I'll just bring one down in my pickup. Of course that will limit the weight to 5000 lbs.

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John

That sounds like it would fit right in, John. Just be sure you bring somebody who can get it out of the truck. While we sip our wine...

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I don't have as many Festools as Fred. Or Marcou's, or Brese's, or Lie-Nielsen's, or Lee Valley's, or Blue Spruce's, or Harold and Saxon's, or...

Okay - lots of activity since the previous post. (Actually, it all finished just after New Years - I just haven't gotten caught up on my posting...)

First, here are some panorama shots. In the first one you can see that they've laid out the plants to be planted. They're over to the right side of the house:


Some more plants arrived a couple of days later, and once the rain stopped, they started planting them:


Once the plants were in, they laid shredded cedar bark ("gorilla hair") as mulch around the plants. It's the reddish-brown stuff on the ground:


Now for some close-ups.

Here are some plants placed for planting in the side yard:

You can see the paint marking where the river rock is going for the "stream bed".

And here's the front (main) yard:


And the view of the front yard from our front door:


And now for the beauty pics. The finished product!

First the hardscape. The driveway:

Notice the nice stone paths crossing the driveway. They intersect with the dry stream bed, and add a nonlinear element.

Here's the back patio:

You can see that Corwin's worry was satisfied once the stones were grouted. You can't really pick out the square shapes. It's a very pleasing shape and texture.

We had them put a path winding through all the yards. The path is made of flagstone embedded in concrete. Here's the side yard:


And some views of the front yard:
Looking toward the house from the street




Looking from our front door




And my favorite part: the gates. We have a wonderful fence builder. I asked him to build a nice Japanese-style gate, but it was beyond his craftsmanship (at least, that's what he said). So I got some very helpful advice from Randy, and built myself two gates out of cypress, with some cherry accents:


In this gate I put a Japanese-style screen for privacy. It's made of Tyvek glued to both sides of an acrylic panel.


The gates swing beautifully, and they have drain holes in the bottom groove to let the water out. They are all mortise and tenon joinery, and were really fun to make. They're pretty good, but not furniture quality. The cypress was great to work with - so much easier than cherry!

And that's it. Now we just have to wait 10-15 years for things to grow in. What you can't see are 5 pine trees, 2 cherry trees, 3 maples, 3 birches, a bay laurel, and many manzanitas, etc. It's going to be a beautiful forest once it's done!

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I don't have as many Festools as Fred. Or Marcou's, or Brese's, or Lie-Nielsen's, or Lee Valley's, or Blue Spruce's, or Harold and Saxon's, or...

Bay Laurel - you can pluck a few leaves to throw in your soup from time to time.

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Water separates the people of the world; wine unites them.

"If you have good manners and are well spoken, you can be welcome anywhere." -Mom, 1959

Looking good, Peter, and very water friendly!

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John

Indeed! And apparently the cherries are edible too. Of course, we'll have to wait about 10 years...

Thanks, John. I'm so much happier with it than the way it was. The plants are all California natives, and we've already got our first blossoms. It'll be really fun watching grow in, year after year. You're all welcome to come and visit! (Audie tried that, but my work schedule is so crazy these days, we couldn't figure out a time to meet up. )

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I don't have as many Festools as Fred. Or Marcou's, or Brese's, or Lie-Nielsen's, or Lee Valley's, or Blue Spruce's, or Harold and Saxon's, or...

Peter,

Very nice!

I've always said that rocks are free, it's the shipping that gets you.

I see you removed the blue "guest house;" where will Fred stay when he visits?

Best,
Rutager

Potosan, I am searching for a puddingstone to send out to the Festool rock garden. Our local puddingstone is a conglomerate of purple sand stone with round white quartz like stones embedded in it. This highly mineralized area is full of interesting deposits. Iron, zinc, uraninite, traces of gold, silver and copper. We are sitting on enough iron to supply the world but it costs too much to dig it out. Every once in a while an old shaft will collapse and leave a supper size hole in the ground. One appeared in the Wharton American Legion parking lot one day a couple of years ago costing over $250.000 to fill in. In another case a guy went down to his basement one morning only to find that his basement went to infinity. Good thing he didn’t take that last step.
I found a deposit that contained 2 ounces of silver and ½ ounce of gold. At that time it would not pay to dig. A geologist I knew found six deposits of uranium and removed about 25 tons of ore before the State made the area into a State Park. They don’t know the gold is there. I did however find a beautiful piece of magnetite I call the wishing stone.
Bob

Water the rocks and watch them grow.

Peter,

I love your landscaping and your beautiful gates. You really did a great job on those. All in all really superb except I am wondering about all the gorilla hair that was put down to help promote growth. This may be bad news and if so I am sorry but those boulders, they are just not going to grow no matter what you do. I can offer you Pennsylvania coal but I need to know do you want enough to put in the yard or just enough to occasionally use in Gillian's Christmas stocking? Also, if you would like I could get you some natural gas and polluted water from the fracking in our state. Just say the word.

Fred

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Bob - awesome stories about the collapsing mines. Can you imagine going down to your basement and finding the gate to hell?!? Wow!

And the puddingstone sounds delicious. I guess the quartz stones are the plums in the pudding.

Fred, you know, I watered those rocks diligently for the first few weeks, and I don't see any evidence that they're growing. I'm really bummed. I asked the guy for BIG boulders. Not these wimpy things!

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I don't have as many Festools as Fred. Or Marcou's, or Brese's, or Lie-Nielsen's, or Lee Valley's, or Blue Spruce's, or Harold and Saxon's, or...