The Roby Family

The front of our house continues its metamorphosis. From day one we’ve been eager to rip out all of the old landscaping and begin anew. Most of the old landscaping has been removed for several months. Since its removal we’ve been debating what type of edging to use for the new landscaping.

We were confident we wanted more than a basic metal or composite edging:

We used this at our first house and we felt something with more heft was the appropriate choice.

We moved on to considering a pre-cast concrete block for the an edge in areas and a near retaining wall in others:

With the slope of our yard this presented some neat opportunities but also a great installation challenge. We were gifted about 20% of the block we would need for the project, but in the end we felt this would be too much work.

After much debate and driving around peaking at people’s yards we decided to use weathered limestone boulders to edge our front landscape beds. The entire project isn’t done so we’ll save pictures of the entire edge for later. However, here are a few pictures of our larger and/or more interesting rocks:

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We roughed out the beds with the gifted (thanks Whites!) blocks to give us an idea of the shape we wanted. That was great except when it came to removing them. That was just the beginning of our heavy lifting. Here are the weight totals of all the work we did this weekend:

2,400 lbs – Concrete block removal

2,400 lbs – Loading and unloading 30 bags of top-soil for shaping

460 lbs – Loading more limestone boulders at stone yard because the 3,830 lbs they delivered wasn’t enough

4,290 lbs – Installing limestone boulders

9,550 lbs – total lifting, hauling, rolling, grunting done this weekend

In case you are math challenged like me Google says that is 4.775 tons of material! Josh moved the mass majority of the weight. One of our neighbors helped him move the largest stone, which clocked in at about 500 lbs. The rest was Josh showing off his new found “old man strength.”

Now that the edging is done we will prep the bed and be ready for planting this fall!

Now that we’ve removed a lot of overgrown bushes and trees it is time to start putting some plants back in place.  The first plant to find a new home is a shumard oak.  We planted the tree just north of the driveway where a massive grouping of crepe mrytles once stood.

Here is what we hope the oak will look like once mature:

Thankfully it won’t be accompanied by that hideous green gradient edging once mature.  The fall foliage will be red and orange.

Here are a few pictures showing before and after.

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It might take 15-20 years before we are ready for a gathering under this old oak tree but we look forward to watching it grow.

PS: We’ve started on a few other planting beds, but none are ready for unveiling.

If you’ve been following along at home you know our old house is flanked by many a bush and many a tree.  From day one we’ve wanted to complete a major tree and bush removal.

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First priority?  Remove the giant mass of crepe myrtles that had set up residence adjacent to the driveway.  They were overgrown and made backing out of the driveway quite the task.  As of last Friday that giant green blob of stems and leaves is history.

Another easy choice for removal was an overgrown mass of juniper, mimosa and Rose of Sharon bush that sat along the north retaining wall.  The choice that took much more debate was the removal of the cedar trees that guarded the wings of the house.  At roughly 40 feet tall they were stately and gorgeous.  Well, that was fall 2007 prior to a giant ice storm that removed their tops and approximately 10-15 feet of growth.  We never saw them in that state and can only imagine how great they looked.  After a rough fungal covered summer and review by several arborists we made the tough decision to remove them.  At the feet of the cedar lay decades old juniper bushes.  We had a real love/hate relationship with these guys.  Some days they looked overgrown and hideous.  Other days they were layered and stately.  The week before the cedar trees were to be removed we made the decision to keep them for a trial period of twelve months.  If after twelve months we didn’t like them, they’d get the ax.  Well, the company we hired to do the hacking had a different action plan.  After removing everything listed on the work order and trimming up the large hackberry trees on the street the crew leader had a major brain fart.  I ran inside for FIVE minutes, as I walk out the front door I see him hacking into the southern most bushes with his chainsaw.  I screamed like a twelve-year old girl.  The chainsaw stopped immediately.  Lucky for him the owner of the company had just stopped by.  I’ve become a pretty mellow fella in my thirties but I about lost it on this guy.  He may have been a good 6″ taller and outweighed me by a couple hundred lb’s but I was letting him have it.  Since one can’t glue a giant bush back together we made the tough decision to remove all the junipers.  To the company’s credit they made some very nice concessions on the bill and did a bit more work for free.

