We’ve been tending to the garden unceremoniously with mixed results.  I lost 8 of the 12 tomato plants I originally hoped would yield a tomato fiest, but I’ve since planted new ones.  Try, try again.  The bed of greens has been moving very slowly with the lettuce, broccoli, carrots, spinach, bok choy and leeks inching along.

Everything else has done quite well.  In fact, we’ve already harvested our first golden squash!

But the majority of the hard labor has gone into landscaping the front fence where we have tried to launch a maintenance-free, draught-resistant variety including rosemary and provence lavender.

The bigger my belly gets, the more difficult it gets to weed, so let’s hope the mulch helps reduce the amount of time I spend bent over!  And many thanks to Mr. Erwin who did the majority of the back-breaking work to remove the grass.  Along the inside of the fence, we are planting a hedge of wintergreen boxwoods, so there is more work to be done.

What do you think, should we paint the fence white?

How do I love Texas?  Let me count the ways.

Used to be I hated this state.  Too hot.  Too much traffic.  Too many bugs, especially mosquitos.  Too expensive.

Now my life is here.  My house, my kids, my amazing neighbors, my favorite stores and products, my lake, my breezy spring evenings, my barbeque…  I have planted my roots and I am watching them grow.

No really, I mean it.  We really did plant some roots!

Building the Erwin House Victory Garden, October 2008

Erwin House Victory Garden, March 2009

Last October, we smelled a nasty economic downturn on the horizon, so we planted ourselves a little Victory Garden.  It was late in the season, but I took a chance on some tomatoes and basil (no luck).  The kids picked out some pretty fall annuals.  We had a very successful turn with the collards, broccoli, bok choy, and oregano.  I caught the gardening bug, and I caught it bad.  Our house is full of cups with various seedlings waiting for the last frost (tonight perhaps?).

Seedlings for the Erwin House Victory Garden

Today we had a grand time swapping seeds, seedlings, and various plants with neighbors.  We gave away some trumpet vine, watermelon seeds, and bell pepper seedlings.  We brought home stonecrop sedum, inland sea oats seeds, heirloom tomato starts and garlic chives.  This we will add to the already bustling beds out back as well as to (we hope) some border in front of the fence.  Once we get the fenced fixed, that is.  And painted.  Dang, where is that to-do list?

Ah yes, it is on Facebook.  We’re dorks like that, so do be sure to check us out there if you would like to keep up with our daily tweets and whatnot!

Over the weekend, Crestview Doors had a booth at the Fall Austin Home and Garden Show. It was our first trade show, and we learned so much. I’ll save the details for the Crestview Doors blog, but the best part was that we were on the border of the landscaping section of the show.
I hadn’t gone to the Show before. When we were remodeling, the show fell on a weekend that we were out of town. Since then, I haven’t had a good reason to attend. Let me tell you that the landscaping exhibits are worth visiting.
A few booths down was a gorgeous setup by Goodness Grows in Austin. Heather Thompson, the owner, created an incredible getaway in the middle of a bustling convention center. I wish I had a picture, but I was too busy looking at her portfolio and enjoying the waterscapes and soft music.


We chatted a bit about Erwin House’s pitiful lack of landscaping.

Like most of 50’s suburbia, we have a flat lot, and because most of the trees revealed themselves to be dead shortly after David bought the property, it is also mostly devoid of shade as well.
I’ve waxed on before about how I detest the great American lawn. I want a quite inauthentic yard actually. Meandering paths, quiet shady hideaways, lots of natural plants, a small vegetable and herb garden.

Alas, I also have children to entertain and two dogs to let roam free.

Across from us was Agave Landscape and Nursery. They also had an impressive booth complete with water feature.
They had some pics of the ironwork they specialize in, and I couldn’t help but notice a cool iron gate that I thought would complement the Allandale we had on display.

