here is the house...

Finishing up the Backyard Planting

When last we left the garden it looked a little something like this:

Which is all well and good until your eye finds its way to the back left corner and sees the lonely little barren fountain with no plants around it. Here's a close up:

So sad! We did some research and figured out that perhaps the grasses that were planted there were not happy about the lack of sunlight in the back corner. Also, we should have trimmed back all the dead pieces much sooner. The combination of those two factors led to this sporadic regrowth and this general sad look. So we got some more grasses, ones that will hopefully tolerate the shade better and also regrow more predictably.

The tall grasses are Karl Foerster Feather Read grasses which will eventually grow 5-6 feet hight and have purplish-bronze feathery flowers on top. The three smaller grasses in front of the fountain are Silvery Sunproof Lilyturf which are a striped light green and dark green that will also get a spikey lilac flower at some point.

We also had one dead maiden grass on the other side of the back of the garden which also looked quite sad.

Again the lack of a huge amount of direct sunlight in the other back corner limited our plant choices. We finally settled on a Camellia Japonica or "Kramer's Supreme" which will bloom with HUGE (and I mean really, really big) dark red flowers in the early spring. Too bad we need to wait almost a year to see them, but this plant will do well with the light we have to give it in this corner.

I also found a nice potted flowering plant to put on the table near the bench to help further hide the AC hookup lines that go into the sunroom

So after another round of de-weeding and re-mulching I'm proud to say that the backyard is pretty much done! However there is still more planting in our future, as we have almost finished grouting the front yard and after the grout and the tile and sealed we will be looking to fill 4 huge planters we bought at Costco last week. Since that area also does not get much light I see some big Hollies and perhaps some Azaleas and/or rhododendrons in our near future.

The House Guest

Taking photos of our work around the house this weekend and looking through them reminded me that I never mentioned that we house-sat my parents cat Shea a couple of weeks ago. Since this blog is as much about cats as it is about a house, here are some photos of Shea interacting with Jules and Monkey for your enjoyment.

Shea quickly laid claim to the scratch lounge and spent the majority of his visiting chilling in it, much to Monkey's annoyance. But what was he going to do? Shea is like 4 times his size…

Shea also laid claim to the basket on the same window sill—but fortunately for my cats he couldn't be in both places at once

Jules is a cat without a basket or a lounge

I mistakenly thought Shea might like to sleep on the guest bed but only my cats seem interested.

Shea loved the scratch lounge so much we sent it home with him. Monkey is still upset about this turn of event as the store near us that carries it has yet to get one back in stock for us to replace it!

Monkey was absolutely fascinated by Shea and loved to follow him around and stalk him. With Shea gone he clings to his black sheep for comfort!

Jules was not a big fan of Shea. He kept eating all her food and she needs as much as she can get. When he was here she dropped down to around 8 pounds but we recently beefed her back up to almost 10 pounds so she is back to fighting weight!

And without their scratch lounge the cats are forced to fight over the basket. Here they are in a rare moment of calm sharing it. But Monkey can never leave well enough alone so shortly thereafter the biting started, followed by hissing and swatting. Sigh, why can't they just can't along?

Weekend Planting Extravaganza

As much as we wanted to deny it, it became pretty obvious we were dealing with some dead and/or dying plants in the backyard. The planting for the TV show happened really late in the season and while most things took root and flourished a couple of plants suffered casualties by being hit with the cold so fast after planting. Case in point, the two Bar Harbor Junipers on the left here—poor plants

The third one there wasn't even looking so hot, just like its two brothers across the way

But the most unhappy plant of them all was the Golden Hinoki Cypress all the way in the back center of the yard. Here is was during happier times on the right.

But most of that green had turned to an orangish-brown and was just looking pretty sad. I looked up the light requirements for that shrub and it appears to need more sun than it is getting back there, so I hatched a plan to replace some plants and move some others. This is a far cry from my only experience with gardening, which was planting a couple of tulip bulbs in the house I grew up in as a kid. Let's hope it works!

