Ode to the Fence

Eric and I are irrationally in love with our new fence. Over the past 24 hours we've spent a good, solid amount of time just staring at it and relishing in the fact that we don't have to see our neighbor anymore. It's like having a whole new room in our house, open to plenty of possibilities that we couldn't see before when we were forced to see him. It's truly a revelation.

Now I've got all sorts of plans for yard related work dancing about in my head, but unfortunately the time of year is wrong for a lot of what we want to do and the funds have dwindled down to a slow trickle for big expenses. I've got a landscaper interested in helping us out for a reasonable and affordable amount of money, but we're still left with a lot of additional expenses to do the yard exactly the way we want to. We'll just have to pace ourselves and buy what we can when we can. Man, I hate being frugal!

(sing it like you're Grand Master Flash!) Do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-FENCE! Check out its majesty:

Okay, so for instance for the concrete area shown in the picture above we wanted to tile over that and tile the 2 foot side wall with some sort of cool natural looking stone. We would do that ourselves, but that is a huge job and just the materials alone are pricey. I'm guessing that will be a fall project at the absolute earliest, but more likely a spring project for next year. We'll just have to deal with the ugly concrete for now. We thought about staining it, but we hear bad things about the way it weathers, even if you put some sort of hard epoxy coat on it. We'll see.

In that left corner on the lowered area we want to get a nice but small table and chairs for eating outside, something with a big umbrella. Eric fell in love with the slight rocking chairs at Home Depot Expo a few years ago so we think we found a nice, suitable alternative that will fit well in that space. We just need to do a little saving to get it. Yes, all the chairs rock and are super comfy:

We also want to find a way to hide those AC units, but still make them accessible if they need servicing and make sure that air can flow around them. I think we will be either getting or making long, narrow wood planter boxes to put about a foot off of the AC units and planting some tall grass in them. That way the planters can be moved if we need to get some HVAC guys over but the rest of the time we don't need to look at them. It needs to be something movable, as all those contractors don't seem to be the most graceful creatures in the world—I would be pissed if they trampled our plants.

We'll also most likely do the same thing along this edge to hide all the AC and electrical conduit that is on the retaining wall. Three or 4 long skinny wooden planter boxes should do the trick here. It would be nice to also do long, skinny planter boxes along the tops of the concrete edges to the raised garden section and the stair wall into the sunroom. That starts getting super pricey though.

We'll use all those CMU blocks to create the foundation of the raised and partially covered wooden deck that we are going to have built for the back right corner of the garden. I'd like to have some chairs up there and a small side table or two. That will be the place to sit out and drink whiskey…or wine…or beer…we're not picky, as long as we can drink out there. The landscaper is helping us with that task and he knows the importance of creating the "drinking oasis".

We'll be doing some large, flowering trees along the left edge to get even more privacy on that side, maybe also in planter boxes so we get some additional height in them. We aren't going to do any grass, just planter boxes with minimalistic, Zen-garden suited plants and lots of river rocks on the ground. That pile of large, flat bluestone will be used to make a nice, winding path through the river rocks to the deck area in the back. Yay progress!