Fall is for planting!

Alas, before planting we have a bit more work to do. The front courtyard area is where gravel for the foundation was dumped and then compacted by construction vehicles. On top of that, the guys that did our stucco mixed all of their concrete and sand in this area... So, shovel by shovelful, Mike spent an entire Saturday digging up a bed about 2.5 feet wide by 6 feet long and running it over a steel grate to filter out the gravel and concrete pieces... Flowers by Spring!

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Out of the gutter and into the cold..

Although the stucco guys completed their job a couple of weeks ago, some minor cracks developed in 3 areas and they have come back to patch them up..... Having the scaffold up for the stucco guys allowed our gutter guy to hang the final piece.... On Wednesday of this week the guys from Airsmiths installed the air conditioning condenser...If you're wondering if that is the American Standard Allegiance 14 Super Efficiency Condenser, you would be right! It is made in Texas in the same factory that Trane air conditioners are made at. http://www.americanstandardair.com/Products.asp?Section=homeOwners&ProductID=7&CategoryID=16&SuperCategoryID=1

Controlling the weather

We installed a Weathermatic irrigation system controller. It is connected to an on-site weather station that monitors temperature, rainfall, windspeed, and humidity. As the seasons change, it automatically adjusts the station timing, very handy! UPDATE: We had nothing but trouble with this controller and in 2016 we replaced it with a dramatically better one from Rachio. See it here: https://www.rachio.com/ Better yet, the City of Sacramento has a rebate program to replace old controllers with `smart' controllers like the Rachio, check it out here: https://www.cityofsacramento.org/Utilities/Conservation/Rebates/River-Friendly-Landscape-Rebate

We have officially started!

After almost 3 years of planning and designing on paper, today we took the first steps on the site of our new house. We cut down and carted away our fruit cocktail tree (a grafted fruit tree that had branches of nectarine, peach, plum, and apricot), 2 grape vines, a grafted Asian pear tree that had 4 varieties of pear, a grapefruit tree, a lemon tree, and an orange tree. It was sad to see them go, but it was exciting to think of what is to come.

Mike and Jeff's New House

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