Screen

I failed to post pictures of our finished screens. With the foilage filling in it's almost impossible to see them in some places. What we love is more privacy in our bed/bath and loosing the view of the neighbor's storage area. Plus, the metal roofing we used on the screens (matching the siding of the mainliving building), extends the architecture into the garden, enhancing both the buildings and the outdoor spaces.

Recycled Roofing Becomes the Perfect Screen

Our new screen makes use of the same recycled roofing we used to side our main living building. It will be capped with black flashing to give it a finished, refined look. Although we're liking the open feeling of our neighborhood, for this part of our garden we needed to screen away the neighbor's unsightly storage and provide bathroom privacy. This 40 feet of screening does the job.

Even the back side looks good, but doesn't really need to since it faces the neighbor's storage area and propane tank.

The close proximity of the neighbor's studio which is nonconforming being only 1 foot from our property line is one of the reasons we needed to screen this section of our property.

Moving our New Screen Along Toward Finished...

Some familar faces are back on the Fredley project -- much missed and very welcomed back -- working on our new screen.

Travis

Erin

Brad (dbBrad)

A Privacy Need

We've long intended to build a screen between a studio on our neighbor's property to the north and our guesthouse building. Finally we're getting around to doing that project. Between storage on the back of the studio and their propane tank, it is not a very attractive scene. Further, our bath windows look that way so for privacy this 40' screen is critical.

Rain, rain and more rain.

We've been having enough rain to think about building an ark. The land on Whidbey is completely saturated with puddles everywhere; ditches full; catch basins overflowing; wetlands, creeks and lakes high; and people growing webbed feet. Fortunately, our built pond and wetland are handling our roof and site water beautifully. The pond is draining into the wetland, as planned, and the wetland is filling, with about a foot of capacity yet to go. It appears we've provided for more than adequate overflow. If this storm doesn't fill it to capacity, it's hard to imagine what would. Yesterday afternoon, after it stopped raining, the wetland showed no signs of water on the surface after about 2 hours so the absorption is rapid.

dbBrad our design builder and I worked together on this project, and two other storm water projects in Greenbank.

Extending our Stream

Our little stream extension was under construction last week. Just in time for our early Thanksgiving celebration with friends. As always, we had the last minute project scramble getting put in place just minutes before our guests arrived.

Last week:

This week:

The snow is falling and the temperature is in the mid 20's. It's beautiful out, but cold. Fortunately, Brad of dbBrad finished up one leg of our heating system last week.

Sunday - A Day of Work!

With a borrowed "half hour" from Mr. Ed (time was actually more like 2 or 3 hours), and a full half+ day of Brad's time, Sunday turned into an amazingly productive day of many small, and not so small, garden projects. Our first task was planting a huge old tree Brad drug home a few weeks ago for a pond snag. With many grunts of effort and Fran fearing both her favorite men would have broken backs, the snag was planted by the pond.

Snag

Now we just wait for the Pileated Woodpeckers to visit.

Pileated Woodpecker

Then an old stone step that wasn't working very well because of spacing and a riser that was too low, was ripped out and a new step was put into place.

Stone Step

Another project we've been working on for a little bit is extending our stream. If two ponds and a stream are good, isn't more stream better? Well, apparently that's what we think, because that's what we're doing. To give Hermione (a beautiful gift from Diane Kendy) a location of greater status, she's been moved in preparation for her new home along the new stream. Then plumbing and digging are being done before putting in the stream's liner. And, of course, the gathering of the rocks needed to create the natural look of a NW stream.

Hermoine & New Stream-in-the-works

Two other projects were worked on too. A retaining wall under the guesthouse and a stone patio, also under the guesthouse, overlooking the pond. Photographs of those two projects will follow. Presently the heating system installation project is being staged in that area so photographs of both would be full of PVC parts and tool boxes and all the stuff needed for plumbing.