It started as a disaster so how bad can it get?
The joys of poison ivy. Difficult to spot in winter, come summer however it will be eradicated without mercy. Can’t wait to go to the O+ Gala in less than two weeks with a sexy rash!
This is a great site on identifying poison ivy, season by season.
Saw maybe my first woodpecker in the US today, I think it’s the Downy woodpecker (Picoides pubescens), it was pretty small, probably no bigger than a Starling.
Came across a lovely big bumble bee, we think it was the Common Eastern Bumble Bee (Bombus impatiens). It might be common but it was pretty cool. These bees are known to be hardy and will be the first to appear in spring.
The good pictures were taken from internet, mine are the rubbish ones.
We also had a bald eagle fly maybe 100m over the garden which was nice. We’re lucky to live by cliffs which seem to attract eagles and vultures.
Can anyone tell me what this tree is? It’s over 100′ tall, the trunk must be a good 4-5′ across and it has lots of small red blossoms on it. These trees are numerous around Kingston but I haven’t been able to identify it.
A beer or substitute for the first person who identifies it correctly.
Taken from Google street view, may or may not have had tenants then.
It was a cold winter day when these were taken so will be much nicer in the summer. One day we hope to move the cupola (the little house that sits on the roof) so it’s in the center of the house, making it slightly larger and adding more windows etc.
If you don’t know what a cupula is or it’s purpose then this is a nice little article.
It will be nice when we have removed up all this stuff, the junk, the rotting deck and the staircase. The staircase isn’t original and was probably added when they split the place into apartments. Yes, they are cement asbestos tiles but we will remove them carefully (with correct dust masks etc) and dispose of it in a proper fashion. We will keep the upper deck until the time comes to replace it.
No denying it is pretty bad. Looks like work was just abandoned…. very Mary Celeste of the roof. Nice views from the top though.
According to the neighbours the garden had been unattended for about a decade. In that time many hundreds of saplings (they looked like ash) have taken root. The small ones could be pulled out by hand but most needed digging out. Not hard but when you have hundreds it can get tiring. Spend two weekends on it so far and probably have half the garden cleared.
Worse than the trees are the creepers which are thick on the ground and like to put down roots every 6 or so inches which makes pulling them out hard.
The garden is a good space and we will first get accustomed to the levels and how we start to use it before we do anything. Currently we are thinking of some lovely blossoming trees and beautiful blue stone walls. We will visit https://www.opus40.org/ again to give us some inspiration.
Pretty much everyone, without prompting, notices the good parts, the door, the banister and the decent sized garden. The door looks pretty art deco to me and we may try and recreate this style elsewhere. It’s also nice that the door is so wide.
The banister, while not looking much is black walnut and should come up a treat. There is a chunk missing but that can be fixed in time. Shame I never learnt to use a wood lathe when I was at the Crucible as quite a few of the balusters are missing.
The previous owner(s) seemed to have left in a hurry. They had started ripping out all the lath and plaster and drywall. Shame they hadn’t removed it as it took us a few weekends and two huge dumpsters to remove it all, plus it was hard work, icy and wet. They left furniture, books, credit cards, sex toys etc. Shame nothing was worth keeping.
