Sheila bought a grape vine one day a couple years ago and stuck it in the ground. The thing is huge now and we’re seeing a lot of grapes. Cool!

When we first moved in a couple years ago it was winter and we actually thought this tree might be dead. Low and behold the leaves came in. Here’s a before and after of only 3 weeks of growth.

Man when I look back I see that I started this project in April… holy shit this is taking forever. Of course I haven’t touched the back yard in months—too cold!

Remember this?

I only have a few more to do and I can finally start to throw some boards up. This is still only 50% of the area I need to cover but I’ll be glad to have this chunk done.

BAD NEWS: see all those trees? They are all going to die. We had an arborist come by to take a look as they were looking kinda sad and we had to cut one down. Turns out they all have a disease and will all have to go. Bummer. I guess I’ll just use this as a chance to envision something new. I think I might do a small grove of bamboo and maybe some little sitting area.

I really enjoyed the rain this weekend.

If you’re an animal at my house this is what you do most of the day. It must be nice…

Well it’s taking forever but I did put a coat of paint on that back wall. However, right after there was a debate on if it was the right shade of brown. Then, after that, I decided to drop another skim coat of stucco on it as it was looking a little rough. By rough I mean it looked like a TOTAL amature job: yikes. So, now the paint is jacked up again. Whatever, I really just want to play in the backyard and get dirty. More soon…or not so soon.

I ran into this guy. He was hiding in a hole full of crickets. The week before Cosmo dragged him the in house and he was missing his tail. It’s good to see he’s doing ok.

This weekend I put on the cowboy hat and got to work on the front door. It’s located on the side of the house and it’s sort of impossible to find if you don’t know where you’re going. So, I thought I’d drop some lights out there to spice things up.

I started at the top and worked my way down. This one shines down on the front door and makes some nice dramatic shadows on the iron work. Next I ran another wire from the base unit to the ground and started digging. I had to run a wire under the walkway so I got this little tool.

You glue it on the end of a PCV pipe and it makes a pipe-water-jet-thingy. Then, you crank the hose up and point. That’s it. The water digs for you and it’s pretty fast.

After that I just tied the wire on the pipe and pushed it through.

The lights are like 10 bucks a pop. You just stick’em in the ground and hook’em up. See that little clamp thing? It just snaps on and that’s it. It’s a glorified Christmas tree light.

Then I ate lunch. I only eat this crap like once a month or maybe less. When I do, it’s really good.

While I was enjoying my trans fat I noticed that Sheila’s cactus container was looking good so I snapped a picture. Back to work.

The next step was to bury the wires in little trenches.

Last thing was to hook the wires up the the power which is like “installing” speakers on a old stereo. I’m done!

We all got evacuated from our house for this.

Parolee threatens to blow up Van Nuys apartment before surrendering
BY JASON KANDEL, Staff Writer
Article Last Updated: 05/18/2007 07:08:41 AM PDT

VAN NUYS - A 36-year-old parolee holed himself up in his apartment last night and threatened to blow up the building by turning on the gas, forcing the evacuation of 100 neighbors and the shutdown of a stretch of Sepulveda Boulevard, before crisis negotiators talked him into
surrendering, police said. The drama began about 8 last night when police responded to a call of a domestic dispute in the
7300 block of Sepulveda Boulevard. When officers arrived, they said Mark Nevarez barricaded himself inside his apartment, threatened to shoot police and blow up his apartment — at one point even turning on the natural gas on the stove.

“Suddenly the boyfriend barricaded himself in his apartment and he wouldn’t come out,” said Los Angeles Police Lt. Robert Davis, a watch commander at the Van Nuys Division. “He said something about having guns, that he would shoot the officers if they entered. Within the hour this thing kinda started to go downhill. He did threaten to blow the building up by turning on the gas in the apartment. So the gas was shut off for the entire building.”

Police evacuated about 100 residents as a precaution and a stretch of Sepulveda was temporarily shut down. No one else was inside the suspect’s apartment at the time.

Officers from the elite Metro unit were called in and over six hours negotiated his surrender. After six hours, crisis negotiators were able to talk him out and the incident ended peacefully at 2:30 a.m., police said. He was booked into the Los Angeles County Jail for violating parole. Details of his criminal history were not immediately available. Nevarez is on parole and has a long list of felony convictions, Davis said.

The evacuated residents were able to return to their apartments at about 3 a.m. But the gas remained off overnight and into the early morning until it could be turned back on when the Gas Company can have access to each of the 36 apartments, Davis said.

So the back of the house was not so great when we moved in. It’s not that is so bad I think it was just a little neglected. Over the last month Sheila and I have been trying to clean it up.

To spice it up a bit we thought we’d add a fence in the back to try to unify the whole property and also add a little privacy. I spent 2 weekends digging fencepost holes and then demoed the old dog kennel that was just looking WAY to white trash.

While digging around I ran into this little guy. Pretty freindly. He let me pick him up!

Run little guy…

OK, so the kennel is gone.

Now lets drop in a few plants so it’s not just dirt city back here.

Man, I’m not down with the pink cinder blocks. Hello 1962.

So we decied to stucco the wall. Do you think that the fact that we had never stuccoed anything before held us back?

The directions on the bag said add a gallon and a half of water. This magarita pitch will do.

Sheila shows me how it’s done. Thanks honey, I’ve never frosted a cake before.

Do you think the fact that we had zero experience affected the look of the job? Maybe a little but it’s so much cheaper to do it yourself. Then again it’s still not done yet—yes, I’m going to fill in those holes.

Oooohhh look a grasshopper!