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  The Crenshaw Family

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The Crenshaw Family

A bit of a gap between pictures this time.  Needless to say we have been busy and then vacation and a few business trips got in the way.  The retaining wall is FINISHED!!! 23 pallets, 36 blocks per pallet at 65 pounds a piece = 828 blocks or 53,280 pounds that the worlds greatest neighbor helped me move ... he also helped with the 35 yards of top soil that was moved into the back - roughly 20,000 pounds.  All of the blocks and dirt all by wheel barrow.  The 1600 square feet of sod (Insta-Lawn) will arrive this Friday.  Expect the trees that are sitting on the patio to be planted on the hill and all the dirt to be covered in green in the next set of pictures. 

Well, you may have noticed a small patch of ground with no grass yet.  Seems my calculations were a bit off (I even over estimated to try and compensate for the angled areas) and I was off about 100 square feet. This is the fourth lawn I have done and my first UNDER estimation.  The extra will arrive this week and will take no time at all to put down. The hill is completely covered in weed block now and ground cover is due to go in this coming weekend. Low voltage lighting is in on top of the retaining wall around the patio.  I need to get a couple more lights to finish coming down the top of the wall over the grass.  We also have the three large trees on the hill lit up. In the far corner of the yard, we still need to build some steps to allow Mary and the kids to get up to the elevated vegetable garden. More wiring for the trellis and quite a few detail things to finish up, but as Mary says, "the hard part is finished".  Some how I don't think it will ever be finished.

The rain this winter has kept us out of the yard except for the occasional "weed fest".  Even with the weed block, we have to get up on the hill to weed where the weeds try to grow the same place our ice plant is growing.  It gets a little better every time and we have less and less weeding to do.  The ice plant is filling in really well and we expect that the hill be be completely covered by the end of summer. We did lose one of our young Camphor trees to a huge wind storm, but we replaced it already and the new one seems to be doing well.  We can't forget our newest helper too.  We think he may be why things are growing so well.

We also have done a lot of work in the front of the house. It is not quite finished, but close.  We covered our "leprosy ridden" front walk with tile.  We did the front porch area as well.  Then we added a post lamp and a spot light for the flag (which has been flying quite a bit lately - flag etiquette says ya gotta keep it lit if you leave it up 24/7).  The final touch will be to cover the dirt area with medium sized river rock ... if we can find it at an affordable price. We do need to figure out why the grapefruit tree will not grow.  Produces awesome grapefruit, would be nice if it was more than 3 feet tall though.

Well, Dan says "The front is DONE!" ... some how no one really believes that though.  We finally got all the rock in place that we wanted to cover up the dirt/rotted bark stuff.  It came out better than expected.  Nikki thinks we need something to the left of the office since there is a lot of "open space" there. We are thinking a stone bench so that if that silly grapefruit tree ever GROWS we will have a place to sit in the shade. It took a few years to finally get the look we wanted, but we are pretty happy with the results.