Friends of Sausal Creek Native Plant Sale

On this rainy Bay Area day, we went out to Joaquin Miller Park to shop the Native Plant Sale put on by the Friends of Sausal Creek. We love Joaquin Miller Park and love hitting up the Native Plant Sale when we remember to. We picked up a few plants two years ago from the plant sale, but completely missed it last year. So, even though it was raining, we were pretty determined to go through the natives.

We brought our puppy Jax with (since Joey, our pit, is not a fan of rain) and he played in the rain for a bit with another dog at the sale. He was wrapped up in a towel on the way home in the car and fell asleep by the fireplace when we got home.

The natives we picked up:

Yellow-eyed/Golden-eyed Grass (Sisyrinchium californicum)

Image © Las Pilitas Nursery

California Huckleberry/Evergreen Huckleberry (Vaccinium ovatum)

Image © King County Native Plant Guide

Scarlet Bugler (Penstemon centranthifolius)

Image © Squamatologist


California Coffeeberry (Rhamnus californica)

Image © Las Pilitas Nursery


Douglas Iris (Iris douglasiana)

Image © California Flora Nursery

Red Bush Monkeyflower (Mimulus aurantiacus puniceus)

Image © Squamatologist

Bits that don't make a solo post, yet.

There's a few things that I'd like to post on, but don't have much to say about just yet. So, here's a list of partials from the last couple of months, some of which will get a full post... eventually.


• Completely boarded the attic in the main house, where the POs left off and cleared out a bunch crap.

One of the previous owners put plywood in a good chunk of the attic and that's the portion we've been using over the last couple of years. They didn't board over the kitchen, which has cans popping up into the attic. We raised the floor level a step, over the canned lights, and boarded it up. It's amazing how much more space we have up there. We hadn't realized that the unboarded portion of the attic was such a huge section. Photos soon, but no befores since I didn't think of it at the time.

• We went to Echo Lake, near Lake Tahoe, this summer.

I'm slacking on posting Summer in Reverse. I need to get the photos all together. Dan and I went with his mom and sister and their dogs. Beautiful weather and beautiful little lakes.

• We started a compost bin in June.

Worms, fruits and veggies and browns. It's going great so far. There were flies, but managed to eliminate that issue. We have maggots in there, but they aren't harming so we haven't tried to clear them out. There's an awesomely rich chunk of fresh soil in there and it looks amazing.

• Finally figured out where I want to plant my pomegranate tree.

It was a birthday gift two or three years ago and has been in a large planter ever since. We took out the small turtle pond in the front yard when we replaced the windows earlier this year and now have a great spot for the pomegranate.

• Re-drew the front yard landscaping, again.

It's still a mix of fruit trees and a lot of native plants. We still need to decide what natives we want where. There's a native plant sale coming up at Joaquin Miller Park on the 24th, if we're able to go. Once I find one of the cables for the camera I'll post it.

• We picked out which city-approved tree we want planted in the sidewalk planting area.

And we know the steps we need to take to finally get that concrete broken up and removed so that we actually HAVE a sidewalk planting area. We absolutely hate that we don't have many trees at our end of the block. It looks barren and gets ridiculously hot. We think the Jacaranda suits our needs. Grows fairly fast, has a round, open canopy and has nice blue flowers. It'll be a little bit of maintenance (dropped flowers, seedpods), but honestly, there are two Jacaranda at the Dunsmuir Estate, where I worked all summer, and damn those things are gorgeous looking.

• Over the summer, I ran a small day camp at the Dunsmuir-Hellman Historic Estate.

I was brought on with ~2.5 weeks before summer and there hadn't been any promotion about it between then and the beginning of the year so the numbers were ridiculously low. The camp was stationed out of the original Milk Barn and had free reign around the estate. Wild deer, turkeys, foxes, skunks, cats and more would be around all the time. It was a blast.

• I'm being placed directly underneath the City of Oakland Naturalist and will be training underneath her.

Applied for a position in my organization (City of Oakland, Parks and Recreation) - oh... almost two years ago. They finally went through with hiring from the list of candidates this summer/fall. I'm crazy excited about this. I'll be working next to the first wildlife refuge in the US. I start on Tuesday. Partial benefits, pay bump and 30 hours a week. Finally.

• Dan and I took off a week of work and went to Chicago for our five year anniversary last week.

We both had free Southwest roundtrips from visiting while he was in college in So. California for two years. Most of my family is in Chicago, and that's where I was born, so we had free lodging wherever we went. We had so much fun. There'll definitely be a post on it once we remember all the things we did and have it all written down (we're a good chunk of the way there). Dan says it's his favorite vacation ever now. We volunteered to get bumped from our flight home if they needed space, we weren't in a hurry home, and bumped we got. Free 4.5 star hotel room, free flight the next day and we each got $400 flight vouchers. Our free trip got us more free trips!

Updated Design

Design for the front yard and porch with the colors we chose to paint the house (the green here is darken than what we chose, but I'm lazy). The back of the house currently has these colors, but we were waiting to do the rest until after the new windows were put in.

Other than that, this is updated to show the new windows we put in (yay!) and I drew up a better door (so that it matches our actual door). And again, the porch columns and railing are an idea of what to replace the really crappy iron railing and columns with. Still deciding on column style, a basic square post or a boxed and bricked post, or boxed and bricked with a taped post top...

