The Hole: A Pond Story-Part One

I need to get the blog caught up with all the events of last fall.  The Hole excerpts were originally shared with a group of friends in a private forum.  Why private?  When at the mercy of contractors, you don't want to be posting stuff like this publicly!  Edited to remove an obscenity or two or six.  

First a before picture!  This is the whole area before we ripped out the rotten fence and expanded it out and put in the new patio.  It was...bad.  I especially miss the chairs along the fence to try and stop the Belgium from running a trench.  The pond was to be the final step of this fix.

Originally shared Sept 12, 2011 in private with friends that resisted the urge to commit me.  Kujos to them!

Once upon a time a demented woman decided a pond would be cool.  After doing much research, she decided she was ready to go.  Not wanting to move a semi full of dirt herself, she began to research pond workers.  She soon discovered that Chicago's 12% unemployment rate is not compromised of a single pond worker.  Pond workers don't want jobs unless they cost 30K+.

The woman was not so demented that she was going to spend 30K, 20K, 10K or even 5K on a hole in the ground lined with plastic where she is doing all the plumbing, hiring her own electrical and doing all the waterfall and landscaping.  Ah ha, she said, I'll do it myself!  Yeah, still kind of demented.  <--and rather stupido to boot!

Step one:  Dig a trench for a concrete collar.  Crazy accomplished this after approximately 18 hours of digging.  Of course it isn't quite done.  Crazy's dog keeps trench hopping and missing and damaging trench sides, and then there is the concrete fence posts to contend with.  Crazy discovered not one but two solid concrete buried old fence posts that fell smack center in the collar that now have to be removed.  That should take a few days. 

Step Two:  Line trench with bender board forms and put in 3/8" rebar.  After two days and a lot of driving, looking for bender board, I decided to table this and go to step three.

Step three:  Find someone to dump concrete in the trench.  FAIL.  No one wants the job for less than 2K.  "Lady it costs me 2K just to drive off the lot."  Crazy decides she is not paying fricken 2K to have someone hold a concrete hose for an hour.  Crazy decides to do this herself.  This means lifting either 92.7 80 pound bags into a concrete mixer, mixing  it with water and then loading it in a wheelbarrow to dump in a trench OR doing the same with 183 40 pound bags.  Crazy decided mental preparation was needed for this step.  So she proceeded to step four.

 Step 4:  Dig hole for skimmer.  How hard could it be, it is a hole that is only about 32 inches wide and 30 inches deep.  It took crazy nine hours to get close.  Hauling dirt out of the bottom of a hole like that rather sucks when your back hurts and your arms seem to have shrunk.  The realization that you have to go even deeper to accommodate the plumbing that some (content removed) sadist decided went on the bottom?  Well that makes one skoot right on over to step five. 

Step five:  Shop for pond (content removed) stuff.  How hard can it be?  Online clicking and then check delivery.  The click click went fine.  Accomplished after much research and gotten for a song.  The delivery however...  Turns out the postal service is freaked to deliver to crazy people's houses.  This was determined after observing the condition of the skimmer box, which seems to have been dropped from a low flying plane on to the porch.  All sides were ripped and/or crushed and the bottom was completely open.  This would not have been major, since skimmers are hardy.  Unfortunately all small pond components got packed in the skimmer box.  The result?  Step five was completed after the photographing of the sixteen different components of the box from multiple angles to show damage and document missing items, then shrinking said photos and emailing.

End chapter one.

Stay tune for chapter two when I might actually get to dig again.  Unless I am in jail for murdering the patio guys that showed up today unannounced to fix a low spot in the new patio and proceeded to rip out the wrong blocks.

2012 Tomato Selections and Why

I'm back!  This past summer and fall was a whole lot of digging misery(pond) and not a whole lot of harvest (garden neglect and horrible growing season).  Neither make for very interesting blogging.  Who wants to listen to someone gripe everyday right?  In my head the 2012 growing season starts with the first seed starts so off we go.

2012 Tomato Selections and Why

I'll be trying for 24 varieties this year.  Originally it was going to be16 but I acquired a few seed gifts yada yada yada going to need to find some space.  I grow open pollinated varieties not hybrids.  My reasons are that I can then save seeds that grow true to type and OP varieties almost always have better flavors.  Many tomatoes I grow are heirlooms, meaning they have been around for a long time.  Some are new and fantastic.  This is who made the cut.

Marizol Bratka:  Purchased from Heritage Seeds.  Selected because it is purported to have all the flavor of the Brandywines with much better fruit set and productivity.   It produces up to 1# dark pink tomatoes.

