You are thinking happy thoughts, thoughts from your childhood, thoughts that do not involve the remodeling of the Patch, nail guns or the continuing prevalence of spray painted succulents in large box stores.
Your mind is set free, free from the burden of backyard refrigerator focal points.
(Okay not quite)
Free from the billowing of plastic draped walls,
and the 7 month rustle of a Tyvek bathroom doorway.
Your breathing is getting heavier and your eyes are beginning to close, first the left then the right, you are falling into a deep, deep sleep.
In this sleep the things that annoy you fall away.
You are no longer concerned or disturbed at just how many stickers can a pair of slippers pick up while taking the short walk to take out the trash.
Or why there is a huge festering slab of fungi growing at the base of one of your knockout roses or why an even stranger stand of Chocolate tube slime mold (hairy stemonitos) has taken up residence on an outdoor table leg.
Brrr.
Even the disturbing amount of weeds are no longer your concern.
Oh, who am I kidding?
Look at this mess!
Chocolate tube slime mold?
Seriously?
3-2-1…You are awake, feeling totally anxious and overwhelmed.
(That’s more like it!)
Yes, this is what 7 months of complete neglect looks like. I think it looks worse than what it is, at least that is what I keep telling myself.
Loki is having a great time exploring her new weedy paradise.
Cat in the Canna.
Her first venture outside…on a leash!
There has been so much going on inside our house with our remodel I have hardly ventured outside…not to water, not to feed and certainly not to weed. Oh and don’t get me started on how bad the mosquitoes are this year.
I don’t even consider venturing out onto the front porch at this point without first taking some rudimentary precautions.
The new den, all finished!
Remodeled bathroom…got to take that sticker off the window.
Our old living room has now become our dining room.
It fits well with our distressed new ship-lapped walls.
Back outside the Patch the Gulf Muhly
Muhlenbergia capillaris
are in full swing,
one of my favorite native grasses.
This and Lindheimer Muhly…I cant decide.
Mist flowers are also entering their prime,
bringing with them clouds of American Snout butterflies.
It does not seem like 4 months since my last blog post…how did that happen?!
Spock analysis?
“I believe it to be combination of work commitments, summer vacationing and the fact that we have been stuck in a temporal causality loop since last April ESP.”
“That would explain the sense of déjà vu I keep having whilst visiting and photographing the gulf coast…great work Spock”
Another quick camping trip down to the Texas gulf coast, or was it the same one?
A hobbit lost in the Shire.
The dunes and grasses made a great backdrop as the sun burnt down behind them.
My fire was created by a particularly large bag of charcoal…
…Texas sized…just light the corners!
We were treated to some great sunsets and zero sandstorms this trip – thank goodness.
Pretty much our usual set up minus the life-threatening tarp and aluminum spears.
Further down the beach there was this driftwood beach shack – pretty sure it was inhabited.
If you are into small and alternative living spaces and gardens, be sure to check out some of the documentaries on Kirsten Dirksen’s channel, very entertaining.
Here is an interesting 2 hour intro-documentary film she made featuring individuals with alternative concepts of inhabiting, cultivating and harnessing nature…from Marfa to Austin to LA:
Even though there was just a slight breeze the sandwiches somehow managed to incorporate a rather disturbing amount of sand.
She really wanted to take home some of these colorful lightning whelks,
Sinistrofulgur perversum
but they were all inhabited with hermit crabs who are apparently very partial to these particular shells, who wouldn’t be?
Did you know they are the state shell of Texas?
“We have been stuck in a temporal causality loop since last April ESP”
“Okay Spock, I get it!”
Back in Austin:
I have recently been installing a design in the Shoal Creek area and decided to take a quick detour to check in on a corner lot planting I executed a couple of years ago.
The plantings were doing well…pity about the introduction of the bright red curb!
Come on ponyfoot…giddy on up and cover that red ‘thang’!
I Digress.
Back to my latest design and installation in Shoal Creek:
It started with another substantial corner lot with a ton of potential.
The front entrance was screaming out for better structure…the skinny concrete path was first on my ‘that needs to go’ list.
There where a lot of conflicting mediums and contours towards the front door and around the house that obviously needed consolidation to afford a nicer experience moving in/out of the property and around to a future side courtyard.
The biggest challenge of this scheme was this bare side yard (below) which was to be a courtyard.
The client wanted a sense of enclosure in the space without being totally and visually closed off from the street/foot traffic and neighbors.
A sloping grade (in two directions)added to the design challenge and complexity of the area…
a cunning plan was required.
Design and Visualization:
The before pictures are in the bottom right.
My goal in these visuals was to communicate a more naturalistic and widened entryway to the sidewalk…more in scale with the expansive dimensions of the area.
Vertical height (left and right) was to be achieved with three blue ice cypress trees and trunking yucca in the same color palette.
Contrasting grasses and architectural whales tongue agave are peppered and repeated throughout the scheme.
For the side courtyard the introduction of three large steel panels with plasma cut ‘windows’ and integrated planter boxes enclose the space without totally privatizing it. A new house trim color was introduced to reflect the steel work and add some visual punch.
Crude card mock-ups were constructed to determine the size of panels and cut-out dimensions.
The Normandy Phase:
Contouring and tear-out.
Prepping the area.
The existing sprinkler system had to be tweaked and electricity routed for pathway lighting.
Installation:
Flagstone positioned and
side courtyard is framed up.
Final Design:
Steel panels as viewed from the street. Two sentry Texas red oaks will present future shade at both ends.
You can see the significant drop in grade.
Dwarf miscanthus grasses will fill in the area in front, echoing the rust color of the panels in the fall and winter months.
The two planter boxes house baby, heat-tolerant opuntia (spineless prickly pear cactus).
Two stained cedar benches and a picnic table reflect the new cedar landing platform:
The stained cedar platform covers the existing concrete steps (they are still under there)and offers a larger landing platform on which to enter the side door.
The opuntia will quickly add architectural height and visually soften the sides of the steel panels.
They are also easy to ‘train’ by snapping off paddles where they are not needed or to keep the plant pruned to a desired height.
Steel already starting to Patina.
A small corner planting bed and a stock tank (naturally) offer some convenient herbs from the side door.
The steel work and burnt pine was fabricated and installed by the talented Andrew Miller (aminc13@gmail.com)
Silvermist flagstone/edging and Tejas black gravel all work together to echo the grey of the house and rust of the steel work.
The entryway from the sidewalk was dramatically widened to eat into the real estate of the turf and be more inviting.
Perimeter planting will blend the edges as it matures.
Some great colors on this flagstone.
Large swooping arcs and widened pathways replace previous right angles:
This is me Philip Leveridge,
I am a designer (landscape and product), gardener and bagpiper in Austin Texas (zone 8b)
You can visit my professional landscape design website by clicking on the image below:
View more of my projects and hear what my clients have to say about Leveridge Landscape Design on Houzz:
