Garden progress

Murals are up, and mom built a wall today.... blisters on both of us!

Happy Wednesday

Why it's happy:

1. The mural is done! Melinda came over to help
2. Raha said, "I've been a jerk," after he was a jerk then was great the rest of the day
3. Luke & I drew a scale model of our solar system on the driveway, and he's great with standard measurement
4. Aaron's stunt (repeated at least 20 times) -- fall off trampoline, crawl across room announcing "Baby Aaron!!", stand up by the couch and point at his head exclaiming "Big Me!!" He sometimes said, "I Big Me!"
5. Aaron has transitioned well to no nap and goes to sleep peacefully in the evening, making the evening peaceful for everyone else too

Murals

The plan for taping off the panels didn't last long - Mom and I went to careful edging by hand and we have a first coat of all of the colors now. I'll get a second coat on Tuesday, and then start working on texture and pattern.

With a little help from my friends

We made a good start on the garden! Tracey prepped the bed on the right side of the house - incredibly fast with a garden fork. Raha finished putting up the wall & I'm already happier admiring bare plywood rather than the junk in the carport. Tracy, Mom, and Melinda drew the 4 quilt patterns and taped off the first color.

This is a tedious process. Only one color can be painted at a time, with multiple coats until the color is even and deep. Then the tape is pulled off of that set of color blocks and the next color is taped, and then 2-4 coats of that color are applied. We're using exterior latex on plywood - bright red, a warm gold, grayish purple, and sage green. They are all colors I love in big, simple geometric blocks.

Last night was also a opportunity to use up some of the vast quantities of vegetables from our CSA from Fox Hollow Farm. Mom and I cooked on and off through the day and the kitchen smelled wonderful from the pitcher of herbs Mom brought from her garden.

Dad finally made it back from Montana!

Landscaping Project

The front of our house has always been an area that I thought was pretty unusable and really ugly. These photo are taken partway into a big landscaping & mural project. Here the 4 x 4 foot brick patio has just been taken out, along with lots of heavy edging rock and round concrete stepping stones. My friend Tracy (landscape designer by profession) helped me plan the space and is ordering 4 big oak leave hydrangeas to form a green "wall" extending in a curve from the edge of the stone wall and about 50 helleborus to cover the concrete edge of the house. The gravel and misc. green plan areas are going to be mulch for a play area for the boys and the swing will back up to the hydrangeas. The space between the garden and carport are already partially walled in this evening, and tomorrow we'll finish the wall, paint it to match the house, and begin the murals that we'll mount on them. I've very sore and ready for bed, but I'm excited to see how quickly this is coming along. Here's a photo of one variety of helleborus - they are an evergreen that blooms from Dec - May!