with a little help from the kirby's...
With Ryan’s parents, Dennis and Lynn, in town for a week
and a half, the palmer house is in the midst of some major improvements! As you may recall, they were instrumental in
getting the house up and running two years ago when we first bought the
house. They helped with the landscaping,
electrical system, and other various odd jobs.
So we knew we were very fortunate to be getting another visit from them
this summer!
The Kirby’s arrived on Thursday, and we did not waste any time getting them to work first thing on Friday morning. We have three projects underway that they are helping out with: the construction of two raised planter beds in the backyard, assembling a new fence, and refreshing the front yard landscaping.
Ryan and Dennis attacked the construction of the planter beds. Ben had found a company called Colonial Brick that sells salvaged common brick from historic buildings in Chicago. In addition to the environmental benefit of reusing existing as opposed to buying new, this brick also better matches the brick that our house and garage are made of since they are about the same age. The kind that we bought are called “Chicago Pinks”. Cute, huh?
Laying the first course of bricks was the hardest since they had to use mortar to make the bricks perfectly level. This required a lot of shifting, tapping and tweaking. Take a look at the progress, from no bricks to the completed 3-course walls. Also check out the side wings that we are going to use for potted plants!
Katherine, Christina, and Ben focused most of their time on
the fence assembly. Lots of cutting, sanding and staining. Over the course of
the weekend, we were able to install most of the back fence! We just need to build the gate and it will be
complete. In the meantime, we can now cut down the old fence so that we can
begin working on the second planter bed (the old fence is kind of in the
way).
And last but not least, Lynn has been working her magic on our front yard. It was a rough winter this year (very cold and very windy), and we had some perennial casualties. Lynn helped to clean up the planters and added a number of new plants. One change was removing the small sand cherry in the back of the planter and replacing it with a much larger one. The smaller sand cherry never quite took off in that spot for a few reasons, primarily because it got crushed when the construction workers were installing our windows. We had enough of waiting for it to grow, so she relocated that one into the street-side planters and added another for balance. She also planted a few more perennials to enhance the planters. And very importantly, she mixed in some much needed nutrients into our soil in the form of manure and bone meal. Our plants are going to be so happy this summer!
As if fixing up our yard wasn’t enough, Lynn even made a little project of the parkway of the empty lots next door to us. She whacked the overgrown weeds and made a little planter out of some concrete pieces left over from our own backyard. She used some extra plants from our yard and transplanted them next door. Not too shabby, huh?
After 3 action-packed days of work, we are all exhausted and everyone is taking a much needed break. We don’t want this trip to be all work and no play for the Kirby parents, so they will be taking the next few days off to enjoy Chicago, do some golfing, and just relax. The kids (and the palmer house) are just so happy to have them here!