Pineapple:   Grew it last year.  Big and very pretty bi-color with very sweet fruit. 

Katja:  Seed purchased last year from Adaptive seeds but didn't have successful sprout.  I'm hoping for a very early slicer that is purported to be delicious and "Does very well even in cool, shady gardens."  Now that would be something!

Chocolate Stripes:  I grow it every year, my sweet garden beauty.  It's thicker skin means no icky cracks.  Taste is very good and it gives great photo.

African Queen:  Purchased from Heritage seeds this year.  I was looking for a heavily producing, phenomenal tasting mid-late season slicer.  This one sounded good. 

Matina:  Grew it in 2009 and got very early decent tasting smallish fruit.  Seeing if the seed is still good so I can save some.

Persimmon: Another repeater.  This one can be a pain to get going but man once it starts it goes nuts.  Lots of 4 oz bright orange fruits.  Not too sweet, just right.

Black Cherry:  This is my third and last attempt at this one.  Year one I got the wrong seed from Bakers Creek.  Fail.  Last year it hated the weather( most did) and the fruit didn't taste so great, the few that I recovered that didn't have blossom end rot.  Everyone swears by this purple cherry.  Hopefully  the third time this the charm.

Hays : This was a gift from Dr. Carolyn Male as part of her annual seed give away.  I asked her to surprise me.  Hays originates from Bulgaria and got to the US by way of Hays, Alberta.  It is a pink heart.  Mmm hearts.

Anna Russian: Hearts usually have the somewhat disturbing wispy foliage.  Anna Russian is no different in that respect.  Where it differs is an earlier harvest.  These are delicious.  I grew them last year.

Striped Roman:  I grow this stunner every year.  It is a very meaty red with gold metallic stripes.  Seems to be more resistant to wet season diseases than some of the others.

Crnkovic Yugoslavian: Tasty reliable productive pink that I grow most years.

German Red Strawberry: Several traits that bug.  Wispy leaves, long growth time.  However once you bite into these BIG red hearts, all that is forgotten.  Great tomato.

Ludmilla Red Plum:  Gift from Dr. Male. Productive German heirloom with plum shaped, decent sized fruit with very good flavor. Named by Reinhard Kraft of Germany, who named it after Ludmilla, a Kazakhstan German, who he received the seeds from.  This is one of the few I am growing this year with a late season.

Terhune: Another gift from Dr. Male.  Originates from the garden of an elderly woman in Minnesota who grew it for years.  Said to be a big sturdy pink with Brandywine like flavor without Bradywine's issues.

Seattles Woolly Blue Mammoth:  This is an F3 from Tom Wagners efforts.  I failed at getting it off the ground last year.  I bought it because the fruit are blue (aka purple) and the plant is fuzzy and I wanted a fuzzy blue tomato.

Sherry's Sweet Heart: Purchased from Wild Boar Farms.  It is a new variety this year.  I was drawn to the fact it is a midseason heart and the flavor is described as Mid-season and the flavor description was "Very good flavor, well balanced, sweet-acid."

Solar Flare: Wild Boar Farm's description on this was, "6-10 oz. Beefsteak, Red with Gold Stripes, Very Meaty with Luscious Sweet Red Tomato Flavor. F-7 Cross from Beauty King, selected for flavor, “WOW” Factor, production, increased earliness, scab resistance.  Mid / Early Season, full body red, slightly sweet. This variety is one of my work horses."  How could I resist?

Gary O'Sena: People always talk about this one.  I've never bought it because I don't like it's name.Finally did this year from Heritage Farms.  They say it is one of their earliest, best tasting, and prolific purple/black tomatoes.  I hope they are right.  An early black would be a good thing.

Maiden's Gold:  Another gift from Dr. Male.  The pictures of it are not all that attractive but I like its history and the fact that it might be another big fruited, old fashioned tasting, midseason variety.  This tomato was raised in family gardens for years in Southwestern Virginia and dates back to at least the early 1950's. It almost went extinct in 2009, but 22 year old seed revived and saved.

Amazon Chocolate  Gift from Hertitage seed. Not clear if this variety is yet stable.  It is described as a very delicious brown slicer.

Pink Furry Boar  Seriously, if you saw a tomato called pink furry boar wouldn't you buy it out of curiosity alone?  I did.  Plus it is pretty.  And fuzzy.  And pretty.

Porkchop:  Also from Hertiage seeds, bred by Wild Boar farms.  I needed a yellow.  A striped yellow sounded even better.   Said to be of excellent flavor. 

