stewardship

Windmill palm

Believe it or not, work on the exterior landscaping is still ongoing... some six months after it began.  It has been worth it though, as the back patio, side entrance, and front walkways are starting to look incredibly awesome.  There is still some work remaining, but we hit a major milestone today, having received and installed most of the major plants and trees.  The patio and walkways were looking pretty barren these last few months with no greenery, but now that we've got the plants in it actually has transformed into an amazing tropical themed paradise, literally overnight.

Our plants came from various sources, from the highly corporate Home Depot and Lowe's to Costco to the local gigantic wholesaler called Devil Mountain Nursery.  Princess V really took the project to heart, merrily zipping off to various locations to pick up plants in her Scion tC hatchback.  The tC has continued to amaze us with its versatility and hauling capacity.

Some green friends ready for planting!

Sago palms and other tropical looking plants

Mediterranean Fan Palm

The other amazing thing I've witnessed is V's newfound devotion to procuring and tending to all the new plants we've recently brought home.  It has certainly been a substantial investment to obtain all these plants, and simply on that basis it behooves us to take good care of them.  But it's been remarkable seeing how motivated she has been in scooting around town looking for the best plants to build our dream garden and being all into things like drip irrigation and fertilizer.  Let's hope she sticks with it and helps our garden flourish into a nice tropical retreat as time goes on.

demolition

December is here once again.  Two trials, and a whole year in our new place now behind me.  I've decided to take the rest of the year off (sounds so much more grand than saying I'm taking 2 weeks off, right?) and started telling people at work, I'll see you in 2012.  Some of them seem a little put off by that.  Most satisfying.

And just as I return from Washington DC and settle into my comfortable routine of staying up late watching movies and playing video games, and sleeping in ... what is this cacophony outside?  Oh that's right, I have an army of workers outside digging, hammering, pouring cement, building walls, and bringing my backyard designs into fruition.  Can't believe it's finally happening.  We got our city permits, HOA approval and everything.  Months of talking about design ideas and choosing stone materials for pavers and tiles and moldings, actually turned into something really being constructed!  It's very exciting for us, not to mention costing us most of the remaining savings we had left after purchasing the home, so we are of course monitoring things very closely and taking pics of everything that goes on.  Oh, Mauro is going to move a pile of dirt from one side of the lot to the other with the Bobcat?  Hold up, let me go get my Nikon...

Can't wait to see it all when it's done.  Firstly, because it's going to be awesome.  Secondly, I can start sleeping in again.

architectural

It's been a year since we moved into our new place at Stonebrae. And we still haven't started landscaping in our back yard. Not to worry though, I have been hard at work designing and visualizing what our back yard will look like, and we've selected our contractors for the project. So we'll be getting that started soon and we're very excited about how it will turn out.

2D drawing, my layout overlaid on top of plan drawing of our lot.

I started out sketching designs and ideas on the iPad using Autodesk's Sketchbook Pro, which is a great 2D sketching tool. But when I started to use photos and try to visualize the outdoor kitchen and pergola in 3D, it wasn't cutting it.

Top view of the lot in Sketchup.

 So I found out about Google's free 3D drawing tool, Sketchup, and started playing around with it. It's pretty easy to learn by watching the various tutorial videos they make available, and you can't beat FREE! So I started out by sketching the kitchen area, and next thing you know I had added the pergola, and then the whole backyard design. And then to take it to the next step, I started drawing the outline of the entire house, and before you know it I had a complete 360 view of the property. So I went ahead and did some redesign in the front yard too. This stuff is addicting! One of its primary purposes is for architectural and landscaping design, so it was very easy to take the real world measurements I had and input them to make my drawing to-scale and as realistic as possible.  

Kitchen and pergola area, with measurements using Sketchup.

In addition, Sketchup can pull in real world imagery from Google Maps and Google Earth, so you can actually render stuff and see what it looks like in real locations.  And you can build and share objects (called components or models) with everyone else in the Sketchup community, so you don't even have to draw/create everything yourself.  If you need a pre-rendered palm tree or a chair, chances are someone has already done it for you, and you can just drop it into your project and move/rotate/scale it around to your taste, or even tweak it further.  Data just wants to be free...

Plants, furniture and pergola from the 3D Warehouse.  House, walls and fountain design by me.

We're still in the process of getting approval through the HOA but our contractor is on board and we are ready to make this jump from virtual to reality very soon. Stay tuned for real photos of the finished project and we'll see how true to the design it turns out!