Creature Feature

On our way to a friends house in San Francisco we saw a cutie-patootie moth hanging out on the door frame.

We also saw this beautiful yard...well, spied on it is more like it. The lamp post, fountain, and furniture make it seem so cozy!

Amazing Gardens

Step Garden, Fukuoka, Japan.

Check out Popular Mechanics roundup of unique gardens all over the world.

The stump project

All other websites in the world will want you to remove a stump using one of the easy ways:

• drilling holes and adding salt (this will soften the stump over a period of several months)
• hire someone to use a stump grinder (this will leave you with a nice pile of mulch).

Removing a redwood stump with an axe and a saw is not recommended on any website anywhere.

Except on mine. I like challenges. I suggest getting an axe, sturdy gloves, putting on some great music and going to work. If you are already in decent shape, it will take you about 80 hours.

Why on earth did I do this? Because I don't get a lot of opportunies to delve into physical labor. I very much enjoyed the blood & sweat I spent getting this out.

Before the stump & it's roots was something I had to work around and by the end I had a huge hole & lots of potential.

Opa!

I love the look of bricks and terra cotta but when they get too old they don't seem to clean well so what do you do?

Break them up & expose their rich color!

Here I used bricks to make a little semicircle to contain ice grass. Cute.

Oakland Garden Tour Highlight reel part 2

I enjoy looking at people's garden "work stations"

In the first station below there's no shortage of pots, labels and dirt.

In the second, I love the elbow room and it looks ready for you to cut flowers, water, paint on some root starter, and pot a plant all with a very pretty backdrop color.

Portland flowers

Don't know what these are called (yet) but they're lovely!

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Cutting edge science of flowers

I always find it delightful to check out the wall art in the school in which I volunteer. The other day I saw this. Kinda-super-cute, huh? You have to love the little bug.