Mini Rain Garden

We have a downspout that collects more water than the others. We've had the gutters looked at by a pro and cleaned, so maybe this gutter is just more popular. Or the house is old and a little leansy (more likely).

One year at Thanksgiving (when we were getting ready to have a bunch of people over!) it rained cats & dogs and the area by the downspout pooled and flooded pretty badly. So I scooted down to Ace Hardware (which was open for at least part of the day - thanks Ace!) and got one of those plastic tube extensions that you can attach to the downspout and move the water away from the house.

This worked great - now the water all goes into a landscaped area away from the foundation and soaks in. But we decided to up the ante and make a little rain garden/dry creekbed to collect and distribute the water, and also look pretty!

So far, with the second real rain of the year it's working great. I can't wait for those little ferns and whatever those succulents are to get a little bigger and create more of a landscape feature.

House Painting Complete

This has been done for a couple of months, but I've been spending every spare moment of good weather out walking the dog or fussing in the yard, (not blogging in front of the computer!). But here is the good news: the exterior paint is complete and we are so happy with it!

Our painters did a great job. We also had the bonus experience of liking having them around, which is great when you have a bunch of dudes hanging around the house for a few weeks working on a project. They did a nice job matching the gutters to the color behind them, and they were very thorough and made sure that we had a thorough inspection and sign off.

We thought about eventually painting the front door, but the contrast of the exposed wood grain and the off-gray looks great. I don't think we'll be making any changes to the door finish! (We just saved ourselves some work there!)

We also added this little maple: