Pianophile

Just as a blogophile loves blogs and blogging, I would consider myself a pianophile. Any time a pianophile walks by a piano, it is hard not to hear what it sounds like and how it plays. My piano motto for a long time has been: I Like To Play. Seeing the inside of a piano (especially while playing it) is always fun, not to mention the increased sound from having opened up an upright piano. This is when it's nice to have some music memorized. You can watch the hammers hit the strings while listening to the giant surround sound of something that doesn't even need to be plugged in. It is never too late to start playing piano, and you can do it for the rest of your life.

Cats and Dogs

About ten days ago, just a small localized area where we live got four inches of rain in a very short period of time. Our avenue temporarily turned into a river.

In the wake of this early summer storm, we also ended up with a temporary lake in our back yard. Four quick inches of rain is all it took to give us some prime lake-front property.

We never knew that when we were putting in our rock gardens, the rocks would someday be a rampart between land and water.

Needless to say, after it rained Cat & Dogs, we didn't have to do much watering any time soon.

New Vegarden

This is one of two new vegetable gardens we've built in our backyard this Spring. At this point, all that was left to do on this one was to fill it with dirt, plant the vegetables, and put a fence around it to keep out the rabbits.

To get to this point, we pulled back the sod, put the lower layer of cedar 4x4 deck posts together on a flat surface (in the garage), carried it out, put it in place, and finally attached the second level of deck posts to the lower level with six inch screws.

Kit already has this garden planted, along with the other one which is on the opposite side of our backyard. Both will get full sun all day long (unless it's cloudy). The shorter end pieces are 4 feet and the longer sides are 10 feet. The actual outside length of the ends is 4 feet plus 3.5 inches (the width of the posts). The sides are 10 feet plus 3.5 inches. If you look at the corner, you can see we have the two levels put together differently so that the seams would not line up. (Click on the picture to see it closer up.)

Making gardens using 4x4 cedar deck posts was such a quick and easy way to add vegardens to our yard. We got the cedar at 55% off of its normal price since they said it was a bit old and weathered, which was perfect for building gardens!