front yard 3: hell strip
The front yard was a pretty daunting thing to tackle, so we first tried the grassy strip between the sidewalk and the road.
After reading some blogs about removing lawns, I followed (with help from S) the general recommended method. It took us about 2 or 3 weekends.
1. Turned over all the sod with a shovel. This took the longest.
2. Got cheap mulch at municipal dump. It took 2 trips and 5 big garbage bag fulls for only ~1-2" of coverage.
3. Spread out newspaper on top of sod, then mulch
4. Planted things: I bought a few CA natives at the Hidden Villa biannual sale
- pacific coast iris (lavendar lace)
- conejo buckwheat (said to be sulfur yellow)
- san francisco wallflower (said to be pale yellow)
- and two little satellite plants off the parent penstemmon & mexican sage I already had.
I was still going for a purple/yellow/silver scheme at the time.
5. I found random bricks and used them to edge against the neighbor's weedy grass hellstrip so it wouldn't creep in.
pink circles = new plants
before and after
during and after
You can't see much because the plants are still tiny and there's debris from other yard work. The grass is gone for good, and I've only had to weed a little here and there. All the plants survived, though the penstemmon shrunk back to a tiny little sprout, and I suspect people like stepping in it when they get out of their cars.
In the fall, we dumped a whole bunch of extra pine needles on top. Don't do that -- weed seeds really like settling in there.
And a week ago the wallflower bloomed for the first time.
see also: front yard 1, front yard 2
coat 2: pattern fit
Pattern fitting the coat, with help from the teachers. They are always surprised by how little I need to change -- only an extra 1/2" in CF. I might also have to take in the back as usual, but I won't be able to tell until the muslin.
In class and in books, they teach the more common adjustments, like FBA (full bust adjustment), rounded upper back, and swayback. I suspect that is targeted to a certain body type and maybe age. I bet there's also a set of common adjustments for the "average" asian body (maybe more rectangular/stick-like vs. the classic hourglass, which would lead to ... mostly waist adjustments? SBA?). That would be neat to know and very handy.
see also: coat 1: the fabric and plan
front yard 2: the future
Here's a sketch of how the front yard could look one day, with a bright red door that does not yet exist.
It's a mostly purple/yellow/silver scheme, with bits of red. The eucalyptus has also mysteriously disappeared.
I can't remember where I collaged the plants from anymore, but these are:
- deergrass / Muhlenbergia rigens - for height and structure
- moonshine yarrow / Achillea "Moonshine" - for yellow
- penstemmon (from the backyard) - for purple
- cleveland sage / Salvia clevelandii - for purple
- california fuschia / Zauschneria californica - for red
- lambsears (from the backyard)
I think I put this together almost a year ago and have been messing with it on and off ever since.
see also: front yard 1: an intro
coat 1: the fabric and plan
I decided to go with the Butterick 5145 coat, since there were a bunch of reviews about it already over on Pattern Review, and they all sounded happy.
I also went for the more interesting fabric and ordered 3 yards of the teal wool blend. Except, when I got it, I realized that what seemed like an interestingly thick woven tweed with highlights and shadows was actually the pattern of how the strands had been felted into a smooth fabric, with mostly black/white strands, with a bit of teal here and there. So, it reads as a much darker and busier fabric.
Compare my photos ...
...to the website's
I kind of wish I'd gotten the black and white 100% wool herringbone tweed instead, but oh well.
I'll be making the view B length, with the following mods:
- pointed, not rounded, corners on the collar
- welt pockets and epaulets and wrist tab things
- thinner back tab thing
With the louder pattern, solid black accents and piping might be nice:
front yard 1: an intro
I decided to post gardening stuff by project, which means I'll be backtracking around a year or more to get things started.
The front yard is not an inviting place. It is gloomy and shady, except for a bit of afternoon sun. An ugly eucalyptus with a penchant for dropping branches towers over it all. The house sellers tried to hide things with a layer of nuggety brown mulch and clowny marigolds, but within a month, all the junk that was hiding underneath started showing up again. After half a year, it was mostly weeds and grass.
september 2008, march 2009: what it started as
Not everything was bad ... in the spring, I found a ton of violets hiding in the grass. The yard also came with a cute green japanese maple and what I found out later were a mexican bush sage and several japanese anemones.
I watched and charted and researched for almost an entire growth cycle. Some things, like the begonia and princess flowers, didn't make it through my turning off the water. Some things, like the volunteer baby loquat tree, I weeded out. Some things, like the blue potato bush, I tried to chop down thinking they were shrubby weeds, until they came back the next year with flowers and proved they weren't. (Most things I ended up finding in various excellent California plant books at the library, but the blue potato bush was a tough one. Be impressed by my image-search abilities.)
L: what it came with, R: what died in the first 6 months. the marigolds dried into little husk corpses
The plan is to have a much better front yard, done mostly by myself. It will be drought tolerant, and have California natives where reasonable. It will also probably take 3-5 years to get there.
List of useful books and websites about drought tolerant and CA native plants:
- Las Pilitas nursery website - incredibly useful articles for the beginner
- Northern California Gardening: A Month-By-Month Guide - by Katherine Grace Endicott - indispensable. tells you what to do, when. I found the 1st edition in a used bookstore, but it looks like there's a newer one out.
- Golden Gate Gardening - by Pam Pierce - really practical tips on gardening in this area. I learned the names of half my weeds from this book. I think a 2nd edition is coming out this week, and it will be mine.
- Bruce and Sharon Asakawa's California Gardener's Guide - I used their books to ID most of the stuff I had
- Designing California Native Gardens - by Keator & Middlebrook - in-depth view of ecology, gardening, design
- Plants And Landscapes For Summer-dry Climates Of The San Francisco Bay Region - similar to above. detailed explanation of things, more about design and ecology.
- any book with the words "Western" and "Sunset" in the title