Sadly, I am landscaping challenged. For some reason, sitting down and sketching out our house was no biggie. When it comes to the yard, though, I have a serious creative block. It is like there are too many possibilities. We are going to need some help on this one.

Painting our deck had become a matter of life and death judging by the heavy sighs David and I would voice every time we would pull into the driveway lately. People told us they loved the rough cedar, but we have never felt like it jived with the mid-century themes of the home. Like everything else, we knew it was a simple do-it-yourself job, but we also never had the time for it, especially not with a baby and new business. So, we finally caved and hired a crew to come out and powerwash and paint the posts as well as stain and seal the Cumaroo deck beams.

BEFORE

DURING

AFTER

What a HUGE difference it made! I suppose it had to wait. We were told by a few contractors that you have to let cedar age a little or it won’t take the paint (and its natural resin might even bleed through). It looks so good now, I don’t know what to do with myself.
I have great plans for landscaping, but first we have a project that requires some planning. As you can probably see, our deck doesn’t actually provide any cover for the area underneath… including our front door. Heavy rains drip directly through the deck beams and form a lake right in front of the picture window. We are going to have to build some kind of under-cover, provide a gutter to redirect the runoff, and then grade the soil so that the water won’t collect in one spot. Only then can we finish the concrete screen fence under the deck and landscape that area.
I’ve been saying that Erwin House was completed in August of 2006, but I suppose a house is never really done, eh?

People ask us why we “went up” with the house, building on a second story when we could have just added a room onto the back. There are lots of different reasons… and one of them was because we didn’t want to lose the yard.
Our lot is a strange triangle with the acute angle in the back. We quickly realized after moving in that most of the yard is in the front whether we saved the backyard or not. And the front yard lines a busy street. If we were going to enjoy soccer scrimmages and frisbee tosses, we were going to have to build a barrier between the people who regularly ignore the speed limit and us.
Hence, the hunt for the perfect fence material.
David and I had long admired the Modern Phoenix homes.

We so admire the creative and often elegant use of concrete screen blocks to privatize or decorate the home and landscaping. But we also appreciated the iconic nature of the screen block. The varying types of screen blocks used throughout the 50’s and 60’s symbolized a new age of mass production that could manipulate materials decoratively and affordably in ways not previously possible.
Unfortunately, decorative concrete screen block is as difficult to find as a retro front door. We searched and searched, finally asking Amy’s Ice Cream to tell us where they had procured the blocks for their concrete wall at the Burnet Road location. They pointed us to Featherlite, a concrete company with a location just north of Austin in Round Rock.
My first phone call to Featherlite was a bust. They told me flat out that they didn’t make these blocks anymore–Amy’s had special ordered them from El Paso. So, I began to try to hunt down another distributor.

We caught a blurb in the summer issue of Atomic Ranch. The Editor mentioned that many people were looking for similar decorative concrete bricks and she welcomed all readers to submit their info. We surfed our way to Orco, a California company, that still manufactures a variety of vintage concrete blocks… but they don’t ship outside of California. The freight would be staggering, warned the sales rep. We told Atomic Ranch about Orco, but they already had the scoop.
I tried Lowe’s; one of their commercial sales reps was very kind but couldn’t find anyone to help. We called every landscaping company in the county, but again no luck.
I called Featherlite again. This time I spoke in more detail with a sales guy, asking him if he could check if there were any leftover blocks from the Amy’s job. Lo and behold, he said they had a few left onsite and we could come take a look and grab what was left.
David and I made a trip up to their McNeil lot on Friday. They didn’t bring us the Amy’s block… they brought us the mother of all atomic-age designs. And we instantly bought 68 of them to fill in the gaps in the cedar fence David had been working on all summer.
You should have seen the look on their faces when we started plotzing over the blocks. They thought we were out of our minds. We told them about Atomic Ranch magazine and how lots of people were looking for these blocks and we had been searching forever and would even consider buying all 934 of the blocks left in their inventory. The sales rep handed me his card and told us to spread the Featherlite gospel far and wide. They have to make 500 at a time, he explained, and there simply hadn’t been enough demand to keep them in stock.
So, house renovators, mid-century advocates, and modern houselovers, we ask thee to go forth and prosper with the new knowledge you have of concrete screen blocks. Don’t let iconic architecture die with the end of the 20th century. Demand retro and contemporary designs to be fabricated regularly and abundantly. Block-heads unite!

