Side yard project – during

I always forget what a roller coaster a project like this is for me. I freak out for fear of making expensive bad decisions, then I’m elated when something looks good, and back and forth.

Frank and I make our own design decisions. After 22 years, our house feels as personal to me as our fingerprints, one decision after another that we have collaborated on and ended up with something that pleases us. It sometimes pleases others, other times not so much. But it doesn’t really matter as long as it pleases us.

As usual, this time we started with some practical considerations (the slippery and dangerous brick paving had to go, and the old wood planter was nearing the end of its useful life). The aggregate with brick trim started with our back patio in about 1993. I don’t remember why we chose it then, maybe with a nudge from the contractor who did that project for us. Then finally in 2006 we replaced the front driveway and reconfigured the front porch and entry with the same plum creek aggregate/brick combination.

So it wasn’t hard to decide to tie the front and back together by using the same materials again.

The stucco wall to replace the weathered old wood fence came about because the view from our kitchen table has always looked out to the corner where the fence met the stucco wall of the garage. That has always bothered me, because that view out from our large kitchen window is one we see every day of our lives, and it just looked wrong to me. The corner was usually hidden by a large plant, but I was always aware of it.

Still, I was uneasy when we started and not sure of the choices we’d made.

The guys who did the front driveway and porch project in 2006 and are now working on this project are great. Jim, the boss, and his friend Gary hear our vague instructions, tactfully fix the flaws, and make it look like we knew what we were asking for. They have spent hours measuring and calculating to fix the drainage problem, which was the underlying reason for the slippery brick. And did I mention that they work hard and quickly and for a very reasonable price? Since Monday morning, they have completely dismantled the old planter, fence, and brick paving, built the new stucco wall and planter and laid out the paving areas with proper drainage. Today, they’ll finish the brick and Monday they’ll start pouring concrete.

Now that I’m comfortable with the hardscape coming together and feeling like it should always have been this way, I can think about the fun parts.

Which parts of my old weathered fence gallery will make it to the new stucco wall? It’s so different that I no longer think recreating the old tableau will work.

The stucco wall and garage wall will be the same soft green as the rest of the house. I woke up in the middle of the night a few days ago thinking that I COULD paint the whole thing yet another outlandish color (the house shutters are a subdued deep lavender and the patio pergola is a deep teal), but I think I’ve decided that this wall should be a background, not a focal point.

I think I’ll have a simple ceramic urn fountain, similar to the one in my front yard, as the focal point in the corner of the new planter. What color should it be? The same green I used in front would just disappear against the green stucco.

We’d planned to re-create the trellis-with-climbing-rose-camouflage for the garage air conditioner, but we’re realizing that just won’t work, so the wall will be smooth and the air conditioner re-located to the back of the garage. Should I add a trellis with bougainvillea on the garage wall?

What will I plant in that big planter? I don’t use annuals anywhere else in my yard except as filler in some of the vegetable beds, but it’s always been nice to look out over a colorful bed of pansies or something in midwinter from the kitchen table. I’ll probably stick with the old plan of using seasonal annuals for a big burst of color here.

OK, this is probably WAY more than anyone else would ever want to know about this process, so if you’re still reading, my apologies. I’ll post more photos as we make progress.