Removing an Eye Sore: Adios Pool Fence

When we bought the house in 2001, our sons were small and we had a lot of little kids running around the yard. So, we installed a pool fence.

I've hated the pool fence from the day it was installed. I felt it was ruining my fun, cramping my style and giving me eye-bleeds. I was obsessed with hating it, I admit.

This year our sons are respectively 25 and 18 and it occurred to me that they are adults. Adults who can be trusted to walk across the yard without accidentally dropping headfirst into the pool.

You know when you don't have a headache, or you don't have the flu, you take it for granted. Only when you get that headache and you get that flu do you realize how well you had it before: when you felt good, when you were gloriously healthy. An eyesore feels a bit like that. You can't stand it when it's there. You obsess (ok maybe you don't, congratulations for being such a level-headed, mature individual), you think that when it will be gone you'll be deliriously happy.

But you don't. Instead you take brief note of the improvement and go on with your life.

Still, I'm pretty glad that my garden is no longer an annex of Alcatraz.

Before: (not exactly the same angles, so shoot me)



After:



Before:



After:



Before: (note the new bed, ready for planting)



After:



Here is lunch and dinner by the way. It's August and we can't pick vegetables fast enough.

Provence Meets Mid-Century Ranch Style

I have not shown you the front yard yet. I love it. It's Provence meets Los Angeles. Or at least that's the idea I was trying to achieve.

Although it pains me to put ugly things on this blog, this was the before:

1959 ranch style architecture.  Designed by Charles Dubois

If you are curious about Mid-Century, Ranch-Style California architecture, here is what the Los Angeles Conservancy has to say about my neighborhood: "It is a wonderfully intact neighborhood that effortlessly conveys its postwar suburban feel into the present day."

Yes, but an acquired tasted. We bought it before we knew it was fashionable.

I could not WAIT to smother this effortless postwar gem with plants.

Vegetable Garden: What Have We Done?!

Update from the vegetable garden. Still no drip system, but I don't care. Why did I ever think we needed one? It's march and cool out. I have conveniently forgotten that in the Valley (as in Los Angeles San Fernando Valley) summer temperature can reach over 110 degrees. But a mild form of amnesia compounded with winter lethargy has replaced my initial energy. I do better with super physical jobs than tedious ones where I have to learn something.

Planting all veggies at once, damning caution and restraint to the wind.

Meanwhile, the vegetables (and my husband), unlike me, got the memo: Spring has sprung.

 premature tomatoisation.

Carrot seedlings, ponions and asparagus in the back. Or as we say in French "n'importe quoi"

Vegetable mashup 

Here you can see our technique: vegetables are planted without rhyme or reason and with no concern whatsoever for size at maturity or the fact that the beds are too deep to be reached in the center.

Peas so tender and cute

Me, possibly still in denial but starting to realize that things are growing fast and are planted too closely. 

Also, that I better get my s%#t together re: the drip system.