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Lucky for them we were already on the fence about removing them and Jenny already had a landscape plan drawn up sans junipers.  Otherwise, I may be in jail.  The house looks pretty bare without all that vegetation.  However, it looks a lot bigger and more open.  We have a grand plan for the front but that needs time and money.  We just happen to be allocating those resources elsewhere right now, but stay tuned.

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After ten days of scratching, clawing and digging in the dirt, followed by lifting, placing, leveling and pounding on wall blocks and finally planting and mulching plants the first gardening project of our home is complete.  In spite of lots of sweat, blood and tears what was a ratty and eroding area is now a clean and level planting bed.  The amount of roots, concrete shards, old toys, rubber washers, balls and tools buried in the dirt was a bit overwhelming but we worked through it and are quite proud of the finished product.

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The centerpiece of the bed is an existing Japanese Maple.  The tree is huge and we are hopeful we didn’t damage the roots, too much, so it will live much longer.  We planted an Autumn Ruby Azalea in the back corner of the bed.  It should grow to about three feet over time and we hope will make a great backdrop for the hostas in front of the tree.

Autumn Ruby Azalea

On the sides of the bed we planted Autumn Ferns.  We had many of these at our former home and loved them.  They have a great bronze color in the spring.  We picked up the piece of driftwood in the middle of the bed on a lake trip with our LifeGroup several years ago.  It adds a nice touch and distracts from the guest room crawlspace cover.  We couldn’t do anything about the PVC plumbing cleanout but are hopeful the ferns will camoflouge it over time.  This fall or next spring we will plant another hosta or two and will also plant some groundcover plants to act as a natural mulch.

We’ll most likely add some annual flowers along the wall each spring to add some color to the area.

This was a very tiring project, to say the least.  The ten days we worked on it just so happened to be the ten hottest of the year.  With the slope of our lot we have several other places we’d like to put in walls like this one.  After this project we’ll have a better idea how to prepare and know to only do them in early spring or late fall.

If you’ve known Jenny & I for long you know we love to dig in the dirt.  Some couples play golf, some games and others movies.  We love to garden together.  The ironic thing is Jenny was a self proclaimed “black-thumb” when we started dating.  Ten years later we’ve turned that thumb green.  Our former house was fully landscaped and we had run out of places to plant things.  With the move to the new house we’ve got plenty of room to have fun with plants.  We told ourselves we wanted to wait until fall or even next spring before doing anything outside.  Well, we didn’t quite make it to fall.  Last weekend we decided to tear up a small planting bed on the back of the house.  The bed is home to a huge Japanese Maple but was littered with other plants that didn’t fit the space or needed more sun to be successful.  The bed was also ringed by old concrete blocks and wasn’t level creating a drainage problem.

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We are in the process of putting in a Pavestone Natural Impressions Riverstone wall around the bed and planting shade loving plants.

Ours won’t look as purty as the picture above but we think it’s going to look pretty sharp.  We’ll hopefully be finished this weekend and will post pictures as soon as we’re done, I promise.

With spring time winding down and summer right around the corner.  I thought I’d post a few pictures of the once well-manicured grounds of the manor.  The neighbors tell us Mr. Speaker, the most recent gentleman of the house, was quite an avid landscaper.  He enjoyed being out in the yard tending to things and would trade plants with neighbors on a regular basis.  Once he passed, his wife paid a crew to mow the year and trim the hedges.  Unfortunately, they only did the bare minimum.  Many of the once beautiful bushes & trees are overgrown and have been infiltrated with weeds, vines & other noxious plants.  We’ve cleaned up a large crepe myrtle and set of bushes on the southwest corner of the property but that’s just scratching the surface.  I suspect we’ll hire a crew later this year or early next to come in clean out many of the old bushes and trees so we can start fresh with new landscaping.  Other than a gorgeous rose bush and a large iris bed no perennial flowers remain.  It’s hard to not have things in bloom year-round, as was the case at our old house, but we’ll eventually get there.  Here are a few pictures of the grounds and the view from the balcony off our master bedroom.

