Yard Tour!

There's always something going on in our yard.

And it's never quite finished.

The house we currently live in belonged to Mr. KK's grandmother. We bought the ranch in 2010 and gutted and renovated it for almost a year before moving in. During that time we concentrated on the inside of the house, tearing down walls, putting in my dream kitchen, and discovering about a zillion termites (good times).

The house was built in the 1960s on a double lot. This means the we have one house and twice the yard – all ours. When Mr. KK was growing up, his dad would use the second lot as his 'wood lot' for his small wood business. During that time that yard contained mostly a log splitter, enough wood to fill the Redwood Forest, and all of the junk stuff my father-in-law had collected over the years.

My father-in-law – God love him – is a collector. And not only does he collect his own stuff, but he collects stuff that other people are going to get rid of. Old windows? Put them in the wood lot! Doors with broken knobs? You never know when you might need them! Boards from a ripped up deck? Sure!

And all of this stuff accumulated in one spot: our soon-to-be yard.

When we were renovating the inside of the house – and even after we moved in – I would drive down the long driveway whistling the theme song to Sanford and Son. It was that bad.

But over the last few years, my father-in-law and my husband have turned our yard around. Gone are the 27 drain pipes that we might need one day. No longer will you find plastic containers in varying sizes, shapes and colors. All those windows? Gone!

We're by no means done, but we've come a long way baby.

Here's a photo tour of our yard(s):

the backyard

the "wood lot"

the bocce court

(regulation size, thank you very much)

the garden!

(see all those planters? built from wood scraps!)

See that fence? 

Built from the wood planks of someone's torn up deck.

The cucumber trellis?

That used to be a french door.

the hops arbor

Our antique tractor. 

I've been known to ride around on this bad boy once or twice.

the tractor pulls double duty:

1. easy yard travel 2. quick ride to the beer fridge

our wild raspberry bushes

the herb garden

The next post: All About My Crazy Neighbor

Nature: 3 kk: 0

I hate nature.

I'm not an 'outdoorsy' kind of gal. I scream when I see a spider, I like to sleep and pee inside, and I could live the rest of my life without ever laying a finger on a lawn mower.

Mr. KK – on the other hand – is the epitome of a nature-lover. 

Dresser full of 'work clothes'? Check.

A garage and two sheds filled with every yard instrument known to man? Check.

The ability to walk over a dead animal carcass, pick up a bug with bare hands and move in closer to evaluate the danger of a found snake? You betcha!

So our house rule is this: I'll deal with the inside, Mr. KK deals with the outside.

This rule usually holds true until we're in dire straits, as was the case this past weekend. I was called in to help with 'the outside' to get our yard ready for our picnic next weekend. 

And when your 'outside' looks like 2 acres of this, you know it's serious:

(We're running a bit behind because we lost a weekend of working around the house due to a trip to Mexico to celebrate a certain someone's birthday, so I'm finding it rather selfish to do anything besides agree to help out.)

So this weekend I bit the bullet, put on my 'work clothes' (read: the pair on jeans in my closet I wear the least) and headed out.

Saturday went something like this:

setting: me planting herbs in the yard

MOTHER-IN-LAW: "What's that on your neck? You're bleeding."

And sure enough, I was bleeding. Because I was bitten by a mystery insect who left a welt that was swelling. It probably laid eggs in my neck, or injected me with malaria.

By Saturday night, the site of the bite was swollen, and all around my neck hurt. Miraculously, I avoided death and woke up Sunday morning.

My neck now looks like this:

I'll admit, it doesn't look that bad here. 

But it's BAD. And it hurts.

setting: sorting through dirt from our old planter.

ME: "This is a weird looking stick." (holding it up)

FATHER-IN-LAW: "That's because it's a bone. Probably from a rabbit."

item in question:

Um, seriously?

setting: the end of the day, after we finished up

MR. KK: "Something just bit me." (inspecting his chest) "It's a tick."

Awesome.

ME: "Let me get the vaseline." 

And I smothered the son of a bitch. (the tick, not Mr. KK)