like a good way to get it out of my system.

Laying the first bricks! This was a very exciting moment, and I finally got to help out! Dusty and all the strings he used to level the gravel, (he had to move them out of the way to lay bricks)

what an engineer!

I think this was sometime in September....we thought that once we started laying bricks we would have it done in one weekend, but that was not the case! All the bricks were old and different sizes so it was sort of like a huge puzzle.

Chattanoogie

This past Memorial Day weekend we went down to Chattanooga,TN. On the way there we stopped at a fun place called Ruby Falls. We took an elevator down a ways into the ground and then walked for a while underground to get to a really tall underground waterfall.

It was really neat to see all the different formations, the one in the picture above is called the chandelier.

They had little lights hidden in the rocks throughout the whole cave to help us see where we were walking and to highlight certain formations, then when we got to the waterfall they had a light show. It was amazing to be underground and see this huge waterfall coming from, what looked like, out of nowhere.

Wildlife Wednesday

The other day we looked out our bedroom window and saw these deer walking across our backyard. At first they didn't notice us and we watched them wonder around for a while. Then I decided to go downstairs and grab the camera to take some pictures, as soon as I stepped in front of the window they spotted me and ran away. Talk about good senses!

Yakin'

Last weekend we drove a little ways out of town to a lake and went kayaking. The lake was awesome for a first time kayaker like me! There are no big boats allowed, just little fishing boats. There were a few people fishing and a couple other people kayaking.

It was the perfect day to be out, not to hot just warm.

There was a little island we went around and this little goose was there sitting on her nest. It was so fun to be able to go around the island even though there was only about a foot of water to go through.

Lately we have been dealing with cicadas (si-ka-da). They don't really bother anybody, they are just really really noisy! They come out of the ground in these exoskeleton things and then a locust looking bug comes out of the exoskeleton and looks like the bug below.

Closet re-do

The first project inside our house that we tackled was the entry closet. We figured we'd start small and move our way up from there. We didn't get a very good before pic, it used to have metal wire shelving in there and it wasn't very functional. The first picture is after we ripped out the shelving and filled in the holes in the wall.

Below is the finished closet! We painted the walls "Dusty Miller", it really is the same color as the plant that is light green/blue and sort of fuzzy called Dusty Miller. Dusty liked it because they share the same name. We added some shelves for our shoes and the buckets hold our gloves and hats.

We have a lot of wildlife here, this is a frog that was outside our window the other night.

And this is one of 2 bunnies that we saw in our yard near the garden! I hope they don't eat anything!

This is what our garden looks like as of late. Sadly, we have already had some losses, something (we think birds) came and plucked half of our corn out of the ground and left them there laying down. You can sort of see them if you look close on the left. Here is what we have so far: pole beans, corn, sunflowers, radish, zucchini, dill, rosemary, squash, peas, lettuce, beets, carrots, strawberries, tomatoes, cilantro, walla walla's, basil, peppers, jalapenos, and fennel. We tried to grow things that we already eat and buy from the store, we still have to plant cucumbers and pumpkins. We will see what we get food from, hopefully everything! We also have wild strawberries and green onions that grow in our yard ( and everyone else's) but we haven't tried them.

Here is a little tomato!

Life in TN

Okay.... so I guess we are an "update the blog once a year kind of people". Between our last post and now we moved to a new place and so far we really love it! The house we found was only 3 minutes from where we were living so it was a pretty easy move. Here are some updates.

We planted so little planters on our front porch. Don't worry, the planter boxes are attached to some pre-existing fastiners that were already in the porch so our plants don't go flying around when it gets windy, and it does get REALLY REALLY windy. Like, blow the neighbors 4ft diameter tree out of the ground, roots and all.

We have also been working on a garden. We made these raised garden beds that should hold up for awhile. We put weed blocker stuff on the bottom and also chicken wire to keep the moles out.

Above is our yard pre-garden and below is our yard with the garden beds in place. The tall thing with the string is for our pole beans to climb up.