So, early Saturday morning I set out in a rented pickup truck with our friend Colin to drive out to Long Island and hit a couple of the nurseries for plant options and pricing. First we hit Hicks Nursery in Westbury which we found to be sorta like the shopping mall of nurseries. It took us a while to find the outside plants which were poorly labeled and highly priced. When we asked for help with recommendations on what plants worked well in shade we got some vague responses but not a whole lot of help. While we saw some stuff we liked we decided to try another one to see if we would have better luck. That is what brought us to Cipriano in East Meadow, which was more of a family run joint, with all the outdoor plants up front and well organized and priced. We got a lot more help there and tons of assistance planning and selecting our plants. And the prices were much more reasonable.

So plants and a couple of bags of mulch in hand, we came back and Eric and I set to moving and planting for the rest of the weekend. We got it all done except we ran out of mulch, but here are the fruits of our labor.

The half dead looking cypress moved to an area with partial sunlight to see how it does

Two new junipers on the left—Blue Chip Junipers actually cause they didn't have Bar Harbors, but they look so similar

A couple of new container plants—two Japanese maples in the small round planters for now that will eventually move to the front of the house once that area is grouted and sealed and we get some planters in there.

Trimmed plants, super happy perennials and new mulch—check out all the new growth on that globe blue Spruce in the foreground and the weeping Norway spruce in the back left! Plus we are still waiting on those perennials to flower.

And a brand spanking new Japanese maple in the back where the Cypress was. They evidently don't like direct sun and grow very slowly. I've been in love with this plant for a while and kept walking past it at both nurseries wondering how to make one work. The small ones were pretty reasonably prices so I went for it! I'm thinking I might stack some rocks around the base to get it more of a focal point feel back there.

And in the new planter boxes, to compliment the red tones in some of the perennials and the new maple:

In the back we have Celosia, which will grow some intense tall red flowers, some silver dust for a white look, some wizard coral sunrise which I refer to as "the watermelon plant" and in the front some red splash hypoestes. So this is our first attempt at planting some stuff on our own—let's see if it works!

Not Quite Done With the Tiling

When last we left our intrepid homeowners they were mid-way through a particularly vexing outdoor tile project. Did they conquer the tile? Well, not quite yet, but progress has been made…

Last Sunday we couldn't do anything without a trip to Home Depot to pick up new filters for the central air units. It reached 93 degrees in Brooklyn last weekend and no one was happy about that stifling heat, especially Monk. Here he is pre-air conditioning fire-up:

Here's the close up on hot, low hanging upset kitty-face—poor little guy!

So it was off to Home Depot to try to figure out the difference between the filters in Ultra Allergen, Micro Allergen and Ultimate Allergen (hint, probably nothing except the price) and then by the time the AC filters were replaced in the most ghetto-like fashion ever we had already lost most of the day. We did some more tiling but quickly lost the light and our steam. Everything left to do required elaborate cuts which is a time consuming process. So we closed out Sunday with mostly finished tile and Eric did the rest of the cuts after work on Monday and Tuesday and got all the tile mortared down on Wednesday evening. Then we hunkered down for a solid couple of days of rain, assumed based on all the meteorological predictions that we would lose this entire weekend to rain as well. However, today it's Saturday and so far no rain despite what they have said so we lost a day we could have been grouting and we most likely will actually lose tomorrow to rain. Oh well, the good news is that the rain is no longer powdering the concrete in the front patio and clogging up the drains. Plus, even without the grout and covered in pollen, the tiled area looks 500% better than it did before. Check it:

The area around the drain had such a deep slope that this is the closest we could get with the tile, but we have a nice 9.5 inch stainless drain cover that we'll be installing there to cover that area up. Then we just need to paint the window ledges and the vent, touch up the paint on the walls and the railings, finish grouting, seal the slate and get some planters in that area. And THEN we'll be done.

Also speaking of done, here is the new blue door after its new coat of slightly lighter, slightly brighter paint:

And here's Monk basking in the chilly awesomeness of central AC