Our poor yard. Ever since that big, ugly purple monster moved in, the whole plat has gone to heck. First there was the dead grass killed by the dumpster and the storage pod. Then there was the havoc that was wreaked by the driveway installation. Now there is plain old neglect to deal with.
In a fit of inspiration, we bought a cordless electric mower (Homelite — Home Depot was having a sale). It did most of our thick, moist, weedy lawn and needed to be recharged overnight to finish up the last patch. We gave it a thumbs up.
In a fit of desperation, we began to build a fence for the front yard. We live on a very busy street and we have two highly energetic boys as well as a spastic puppy and curious kitty.

Then we were deluged with door orders. The lawn is starting to look a little like it did a few weeks ago in the above photo once again. I’m thinking we take all of the damaged goods we’ve been stockpiling in our guest bedroom and pile them in the front yard, creating both an effective barrier as well as a no-holds-barred advertising campaign all in one. What are your thoughts?

A year ago, I was busily cataloging information about landscaping and green building. I was hoping we would have the opportunity to do a bit more green building than we did. I can count an incredible increase in energy efficiency among our successes, but we’re still in the process of making room for basics like solar panels and a rainwater/greywater storage tank.
Still, the driveway is in, as is the new sidewalk, and the rain has started to rejuvenate our lawn. I can’t help but look at our plot as a blank slate which daily begs, “Now what?!”

I’ve been playing around in Photoshop, trying to figure out what should go where. Today was the first day for breakthroughs in landscaping discussion. Never you mind that we have no time whatsoever to actually get on our knees and plant anything, especially with the Violet Crown Festival in the works and practically around the corner (we’re chairing this year!) and a new business to babysit.
I’m loving on Laurie’s landscaping and the pics over at Stone and Cobble. A trip to Gardens may be in order…

The punch list grows smaller.
The big event of last week was the removal of the old driveway. I think it took longer than they had expected. The driveway was original to the house and was a solid 6 or so inches of concrete through and through. No rebar, no clay foundation. They had to score each section twice and remove it with a bulldozer (a real treat for the younger boy).

It dramatically improved the face of the house in my eyes. It shifted the focus of the automotive section of the home to the backyard and it left plenty of room for the crepe myrtles I plan to plant in front of each post (once they are painted white, ahem).

Ace’s guys also hung the shutters and awnings, so now all we need are the screens on the front of the house, and we’re going to be close to perfection.

There was much ado about storage this weekend. Financial considerations made us cut the driveway, carport, and outdoor storage/garage from the original plans. That meant that, for the past few weeks, our guest bedroom became the garage and was piled to the brim with boxes, tools, and whatnots.
Realizing that it might be a while before we get a garage built, and seeing as we have company coming for Labor Day weekend, David bought a little shed to put together.
Who knew it would be such a project! Luckily, he had helpers
In the meantime, I organized all the schtuff and tried to put it in piles that could be moved–to the storage shed, to the attic, to somebody else’s house. By sundown today, David had cleared out the guest bedroom of all the miscellany and set up the bed and shades. A few curtains, and The Official Justin and Edie Wolfe Suite will be complete.
This coming week we are hoping to get things squared away with our bank. We met with our loan officer on Friday and, well, let’s just say that he didn’t seem to have ever read through our loan paperwork. David is keeping a list of things they have royally screwed up, and I think that one meeting added three or four new items to the list. Can’t wait to see what they do next. In theory, they should have the construction loan ready to rollover to a mortgage within the next week or so. Then the ball is back in our court.