One of these days, I need to draw up a map of the garden idea and post it. It'll be easier to ID all the plants and locations with a top map. There's a lot of native plants and drought-tolerate plants along with fruit trees/vines (kiwi, avocado, orange, lemon, lime and California grapes). Although, we semi-recently added blueberries to the growing mix so the grapes might be replaced with those.

Patio Almost Complete!

There's been a lot of progress on the patio project. I was personally out of town for 5 weeks and in that time all of the "legs" of the patio were completed, a gazebo went up and several plants were in. It was a total surprise when I got back. Unfortunately, I don't have any photos to show the many stages the patio was in between the last post and the current post!



Click for more:



The only progress photo I have before many of the plantings, the compost, the grass seed planting.


Gazebo that came with screening, and although you can't see it, we put a light fixture put in the top of it. The neon fencing is protecting our newly planted grass seed. The blue-green structure in the background is the hot tub area, which was reused from a gazebo a friend was taking down.

Also, a tree in front of the hot tub area and a short bushy tree on the immediate right were free from a guy we got base rock/sand from when we were building the square part of the patio. We think the tall one is some sort of pear tree, maybe decorative, and that the short one is a fig.



The smaller greens on this side were freshly planted.


Transplanted our maple, which hasn't been happy in a container, with a prime spot. The green mosaic ball looks awesome with the red maple and the dark compost color behind it.


There's solar pathway lighting on every leg of the patio (the small brown box-like things).


It'll look awesome when there's some lush grass there!


The original brick path was much thinner and didn't go all the way up to the house, instead there was a section of lame lava rock. We expanded the brick path with a new pattern and got rid of the lava rocks completely! There was a bunch of loose sand still sitting on it.


To celebrate both the patio and the upcoming birthday of Trevor (later this month, of which we'll have a party on the patio), Michelle bought a new grill. The old grill was dying and Home Depot had this one on a very nice sale.

In other news, we had our first rain of the season two nights ago. We haven't been directly watering the grass in the front, because of the drought, so it looks pretty trashy and dead. When I'd wash my car, I'd park it on the grass so that the water gets two uses out of it, though.

We put up the rest of the lava rocks we have (which is way too many) on craigslist and we'll hopefully be rid of that stuff forever!

Backyard Patio

Since we're in a drought and we haven't been watering the lawns (both front and back), we've started putting in a patio in the middle of the back lawn area. Lava rock from the side of the house as base rock, a little leftover sand from the side walkway and a lot of free sand from a guy on craigslist. I'm loving that we're getting rid of the stupid lava rocks this way, haha.





These were from four days ago, since then we've put in the square bricks, including at least one of the paths. Photos of that coming soon.

The plan is to have a strip of grass and several planting areas around the patio. It's a perfect spot to put out our barbeque pit and maybe make a method for the occasional overhang to be put in.

The guy who gave us the sand on craigslist also had two tall, potted trees that he had semi-killed (by not watering) that he gave us for free as well. He didn't remember what kind of trees they were anymore, so we'll see what happens with those.

Finished Path and Found Object

A friend had a lot of sand he wanted to get rid of, so we grabbed it up to finish the bricks on the side yard.


Yeah, too lazy to move the hose, hah.


Bricks are slopped to meet up with the existing concrete path.


Front to back view.

No more stepping on red lava rocks on the side! Yay!

And, when digging around this little guy was found...

Drought

So, it's looking like the 2008 East Bay drought is going to make it so that we're probably not going to be watering our lawns much, front or back this summer. The sprinklers were already having issues awhile back, so they haven't been on anyway. I'd rather they not die completely since it'd look really, really bad. I'll probably try to get them watered once a week or something.

We hate the grass as it is. It's just a bunch of crab grass and it's not all that nice, but looks decent when regularly watered. The drought could be a good excuse for letting it die, haha. Digging it up, rototilling, evening the soil level and reseeding post-drought season might just be awesome.

Not much happening project-wise. I got two kiwi vines (male, female) for my birthday and they were planted in a new planting box in the front. It's located right at the new fence line. When we get around to taking out the current railing columns and replacing them, I'm going to use the curly iron columns as supports for the kiwi vines. They'd actually work pretty perfectly for it, haha.

Exterior Updates and Color Idea

I took some time on earlier this week to check out some books at Borders for bungalow color, window and other miscellaneous ideas. In one of the books (Bungalow Colors: Exterior by Robert Schweitzer) had exactly what I was looking for colorwise; a page full of color combos! I had my camera with me for this exact thing (and taking photos of other ideas in the books).

A couple weeks ago I did a sketch of the front of the house to play with color, column, door and window options (no railings on it so it'll be easier to play with). Using Seroco paint colors, as found in the book: Light Blue, Green Tint and Pea Green.



I bought a new front door for our house for my mom's (early) birthday present. I found an awesome one on craigslist for $50. i haven't taken a new photo of it yet, but here's the one from the craigslist ad we got it from:



Recently, we put in a brick path on the side yard. Soon to be covering the entire area, although with a pattern change since there's a concrete area further up to the side.

Side Gate & Fence

Moved the gate and fence line closer to the front of the property on the small side area of the house.

So. Much. Better.


Photo taken standing about where the original fence line and gate were located.


If you look closely at the right side of the photo, there WERE some vertical bars.


Best thing ever? When we first moved into the house, we had to put up vertical rods across this ledge. The original fence line made it so that it was possible for the dogs to jump over the ledge and be free to roam the streets. NO BARS!


I took the "Beware of Dog" sign off after I took the photo, heh. The fence will get painted when we paint the house.


Sprinkler addition so that we can gross grass further back. And of course, some house sanding.