The Bald and the Beautiful

The new terrace

Today was a chance to tidy up the garden, clear the garage, and do a final barbecue on the new terrace (one of this year’s projects).

So, what have we achieved this summer? First of all, we started early with the new lawn on the front side of the house. The new lawn proved to be the start of the “Big Dig” … We moved pretty much all the soil around, distributing it evenly, picking stones on the way, and finally removing the hedge (approx. 35 m long) and old trees ( approx. 6) we did not want/need anymore. The “Big Dig” ended mid-June, before we could start to plant the seeds. The seeds have become grass long time ago, and today we have a green lawn that grows like crazy. After all, Bergen is known for good “growing conditions” (a lot of rain). So, the last two months we could have mowed the lawn every week, but we opted for less than that. Don’t really see myself, or anyone else for that matter, walking around in cold rain mowing/flattening the lawn.

While we still waited for the lawn to grow substantially enough for us to walk on it, my son decided that it was time to enhance the tree house’s features. Clever as the boy is, only 6, he said he wanted to build a small bridge such that we did not have to step onto the lawn before the seeds had started to grow. So, with the help of his neighbour, and good friend, we started to build ourselves a pretty, small and very useful bridge (see image below “The tree house”).

As the small gallery shows we did, in our eyes, a remarkable job in getting the front side lawn and surroundings into a fairly good shape. A condition it has not been in since 12-13 years back. Actually before we moved into the house (10 years ago). So, you could say it took time before we finally got ourselves around to do anything at all; however, who is to say we have not had projects of this size every summer …

So, summer moved on, yet again, and we have managed to do some proper work around the house. Today was, as stated earlier, the seemingly “last chance” to enjoy the garden and to do some barbecuing before we decided to stow the grill away for the season. We invited our tenant who has been a great help this year as well, and without whom we would not see the end of the projects we started … which of course got bigger every second day as we decided to do more than initially thought was necessary … Anyways, we enjoyed the company of each other and had some laughs with the kids playing on our new lawn and in our new sandbox!

It has been a great summer after all!

Front of the house

My wife and I moved into the house we currently live in about ten years ago. Since then we have had many a plan on how to “fix” the garden. We have usually lacked the long-term plan. That is, we have had many ideas, but many of them have been dreams which lacked the ability to see them through.

We have had many a day during the past ten years where we have, with youthful ambitions, started a project that in the end was just a waste of energy and our friends´ patience

The best example is what we did some odd years ago when our son was about 2 years, and our first daughter was newborn. We had invited a bunch of our best friends to help us with the Big Dig (not to be mistaken with what was known as the Big Dig in Boston, MA) … We managed, during a couple of days, to clear the whole backyard which amounts to about 250 square meters. This may not sound as such a difficult task, but add a muddy and slippery hillside filled with trees, bushes and whatnot … and a couple of young ones that needs your attention every 5 minutes. It was a fun time for all of us, tiresome, but fun. We cleared the backyard in what today seems like a world record time with our bare hands and some old shovels. Most of the shovels broke in the end due to the heavy mud lifting . In other words, it took some effort, but we cleared the backyard and set ourselves some new goals for making sure we did not have to clear it again for a long time. The idea we came up with was as simple and naive as the result. We covered most of the backyard with bark. To be honest, it looked fairly ok the first couple of months, but after a short while it looked nothing like we expected. Today, most of the garden has returned to its previous state. A lot of weeds and small trees popping up here and there.

So, to the present and with the latter in mind, we once again set out to “fix” the garden; however, this time we thought it was best to start with a plan, and the right tools. We decided not to invite all our friends, although that´s not all true as our tenant works his ass off for free (we provide food and shelter ), but we wanted to do this project alone and without the agony of making to many hasteful decisions along the way. To make things easy we decided to work on the lower part of the garden (picture).

As always we started out with an idea, an idea that meant we would realize the long-term goal of having a proper garden, and with this part of it, a proper lawn. A lawn is said to be easy-peasy, but we soon discovered that there was a lot of work ahead before we could spread the first seeds on our new lawn. To make things “easier” for ourselves we decided to start work the day before the Easter holidays. Lucky as we were we managed to rent the proper machinery (rototiller) Tuesday and get six tons of shell sand delievered the day after.

Using the tiller was one thing, but eventually we managed to get a hang of it … literally! It did not take long before all of the soil was prepared enough for the shell sand to be spread out; however, there was this tenant. Eager as always he persuaded us to do things the right way, which of course meant the hard way. We then started to remove all the roots of the old hedge that ran along the garden wall. In addition we removed some old plants and tree stubs here and there which we had cut down ages ago. Then came all the stones that we certainly did not want our lawnmover to chew on (we have already tried that with little success … it died on us). Once done with all the digging, and more digging, we needed to cover the whole lawn with shell sand, rake and level/smoothen it to prepare it for seeding.

The actual seeding has not taken place yet, neither has the other “mini-projects” that came along. In additon to the simple task of getting ourselves a new lawn we also figured that we needed to extend the small garden wall that holds up the walk-way going around the house. This means we have to build a foundation and a small ramp as well for the lawnmover to get access to the lower part of the garden (front of the house). In addition we also decided to create a sandbox for the kids which will hold two-three tons of sand … that is if my prognosis for these things are correct and I get my will when it comes to the actual layout and build.

Stay tuned as the garden unfolds and gets its long needed facelift.