Like A Bar At 2am

Lots of waiting around at the house today. I used that time to take a looong walk around the property. Now that almost all of the snow has melted I can get a really good look at what we're dealing with.  As I've said previously, we first saw the place covered in knee high grass, then knee high snow so seeing it now, completely barren, is like getting a really good look at the person you've been talking to in a bar when the lights go on at 2am....not always what you thought. In this case, it's like marrying that person and THEN having the lights turned on. Gotta make lemonade!

Here's a photographic tour of the walk I took today and all that I saw so you can understand the landscaping issues we have- I love a challenge.

The first thing that became obvious to me is that we have a TON of deer.  A. TON. I'd seen deer hanging out before but usually at the far end of the property and only a handful.  However, the amount of deer poop I saw today would lead me to believe that we bought a deer nightclub, and a really popular one at that.  For you folks who, like me, had not seen deer poop before- this is what it looks like.

My apologies to anyone who was eating Cocoa Puffs while reading this.


Growing up I loved seeing deer when we'd drive through my dad's home state of Pennsylvania or when the occasional confused deer would be spotted wandering through suburbia.  Back then they were just pretty to me, now I see them as pretty, tick carrying, garden destroyers.  I need to bust up this deer nightclub and fast!

I've been reading a LOT about ticks lately and while we're lucky to not be near a wooded area, the high amount of deer running all over is just as bad.  Our lovely neighbors say they have to check themselves everytime they come inside in the spring. They've found them crawling on their boots and socks.  Annnnd cut to me fainting.

I make an effort to eat organic vegetables, free-range organic eggs, grass-fed only red meat and we're paying extra for no-VOC paint & adhesives but let me be clear- I will spray Agent Orange all over that property to keep ticks away.  I have my limits.

Knowing your enemy is vital so I've been doing a lot of tick research.  They're vulnerable in late March/early June. THAT'S when you gotta spray.  That's also when we'll have blinding flood lights on motion detectors attached to everything and big surly rescue dogs running around, both of which I'm hoping keep the deer away.  Ticks don't like open areas which describes our whole property so my fingers are crossed.  I'm also hoping that chickens eat ticks.  It'll be another few months before we have them but when we do I hope they put a jihad on ticks. I know that guinea hens love to eat them but I don't think they lay eggs...and they're loud from what I understand. BUT we'll see.

In other landscaping news, the current pathway to the porch from the driveway is nonsensical and therefore fits right in with everything else.  It hugs the shape of the house making you feel like PacMan trying to get to the front door.  The way I see it, no one is ever going to go to the front door on that path, everyone will use the side door because you get to that first - it's logical enough.

I've gotta bust up that pathway and put in a new one that curves to the front door from the driveway.  I like the idea of natural stones or light gravel with solar lights and low shrubs lining it.

The current shrubs around the house are hideous.  These two look like buried troll dolls. Then there are two unkempt holly bushes on the front of the house. They all gotta go. Bonfire. Hydrangea and Gardenia bushes will take their place.

I love that big tree in the photo above but please take note of the odd elevated area around the base where someone previously had a bricked, or otherwise walled-in, raised flower bed that they removed.  Now it's an eroding mound of dirt to deal with.

I spent a lot of time looking up plants that love water.  I'm interested in plants that love water because it seems we have some drainage issues here and there and I'd like to use landscaping to help remedy it and keep us from getting swarmed by mosquitos this summer.

Many thanks to whoever went off-roading on one side of our front yard, (technically it wasn't ours yet when this happened) I suspect it was crazy ol' Doc Brown and his DeLorean by the looks of those tracks. We now have rivers of muck and stagnant water. The tire tracks are so deep that I'm going to have to till up the area as soon as we get a tractor.

There's SO much blacktop that I think water runoff is always going to be a problem.  I'm looking to plant trees all along the driveway to drink up as much of it as possible.


My personal preference would be to have a fine gravel driveway to let water permeate the soil but this blacktop looks pretty fresh so I think we're stuck with it for a while.





Let me show you how much blacktop we have- here's one side of the parking lot we have out front. Yes, that's a weird cut out blacktop bit sticking out from the side like an employee of the month parking spot.  The plywood is where the dumpster is going to go so it won't make dents.

Here's the other half, just the part where I'm parked is big enough to be almost a full basketball court. It's pretty ridiculous. However, the house doesn't have a garage so the blacktop is nice if we can add one somewhere on it before next winter!

From here I went down to the OTHER section of blacktop where that big warehouse building used to be.