That's it!  I plant one cell of each variety, 2 seeds per cell on 2/11.  Soil was Hoffman's Seed Started which was light and fluffy and completely free of that "beneficial fungus additive" that I will never start seed with again.  Ever.  No sprouts yet but I check 1 or four times a day as they sit on their heating pad.  Feeling good about this season!

The year of extremes continues

1. Extreme snowfall this winter.
2. Extreme rainfall this spring (almost every single day!)
3. Extreme heat last week and coming again this week.
4. Early this morning, extreme rain.  The largest rainfall ever recorded in Illinois.  We got 7.25 inches on my raingauge.

Know whats not fun?  Digging in goo.  Know what is less fun.  Putting up a deck in 90 degrees with 90% humidity.  It rained off an on today.  Didn't matter.  We were soaked when it was raining and soaked when it wasn't.  Oh well still better than drought and locusts and dust storms and wild fires!

Landscaping the New Area Starts-Sort of

 If you had told me earlier in the year that the mid-point of the patio project would occur with the first tomato, I would have been OK with that.  Now it is here.  That patio midpoint and the first tomato.  

Galinas cherry started giving up her goodness last week.  Oh man these little cherries are delicious.  Not sweet.  Very old tomato flavor.  Very rich and very prolific.  The plant is huge, well over ten feet and very easy to keep in a reasonable shape.  

I'm supposed to be talking about landscaping though so I'll conclude my tomato ramblings with the whine that tomato season is a full three weeks behind, thanks to the horrible spring.  Oh well, at least it has started!

The fence is almost done, they are having trouble with one of that latches because they undersized the gate opening a full inch.  (Le sigh) .  This would normally start me on a contractor rant but its already 85 degrees out there and I have a deck to build.

  Focus on the pictures Stacy..  Right

Well this bed is done.  It was an interesting bed to do because it is deep shade on the far left and full sun on the far right.  The goal was to have four season interest, very low maintenance and some color.

The solution I came up with was was Stained Glass hosta on the far left in chartreuse and dark green,  some really glowy double knock out roses in the center and  a chartreuse and dark green dwarf cypress with interesting texture in the right.  I completed it with some shiny black ajuga, which should be easy to contain in this area near the hosta and then some dark purple salvia for the front.  The salvia are just filler.  I wanted the stars of the bed to be the glowers.  It looks underdeveloped right now, but I think once the hosta gets a bit bigger it is going to be nice.  I like the balance the different glowy greens is giving it.

Today the goal is to finish the balcony.  It is predicted to be a rather miserable job.  It is tropical out there right now and we have learned that while beautiful, Timbertek decking is hot!  We spent a good chunk of yesterday putting in the decking boards.  Today is the railings which are complex enough that they provide a video to supplement their written instructions.  

The next landscaping project at the deck is to landscape this area.  I call it the balcony bed.  This area is challenging for a whole lot of reasons.  The deep shade under the deck, the dog loving this area, the need for a four season view since the foyer looks right on it, the horribly compacted clay that has been tramped down in it, and most puzzling of all, the question of what to do on the end.

The end currently has grass in it.  The grass has to go because there is now way to reach it with the mower now that the fence is in.  What I want to do is tie this new bed in with the existing back bed.  However I don't want to completely re-do the back bed.  I also am struggling with the big bulbous blog at the end of a narrow bed that is going to occur if I don't.

I've decided to start on the easy (Ha!) edge of the bed and then work back.  Meanwhile every evening I sit out on the new patio with my tea and plot what the plan is going to be for this area. 

I'll save the challenges for this area for another day.  They are not only aesthetic and functional issues but also mechanical and technical.  It's requiring a whole lot of research.  

That's it for now, the deck calls.

FINALLY! Project Starts

As predicted, the whole permit thing took a month.  Really though even without permits it would probably have taken that long to get started due to the bleeping rain every single day since the snow went away!

Finally last week, we got a break.  We got back from vacation and the permits were ready, the weather was cooperating and the contractors were ready to go.  Time to purge the ugly!

It took about five minutes of ugly purging to figure out that things were going to get a whole lot more ugly before the pretty started.  

Excavation went really fast, but those giant piles of clay that got dumped all over my nice soft, lovely black soil, well that smarted.  We agonized over cutting some tree roots from the sugar maple, coaxed the dog that different grass was still OK and mostly tolerated a whole lot of mud and dust.  Yeah dust.  Who knew brick pavers were so dusty?

