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Entries in summer (162)

Tuesday
Aug032010

Another year, another garden

When we first moved into our house in 2008 we had grass. Lots and lots of grass. We have a large lot (for our neighborhood of small lots, that is) and we had one garden—the standard landscaped garden in the front of our house, crammed full with too many bushes and even one poor out of place blue spruce, planted just a foot or two away from our front porch. Before we actually bought, the inspector had told us that after moving in we would have to fix the grading around the foundation of the house because in certain areas the grass was actually growing up past the siding, a sure fire way to invite bugs, he'd warned us.

And so our garden planning began. We moved in late March so we had some time to stare at our grassy expanse and consider plans for our future outdoor space. Some plans were easy—a 1-3 foot removal of grass from around the foundation, fixed grading, and a variety of native plants in its stead—while other plans came to us only later after seeing the yard take shape. The thing we knew we wanted to do was cut way down on the amount of grass and replace it with native flower and vegetable gardens. We had an eye toward attracting butterflies and hummingbirds, adding trees, and possibly outlining or edging our yard with garden space.

That first summer we accomplished much. We made short work of the grading around the house and also added a shaped garden to the very corner of our lot with the help of Jon's family over a Labor Day weekend. The new garden gave us a place to transplant some of the overcrowded bushes from the front landscaping, including the little spruce tree. Later in the year we added yuccas and some brown eyed susans as well.

Along with the grading we extended the outlet for our sump pump to beyond the edge of the house and made a pretty rock river for it. Or at least, we thought it was a rock river. Shortly thereafter we realized that, thanks to the output of our sump pump, that just wasn't going to cut it, so we decided to draw the water farther away from the house and into a rain garden, which we added in many hours of work over the fourth of July weekend.

You call that a rock river?

Now that's a rock river.

The addition of a small butterfly garden to the northeast corner of our lot rounded out our work for 2008, leaving the lawn looking like this:

You almost can't see the little butterfly garden over there in the corner! That's okay, we definitely took care of that in fall 2009 when we put in a drainage trench/rock river to divert the nieghbor's sump pump away from our new tree:

In 2008 we loving filled the rain garden with native and water tolerating plants, but word to the wise, a sump pump does not a good rain garden make; the influx of water in the spring was too much and we lost all but a handful of our plants. We spent the summer rethinking our drainage plan, took the river all the way through to the other side in September 2009, making this our not-so-rain garden:

While The 2010 growing season brought most of the 2009 perennial plantings back (a huge improvement over the previous year), it highlighted some issues with the new drainage trench in the butterfly garden—namely a low spot and standing water at the outlet—so we decided to go forward not only with our 2010 plans but with our "down the road" plans as well. 2010 plans were to remove the rest of the sod to extend the butterfly garden up to our neighbors' fences (no more mowing/weed whacking in that tight space!), and the "down the road" plans were to connect all the existing gardens with a full yard edge garden.

And that brings us to the first weekend of August 2010 with 5 cubic yards of dirt and 1.5 tons of 18 inch boulders.

Ahhh, so that's what 1.5 tons of 18 inch boulders sound like when falling from a truck. Then we had to roll them down the hill. Thank goodness for that empty lot behind us, eh?

Ollie was a big help. Almost as much of a help as Cookie when we were looking up our property lines on the map.

It's now done, though, and even planted, mostly with transplants from new growth on some of the happily growing native plants we added last year. Four rocks mark the places awaiting trees, probably 2 maples and 2 river birch, to be added over the next few years beginning with at least one this fall.

I think this is our best addition yet and we are really pleased with the way it defines our space while connecting all three gardens and working in the necessary drainage paths. There is always another project, though. Next year the space to the south in the above picture (taken facing ESE) will be made into a patio with a fire pit, a project that is likely to be our most ambitious yet (which is hard to believe after muscling 1.5 tons of boulders). We also plan to add another raised vegetable garden (our current three aren't shown here but are in line with and west of the southeast garden, just out of the above picture).

So here it is, one final before and after (although there really isn't a picture of "before", meaning back when it was all just grass).

End of the 2008 summer season (our first summer in the house)

View from the SE corner on 8/2/2010.

Saturday
Jul242010

Slip n' Slide

We had long planned to spend the afternoon with our friends John and Ashley at their nearby splash zone, but the weather was so questionable all day that we opted to spend it splashing around at their house instead. Lo and behold, did you know that the Slip n' Slide isn't just for kids anymore? Or at least it isn't after a couple of mint juleps.

This one is Jon, in case you couldn't tell.

The only problem is that there wasn't enough slide for adult momentum, as shown here by John. Easily remedied with a second slide, of course. We'll try that next time.

