Faces in the Dirt

I meant to post this way back in the spring when I found it, but I forgot. Actually, the Man found it for me in the backyard. I think it was after we removed a giant shrub in the backyard and he was cleaning up the weeds and junk that had accumulated under it.

This is it. Isn't that a funny thing to find in your yard? Or maybe not. There's an old crumbling stone urn on corner of the patio that I am assuming it fell off of. There aren't really any other details left intact on it, so I don't know for sure, but it must be where this guy came from.

I don't think I took any pictures of the urn this summer, but I rather like its crumbling.

Anyway. I also needed an excuse to play around with picture size on here. Trying to figure out how to make the pictures genuinely "large" on here, since posting them Large doesn't do the trick. Who likes little pictures?? Seriously - anyone know the secret? Scaling makes them look pixellated in Internet Explorer......

Fixed Retaining Wall

We moved into this house last fall, and over Christmas last year, part of the retaining wall on the left side of the driveway fell down. Not that the mass of weeds and rampaging yuccas weren't enough on their own - the wall itself had to fall apart.

We spent a ridiculous amount of time this summer ripping out plants over there and maybe that was a waste of time. I'm hoping that it will at least minimize the number of yuccas that survived all that.

We have been contemplating rebuilding it since then, but it took us a while to decide to spend the money and to find someone to do it. It cost more than I expected, but since we have such a narrow driveway anyway, we decided to have it widened at the same time. Might as well, since it was difficult to get in and out of vehicles in the driveway when the doors couldn't open the whole way.

They did the work over Thanksgiving and while it made a huge mess out of driveway and the street with all the mud, it is all finished now and it looks much better! We still have to have someone come in and pour the concrete where it was widened. And someday we will have to gather up the cash and get the other side done so they match. Wouldn't that be nice??

Seriously, though, it looks so much better than the giant mass of weeds and ugly triangular blocks that were there before. Someday maybe we'll make the front of this house look nice!

Dutch Does Prep

Dutch got a new shirt and he doesn't hate it. I'm not sure he likes it either, but at least he doesn't hate it. I think I must be in the mood to dress up the dog.