Simon Rules!

Some garden (yard) progress this weekend – despite a week of sun, and then an entire weekend of rain and thunderstorms. We were almost thwarted by the landscaping company delivering 7 tonnes of the wrong kind of rock (4-8″ river cobble as opposed to 2″ decorative rock). They scooped it all away and delivered the right stuff in less than 24 hours, which was good. Here’s the wrong rock – click any of the pictures for larger versions:

Here is the right rock in place:

And here’s the border between the rock and rubber mulch:

This area currently only has a weeping crabapple – people have said “oh my god, what’s wrong with that tree?” many times! We’re going to cover it with rubber mulch for now to stop the weeds growing, but eventually this area will have a pool.

Finally, here’s the deck so far with Amber pulling weeds around it. I need to put the stairs on before I can finish the trim, which is a darker shade of composite wood (Trex).

Usually when we go away on holiday, something happens with either the server (power supply fails, Comcast decides to knock it off the Internet) or the security cameras (transmissions mysteriously stop, etc). This holiday was no exception. I noticed after we landed that there appeared to be a large piece of tumbleweed completely blocking the lens. I thought it might have been put there deliberately – and I was right.

I give you exhibit A:

It built a pretty good nest, but the camera mount couldn’t hold it up and eventually tilted downwards, at which point the bird gave up. There was a single blue egg inside, but sadly it never had a chance because there was a snow storm a couple of days after the bird finished the nest.