It's Up & Functioning

So here it is - the grape arbor! It is all done except for the staining and planting the grapes & jasmine. The grapes are purchased and waiting patiently for their day in the sun, so to speak. As for shade, I checked and at 5:00 p.m. there was a pretty decent amount of shade. Of course this isn't July, but we'll see how it tracks. Any comments are welcome. I am actually not happy with how the 2x8 lattice work turned out, so I may fine tune that in the days to come.

Squirrels

From the guy who loves RFDTV - here are exciting videos of the squirrels in our back yard! I love sitting at the window watching them. We have counted 5 out at once, so we know there are at least that many in the tree, but who knows how many more there may be now or later. And although they are fun to watch, I fear for our garden, especially our corn.

One Grape Arbor - Going Up

And here it is - not quite finished, but pushed down the road a considerable distance - the grape arbor (which, by the way, is intended to provide shade to the patio, but only after the sun is down in the sky quite a way). We still need to put on the trellises, and the cross bars on top, but the heavy lifting (so to speak) is done. We greatly appreciate Byron and Peter helping to put the finishing touches on it.

The dirt you see in piles here is now gone, and tomorrow or this weekend we will work on planting the grapes: Thompson Seedless (this is Yuba City, after all) & either Concord or Black Seedless.

Oh yes, this strange creature showed up at our house on Monday night. Funny looking thing, with no ears, and trailing these little pellet-like things.

Easter Sunday Family

Last Sunday was a beautiful Easter day here in Yuba City. So we invited family over for a nice dinner, good company, and some pretty cool pictures of Pete & Mel's trip to the UK. Here are some pics for your viewing pleasure:

Mom with the middle half of her family:

A happy family:

Three flowers beautifying the yard:

Relaxing after dinner:

Getting ready to watch the show:

Two strays we let in because we felt sorry for them:
Inspectors on the job:

Workee, Workee, Workee

We are very happy to have Peter home for a week. We took full advantage of his good nature yesterday to begin to erect the grape arbor for our patio. Here is the final product of yesterday, and a few photos of what happened along the way. We finished the east side of the arbor yesterday as well. It looks much like this, but about twice as wide. We still need to dig the holes, place the structure so that it is all nice and in the right place, standing up straight and level, and cement it in place. We'll do that sometime in the next couple of days, so stay tuned for more posts of posts.
We began by digging the holes on the west side of the arbor, missing the irrigation pipes that run along here.
At the same time the structure was going up, the garden received some of the attention it needs. As you can see, one of the casualties of the project is the basketball hoop. It has seen better days, and needs to move on to greener (i.e., recycled) pastures. Notice the job foreman in the red shirt making sure everything is going as it should. When he wasn't looking, I snuck off to work on the horseshoe pits, the western one you can just see over the base of the basketball hoop.
And here is that guy in the red shirt working the garden. We couldn't have done it without his help.

Here is the west side as it is waiting to be set in the holes and cemented in. The cross-piece you see here is 8 feet long, with the 2 supports being 4 feet apart. The cross-piece on the east side is 16 feet long, with the middle 2 supports 4 feet apart, and the outside supports 2 feet in from the ends. The lattice work you see in the background of this photo will go between the support posts on either side of the "portal" on the east side structure, and between the two structures.

How it will look when it is all finished. ;)