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I also put my new lawn mower to the test yesterday and for the first time mowed the entire lawn in one session.  It took me a good three hours but we’ll get that whittled down as I get used to the nuances of the mower and the lawn.

Lastly, the HVAC is cranking out cold air upstairs, the downstairs unit joins the party tomorrow.  The painters have two coats on all the trim and will hopefully finish the walls and ceilings tomorrow.  We’ll be sure to post pictures when they finish up.

Father’s Day isn’t for another month but it came a bit early for Josh this year.  The new house sits on a 1/3 acre lot and has quite a bit of slope to it.  Our current mower was about six years old and was struggling to run consistently.  It also happened to be a push mower and it was tough getting our new lawn mowed.  I told him to pick a new one out for his Father’s Day gift and go get it when he was ready.  Well, with all the rain we’ve had today was the day.  After hours of research he went with this Toro:

I guess it was the right choice because the lawn looks nice and mowed and he isn’t complaining about his back hurting.  Yet.

When we purchased this Ol’ Lady of a house we knew she had a couple of rose bushes around.  One in particular caught my eye from the beginning.  It’s along the south side of the screen porch and appears to be very old.  Due to its age I thought there was no way it would bloom.  Well, what do you know this thing not only bloomed, it bloomed like crazy!  The blooms are a light yellow in the center with pink tips and are quite fragrant.  Josh attached trellis to the house and I’m beginning the process of training it to the trellis.

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Iris flowers are all along the base of the rose and are in desperate need of division and cleaning.  I’m working at it but it’s going to be a long process.  This area has become one of my favorite parts of the house!

Or something like that.  One of the pitfalls with buying an older fixer upper of a house is the inordinate amount of weedy trees & bushes you’ll find growing along fences and the foundation.  We’ve got our fair share of both.  Right along the back of the house is (was) a 25+ feet tall giant weed of a tree.  Who knows what kind of a tree (weed) it is (was) but it is now gone.  Since I allow friends to enjoy the frustrations of owning a chainsaw I chose to cut this one down by hand.

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I started by hanging out a few different windows to chop the top off.  With the buzzut complete I got the ladder out and worked on the middle section until I had two big sticks.  Finally I put my biceps & triceps to work and using a bow saw I cut that son of a weed down.  The back of the house certainly looks much better & cleaner.  More importantly it clears the way for concrete to be poured for our new AC units that will be installed in a few weeks.  Oh, and you see those two window AC units hanging there, ya those will be gone within the month.

Since I knew I needed to make a trip to the dump I decided to clear a bunch of other bushes out as well.  Our good friends, the Fosters, allowed us to borrow their trailer for the trip.  My one trip to the dump turned to four and an unscheduled vacation day.  No fun pictures of this action, but rest assured the manor is starting to have some sense of cleansing.

As of this weekend we’ve lived in the new house for a month.  It’s hard to believe it has been that long and yet I hardly remember living in the old house.  Funny how that happens isn’t it?  A big reason it might seem like yesterday is because well we have a foot of snow on the ground just like when we moved in.  The camera was still at the bottom of some box at that time so no flicks were captured.  This time I was able to snap away.  The old gal is quite photogenic in the snow.  It is kind of like a Botox shot for the landscape.  One of these days I’ll get around to trimming all those bushes up and giving her the exterior face lift she deserves.

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We have a LONG driveway and after shoveling it this morning my back is in need of some sorta shot.  After this snow the only person who needs a lift is me.  Let’s hope I can pack the snow shovel up until next winter.