The land slopes down to that area from the upper "parking lot" and since the building foundation was made level by digging into that slope, dirt is eroding and starting to cover most of it.

The plan is to add at least a two level retaining wall to that slope to stop further erosion.

In the picture to the left you can see the 3-4 foot drop where they dug the land to be level for the building foundation.  That's where the retaining walls are going to go.



The building on that spot was sold by the previous owners as they were moving but there's still water and power out there as showcased by the lonely water spigot below. Behind it is a gas tank about to tip over but still in working order.  The soil runoff problem is pretty clear.

Here's that second driveway area I mentioned in my last post.  The bit of fence you see is a gravel entrance that leads to where the building used to be. Again, my hope is to put greenhouses here and nice people, who have a passion for buying local and paying in cash, can drive up and buy vegetables, apples and eggs!

From there I headed north to the barn along remnants of a gravel path.  To the right you can see the lights for the lit riding ring that is now grown over in more dead grass.

If we find a trainer who wants to rent the barn and back acreage from us I'll see about getting the lights to work again.  I'd love to see horses running around and have always wanted to take formal English style lessons.  I had a few when I was really little but it made my mom nervous, I blame Gone With The Wind.  Now that I'm a grown up I can try again while I run with scissors, go outside without a jacket in the cold and eat cake for dinner. Love you mom. :)

The barn is interesting.  To be frank, it smells like animal pee. This is something I didn't notice when it was freezing outside.  Today it was in the 50's, I don't even want to know what it smells like in the summer.

There are 4 stables, all of which have had their doors removed.  Nice. Yet random things like horseshoes and feed buckets are still laying around.

Here's the other side of the barn, no there's no snow now, I took this shot a month ago. I can't tell if there's supposed to be a loft but there is a door that opens at the top of the barn.

There's also an office attached to the barn that I plan to make look amazing in my efforts to lure a horse trainer.  It's that or me milking goats.  We have to use that barn for something and I'd prefer to look at horses. I read somewhere that horses like little companions so maybe a goat or two just for fun.  What they eat,  we don't have to mow!



I walked around the barn to take a look at the very back of the property where I thought I saw a fox...

BUT it didn't run so I wasn't sure.  Being me I walked closer and realized it was the mangiest cat to ever live.

It started meowing the equivalent of a cat in it's 60's who'd been smoking since it was 13.  Furthermore, this cat was a dead ringer for Skimbleshanks-

The resemblance is uncanny, no? It had a collar on so I went about my merry way, see you later Skimbleshanks!

On my way back to the house I came across a very weird, burnt patch of land...apparently someone/the previous owners burned a bunch of random things in a big pile. It was a little scary.

Metal, plastic, ceramic pots, beer cans, misc wooden things, glass, anything and everything you can imagine is all a part of this big burn scar in the middle of the back yard.

From there I walked up to the back of the house. There's a small cement room under the porch that always weirds me out.  The door doesn't close right now and there aren't any lights.  In my imagination it's where the Candyman lives. In reality, it's a very useful room that will one day serve as a root cellar. Those brick piles are so Blair Witchy, I need to get rid of them.

After my walk the dumpster got delivered so we have a place to throw our demo trash tomorrow. Now we can finally get rid of the huge pile of masochist's pick-up-sticks in the living room from when I pulled up floorboards. No more stepping gingerly around them while trying to remember if I ever got a tetanus booster (I didn't). 

Then chimney guys came by and put caps on the top of the chimney and fixed the insides (I'm hazy about exactly what was done but I'm told it's $300 well spent). Lastly, Jimmy the septic guy came by and explained the new and improved system.  He was 3 hours late but it's cool, he's put up with our sh!t a lot (pun intended) so I can waste a little of my youth waiting on him.  

Here are the three huge septic tanks out back. We originally had only one but for whatever reason, he had to add 2 more to make the system work properly and abide by county codes. I'm thinking of creative landscaping tricks to camouflage them.  Low shrubs around them? Flower beds? Potted plants on top? I'll figure something out.  

It was kinda warm today....time to start growing seedlings indoors!  I'm headed to Home Depot this week to buy a small greenhouse where I can lay out all my seedlings.  Then I have to get a deer fence put up around the area where I want to garden outdoors.

There's no shortage of things to do but first on the list for tomorrow is demo.  Demo is the word of the day.  We've got to fully gut the master bathroom and kitchen all the way down to the studs.  I'll have photos of the destruction after!