Thursday
Jul222010

Art Fairs

At nearly ninety degrees, sunny, and brutally humid we saw no reason to shirk our annual opening day duty to the Art Fair. Contrary to general local feelings we look forward to this week all the rest of the year, to our chance to catch up with extended family members who always gather on this day to peruse the art and share in good meals. According to the (supposed) Ann Arbor newspaper, artist attendance is up this year, and, in spite of the heat, the crowds were, well, crowded.

Bright blue skies and wispy clouds were beautiful, but hot.

Interactive art with a somewhat cooling side effect.

Carefully placed, clearly marked, and easily accessed city water, both with fountains and a tap for refilling your own bottle, makes disposable bottles of water unnecessary and is an important step towards the Fair's ultimate zero waste goal.

Rather large and elaborate pinwheels or weather vanes that we always enjoy while waiting to be seated for lunch.

Following directions is not somebody's strong point.

Playing at lunch with his new hopper and box cars.

Mr. B's traveling piano.

I guess there were fewer pictures this year, but the rest of them are in the July 2010 folder.

Monday
Jul192010

Townie Party

Look at me journaling in real time. Unbelievable! With the Art Fairs looming just around the proverbial corner the Townie Party was here again and so, being the lifelong townies that we are, we attended. Six years ago we attended the very first Townie Party which consisted, we think we remember correctly, of a few craft booths for the kids, some live music, and maybe an ice cream vendor, all comfortably housed on the part of Ingalls Mall between the alumni building, the MLB, the fountain, and Washington. I don't remember any streets being closed.

We went again right after Calvin was born when it was in its third year and I remember it being only modestly bigger and we hadn't been back since, so you can imagine our surprise upon turning onto North University and finding the street closed and lined with tents while the entirety of Ingalls Mall between North U and Washington was swarming with people, vendors, and art. In its sixth year the Townie Party has really come into its own.

We walked by all the food vendors at first (a very difficult thing to do with Tios staring us right in the eye) and strolled through the Mall meeting with local businesses, politicians, and art councils along the way; the Boy Choir of Ann Arbor and Wild Swan were there, to name two of our favorites, and we also ran into some of our favorite musicians and friends from our more involved (read: pre-baby) years. We also spent some time chatting with the Dexter Chamber of Commerce (after which they dubbed us "that Dexter Family" and referred to us as such whenever we passed them again, a nice compliment to the older couple on my morning run route who has dubbed me "the Dexter girl" after seeing me run into town so often). The space which used to be the whole of the fair was dedicated to the display and sale of school-aged kids' artwork, row after row of booths that ranged from the over-indulgent to the surprisingly talented, all of which was really overpriced (it wouldn't be an Art Fair if it wasn't, would it now).

Calvin's favorite part, as I'm sure you can tell from the pictures, was the craft booth, which has been an integral part of the Party since its inception six years ago. He also collected a number of stickers from the row of obliging businesses and institutions along our way back to the Tios tent for dinner, which we ate while sitting on the steps of Hill Auditorium. In some ways it was like returning home (to campus, that is), and there was something very special about dinner at the foot of the giant from our past. Other than the music, which was painfully too loud and thankfully closer to the beer garden than to Hill, the Townie Party receives an A+ from us.

Saturday
Jul102010

Rolling Sculpture Car Show

There's always something going on during summer evenings in the Ann Arbor area and we almost never find ourselves at a loss for something to do. This Friday night it was the Rolling Sculpture car show that caught our attention. We've made a yearly tradition out of attending this one and it holds more interest for us than our trip to the Auto Show in Detroit because its focus is more on classic cars and even antiques. I actually prefer perusing a collection of model Ts over a bunch of F150s and if I'm going to enjoy a Mustang it will probably be the 64-1/2 or thereabouts.

That being said, the Ann Arbor show does have its share of newer or concept cars, like this Lingenfelter T/A, which was parked between the Mercedes AMG with the gull wing doors on one side and an Audi Spyder on the other. The T/A reminded Jon of a Transformer.

Our vote for favorite car is really up in the air. I loved the 1960s Detroit cop car that had done its duty in Precinct 14 and is now owned by a retired Ann Arbor cop. The car was in great shape, and they had the old siren and light hooked up, something that Calvinw as not much pleased about. I loved all the original paraphernalia he'd collected over the years and put on display with the car.

Check out the stretchers in the back!

We also loved this well equipped Model-T; it had its own method of meal preparation and a car phone (only one of which is in the right context, of course).

And then there was the 1961 Airstream hitched up to a 1960 Cadillac that I would just love to take for a cross country road trip. Can't you just see us cruising down route 66 in this one?