The bad pain was pretty darn short though.  OK the wallet still stings but the ugly fence is out, most of the pavers are in, the seatwall is in and we are starting to get some glimses of what is to come.  Yeah yeah, the deck is still rotten, the beds are still filled with giant clay mounts and the dog still is freaking out, but we are definitely making some progress!

I might even go to a nursery today!

I'm rather freaking out about the new giant bed that has been created and what to put in it.  The back berm bed is infested with weeds.  I'm having trouble keeping up with the existing beds and now there are two new ones and more to come!  Hopefully when I no longer have to relocate clay piles, that will free up more time for weed control.  In the meantime, the plan is lots of landscaping fabric and mulch!

Two Steps Forward...

The season of no progress continues!

Last weekend I spent a fair amount of time getting most of the tomatoes and peppers in the ground and getting mulch down in the foundation planting bed.  While doing this, I occasionally heard a strange sound...almost like two sticks being rubbed together.

It turns out, that is exactly what it was.  The maples in the yard, no doubt peeved that I have started planting hosta's in their root zones were plotting against me.  It couldn't have been two hours after the time I got the last bag down when a gentle breeze picked up, and the maples took their revenge.

The picture below was taken before the subsequent storm hit, which not only dropped 29834729 more maple seeds, but also planted and watered them nicely.

What this means is that this weekend, I get to spend more time on this same bed, getting up the propellars before they sprout and make their evil maple roots.

Unfortunately, this is not the only bed that has been attacked.  They all got nailed, along with the gutter covers.  You know those things that are supposed to keep  stuff out of the drainpipes by embedding them in mesh?  yeah

The original plans for the weekend were supposed to surrounded recovering the balcony in the patio with some lovely Timbertech composite decking.  We wanted to get that done before the patio project started.  It was supposed to be a fast job.  Take off boards, put on new boards, put on rail, done.

     

That would have been way to easy.  I should have known that their would be complications, it is the norm for our home.  The complications were pretty bad.  The boards coming out of the house are rotted, badly.  So badly that they pretty much disintergrated when we started pulling off the tin cover some put over the to make sure they never dried out.

What this now means is that we have to get another permit because now we have to cut these off, dig 42" holes in the ground to fill with concrete so that we have something to place the posts on that will now be required to support the deck.  The materials for this project were delivered 30 minutes after we discovered this mess and now are in the garage.  One of the cars will have to be in the driveway for the next month or so.  :P

The patio?  Well we dropped  chunk o change for a deposit on the project.  Then found out that the permit process here requires sign off by the health department, possibly our bank, and a pre-inspection from the county.  The turn around time of that is a couple of weeks, which mean the goal of starting that is pushed back to the end of the month.  The contractor laughed at me when I asked if we could have our money back for awhile.  :)  The frustrating thing about this whole permit thing is that this isn't a crazy project.  Expand an existing patio a bit, put in some edging of existing plantar beds, re-fence the area that is nowhere near any property line.  Why the heck they need the health department to make sure the water supply is A-OK boggles.  

Oh well, I hold out hope that we have something done by July 4.  That still leaves a good chunk o summer left for enjoyment. 

Photo Theft is so Sketchy. I'm talking to YOU!

This morning I remembered that I had this thing on my blog called statcounter.  I put it on there when I first started the blog and promptly forgot  about it.   I found a link to it this morning when digging around my email.

Statcounter, logs the traffic on your site.  It also tells what images have been downloaded.  I noticed that my chocolate stripes tomato image was rather popular so I got curious and went to google to see what I could see.  What I found is that my photo, taken on my kitchen counter, has been poorly reproduced at an heirloom gardening site  What this tells me is this:  1) This company is sketchy.  2.  This company apparently is unable to grow its own decent chocolate stripes tomatoes.  Every tomato on that plant is a work of art.  Thus I must deduce that since they have had to resort to stealing an image, they are incapable of growing their own fruit and must be getting seeds from who know's where.

I've heard about this sort of thing happening from other tomato growers.  Never thought I would see one of my pictures stolen though.  Shame on you .  If I could get your email link to open I'd tell you directly.  For now I'll have to just call you out on multiple tomato and gardening forums and hope someone gets the message and corrects their mistake.

Here is the link to my post about MY tomato.

Update:  Found an email for them and sent a request to remove the image.  Also posted my complaint at tomatoville where it looks like they may read.

Update #2  Wow, that was fast.  They did not respond to my email, however the photo has now been taken down.   Good.

