A few warm days and a lot of rain equals lots of flowers at our house.


The view from our porch.



The front of our house.



The bell.

 

The Furry Guy has planted plenty of stuff that blooms perennially from spring through late fall. Our property is an ever-changing kaleidoscope of color. He's also planted over 250 trees. (We have just over 2 acres of rolling hills.) He doesn't have to do a lot to it now except trim things here and there and thin things out occasionally.

The man's amazing.

 

We had plenty of that in December and January. Of course, you live in Canada. You've got to expect stuff like that. LOL!

 

We've lived here 16 years on Labor Day weekend. The Furry guy started work on the property that first fall.

The hill with the stone is quite a story. The Furry Guy used carpet that he salvaged from a house as landscape fabric. It doesn't tear and it really keeps down the weeds. For over a year the carpet was the only thing on the hill. People would stop and stare. We developed quite a reputation as weirdos. (Sometimes reputations are true. LOL!)

Tons (literally) of field stone cover the hill. Our son spent one spring break helping The Furry Guy with the stone. They moved 8 tons of stone twice--once into the truck; once onto the hillside. The Furry guy moved it a third time placing it. He said it was like putting together a jigsaw puzzle. He picks out the stones individually. He had a load of stone delivered once, but it had a lot of junk rock he couldn't use. He's picky.

The bell is one he made. We saw something similar at a Natural Wonders store. He got an empty tank and the rebar at the salvage yard. They had cut the bottom off for safety. He used a grinder to remove the paint, then left it out in the rain for a few days. The knocker is a window weight. The loop is a part he had lying around. It's really loud and has a wonderful tone. People tend to stand and ring it over and over.

 

I say you lives in Canada; you takes your chances.

 

Yeah, but the cold slows you down. LOL!

 

BTW, that's a monkey bars in the background behind the bell. The Furry Guy bought it at a school auction for $5 (I think). His uncle's church was building a playground. The Furry Guy's reasoning was that if his uncle didn't want it he could use it as a trellis. He has a flowering vine of some kind started on it. He has a swing that he's going to clean and then hang from the monkey bars. One day in the future I'll be able to sit under the flowers and cuddle with him on the swing.

 

Michelle, The Furry Guy's always planning and thinking. I'm sure that what we have now isn't exactly what he pictured 16 years ago when he started. He's very knowledgeable about plants of all sorts. I've got a black thumb. Plants I touch die. He has made our home quite a showplace.

Kind of.

The angles I used taking the pictures obscured the (now smaller) piles of materials and such that he has stashed in various places around the property. I tell people they're lawn art in homage to white trash.