Update #3 Got a nice email from the site owner.  I'm removing the links to the name.  I'm terrible at holding a grudge.  :)

Another Wet Weekend

The entire weekend can only be described as gross, weather wise.  Very cold, very wet.  I had really hoped to get the rest of the tomatoes and all of the peppers in this weekend, but they would have been ticked at getting put in that cold goo that is currently my yard.  So I spared them that, though they'll still have to deal with their current cramped quarters another few days.

Plan B was to get the old plum tree down for the fence expansion.  Plan B went out the window with the rain.

Plan C was to get more patio planning done.  That went well.  Our guy we were hoping on came thru and his schedule is looking OK for getting this done soon.  The permit process it turning into a huge headache, but that wasn't unexpected.  I won't be posting any more about THAT in case they read blogs.  Hey they fly their planes over houses to see if you added decks so it isn't that far of a stretch.  :)

We did make a trip out to to a landscape supply place or two.  Good thing we made that trip.  Pavers look different in person than in the catalog.  We changed our minds in what we wanted and this change will likely save us a bit of dough!.  Next stop was to check out decking materials.  I'm interested in the third generation composite stuff that is out there for decks now.  I particularly like the Ipe inspired deck from Fiberon.  Unfortunately I HATE all the deck makers composite posts and railings.  The shiny plastic thing-yuck.  Right now we are leaning towards composite decking and cedar posts with aluminum balusters.

I spent a few hours working on the plumbing research for the pond.  This is WAY more complicated then I originally thought.  We are not going with an Aquascape kit or their typical layout.  I want low maintenance which means skimmer and sieve and UV and bottom drain and about a thousand different valves.  Hubs is going to freak when he see's all this.  I wonder if stealth pond plumbers can be hired.  I got a promotion on Friday.  Seems like that could be a good way to spend the pay raise!

Bid Update:

Another bid on the patio project came in last night.  Its frustrating this contractor thing.  How is it that you can give someone a list, a picture of what you want, spend forty five minutes giving details and you still end up with a missing path, two extra columns and the wrong stone?

  Sigh.

Foundation Planting-Backyard

This spring has been a struggle.  I have been unable to get outside to do anything due to almost the entire month of April being rainy.  The other issue is completely unrelated to rain.  It is the issue of the patio project.  I don't want to plant in areas that are going to be ripped out or improved.  That limitation has messed up my whole flow!  

Last weekend I finally got a break in the weather and was able to get outside and get something done.  The back beds were still too wet.  The ground was still to cold for bringing out the tomatoes but the foundation area at the back of the house was ready for some action!

This area had three large yews removed last year from the area in front of the meters.  They were getting old and ratty looking so we took them out.  For this year, I wanted to put in a mixture of edibles and perennials in this bed.  The plum tree that currently partially shades it is coming out (fall hazard) so I'll have more light soon.

 

A trip to my favorite nursery started off the project.  I only went for some grasses to cover the meter.  Like most trips to the nursery, that didn't go exactly as planned.  The $82 bill added up fast.  I had a really nice variety to choose from and I leaned towards the newer and cooler which made for higher prices.  Since my plan was to divide each plant to get more for the money, I actually ended up with almost three times as many plants as shown here.  The impulse buy was the Valentine blueberry.  A pink blueberry?  How could I resist.  The most expensive?  The fern leaf peony at $40.  Hey at least I put back the big bird peony that was $117!

Weeding this bed was a quick job thanks to the fall clean-up we did on it last year.  Planting took a little longer thanks to the residual evil lava rocks that are still found in our foundation beds.  I also found a huge crack in the rain barrel that needed to be dealt with. In that same area, I had to again deal with the ugliest bush in the world.  It is trying to make a come back.  I removed the rocks, dug it up again, covered the area with four layers of landscape fabric and then the rocks again.  Take that Ugly!

I took a break from the foundation plantings mid-day to get one of the self watering containers set-up.  I wanted to get the soil and water in it, so that it can start warming up this next week.  Then the tomatoes will be less shocked when I put them in.  The color scheme for this bed was accidental but might end up being kind of cool looking.  I ended up with a lot of red leaved plants.  Pennstemem, red chard, Red cabbage, molten lava amaranth, rhubarb.  Then I also have multiple bright green perennials.  I added a potato leaf tomato just to try and push things a bit (Galinas cherry) and then topped the area with a non-dyed mulch (I'll save the mulch rant for another day).

The end result doesn't currently look like much.  Dividing perennials doesn't tend to give you instant wow factor but I'm pleased with the potential here.  I post pictures in a month to show you were it went.