The Backyard Peace Treaty of 2001 has been Broken

Today they started working in the backyard. Still not having won the lottery, I was forced to go to work instead of bearing witness to this asupcious occassion. Despite knowing what the intended backyard result is, I'm not exactly sure what the steps are to bring it about. I suspect today's activities generally consist of "Bulldoze everything. Avoid damaging the house". 

This is reason #3 why we are not doing the backyard ourselves. If you are wondering why this is not reason #1, you are clearly not paying attention to my previous predisposition toward "how hard can it be?" Much to my husband's great frustration I had a tendency to just "try to figure it out". And not by researching or reading the manual. Oh no, manuals are for people who don't already know everything. I "figure things out" general by trying different things and observing the reaction. Also, I'm a big fan of taking things apart whether or not I think I can put it back together (Really, how hard can it be? I got it apart). You can see how this is extremely annoying to my engineer of a husband. This isn't the worse part, though. The terrible part of this is I actually happen to be pretty good at this and have a mostly positive batting average for figuring out strange and complex problems. The most commonly heard refrain in our house during a project is generally, "Just because its fixed doesn't mean you did it the right way". Bah. It's fixed. Problem solved.
Why is this important? Left to my own devices, I probably would attempt to just try to figure out how to drive a bobcat, pour cement, and install drainage. This brings us to reason #2 we're not doing the backyard ourselves...

I'm cheap. My dad used to say he was the second cheapest man in the world. The first was my grandfather. Well, clearly some things are genetic, because I certainly inherited this. When we first moved in, my inclination was to do everything ourselves to save money. What I learned instead was that many things are more cheaply done if you hire someone to do and watch them, asking questions, to learn how to do it yourself later (when it breaks again). This isn't true for everything. I'm fairly competent at many plumbing things now, and, of course, I still have to fight my urge to think "How hard can it be?" but the backyard was not one of those things. I was positive this is something that is much better and more cheaply done if someone else does it. Maybe not, but this leads us to reason #1 we are not doing the backyard ourselves...

Due to a series of repetitive close encounters with baby and adult rattlesnakes over my lifetime, I have developed a, dare I say, HEALTHY dislike of rattlesnakes and an extreme disinclination to come into close proximity of them. I completely understand their role in the food chain, their value to nature, and respect them as a fellow meat consuming predator. That being said, if they are in my house, garage, or yard, they are fair game for being shot (I hear you laughing at the in the house part, but I assure you this has happened to me before). I am generally inclined to leave any creature alone in the yard as long as its not actively threatening me. As we live in rattlesnake country and the rock piles in our backyard are prime living quarters for them, I am absolutely astonished that we have yet to encounter one in the time we've been living there. Other neighbors have had trouble during this time, but we have yet to witness a rattlesnake in the yard.
I can only assume that this is due to the previous Peace Treaty of 2001 that the previous owners had with the rattle snake overlords to define the Backyard Snake/Human Borders. Now that we've started the backyard, we are clearly in violation of the terms of the Peace Treaty and I expect vicious retaliation. 

Backyard Status Day 1: After work today, the backyard is a bit flatter and some rocks have been moved. We have lost our 2.5 bushes and the kidney bean pond hole has been filled in. Carefully laid on rocks were the bodies of two baby rattle snakes sans head. I'm tempted to bury them as the first causalities of war. Tonight we mourn all the things that lost their battles in our backyard: the pond, the bushes, the snakes.

The Seven Wonders of our Backyard

Its amazing how attached you can get to something. Our backyard wasn't much of anything, but its sad to think it will never look that way again (baring zombie apocalypse and nuclear war). When we first moved in we used to wander through the yard to speculate on some of its strange mysteries...

1. The Holy Mystery of the Kidney Bean - In the south west corner of the yard was a fairly large kidney bean shaped hole about 7 feet by 3 feet. This was surrounded by a half circle of the local granite rocks that were of the vaguely flattish, seat-like variety. Was it to be a fire pit? A pond? The pond theory seemed more likely given the exactness of the kidney bean shape. Did they actually have a plastic pond that they dug up and took with them? Or did they just dig a hole and try to fill it up with water? Before you say no one is that stupid, I have seen people do this before, having no idea that the ground will just absorb the water. My husband speculated that hobos used the pit for a bonfire when the house was abandoned. This eventually lead to suspicions of dark hippy cult rituals. My money is still on the pond theory.
2. The Ancient Rock Pyramids of Budweiser - Located in the farthest corner of the property is a 4 foot tall rock pyramid. Adorning its base and hidden within it are a whole bunch of empty Budweiser beer cans. Ignoring the beer cans for now, the pyramid is oddly placed and not very will built. It looks more like a palace that the rattle snake overlords forced the previously owners to build for them in exchange for honoring the backyard human rattle snake borders of the treaty of 2001. Full beers were left in offering periodically to ensure appease their snake masters. Since moving in we have ignored their offering ritual, but we have yet to find a rattle snake in the backyard. Perhaps there's a grace period.
3. The Ancient Aqueducts - Once thought to be an ancient writing carved into the ground to communicate to aliens, we now believe several of these 6inch deep troughs to be someone's attempt to put in sprinklers or some sort of irrigation. They are a bit haphazardly dug in making me suspect this was a self construction attempted activity.
4. The Red Dragon of Corner-copia - The first summer we lived in the house we had to weed-wack everything in the backyard and out ten feet to preserve the fire line. Excited to discover what critters lived in our backyard (and wanted to eat us), I started with the areas closest to the house. Imagine my surprise when in a shady corner of the house there was a large red lizard. When say large, I mean about 1ft long by 2-3inch wide. And Red. Bright Red. Needless to say this is not a native of northern California. Being as surprise by my appearance as I was with it, the lizard stuck out this tongue in the manner of the roadrunner from looney toons (sans meep, meep) and sped off into a hole tucked under the corner of our house's foundation. We speculate that he was someone's pet but haven't seen him since, so I imagine him wandering the open fields searching in vain for another lizard that looks like himself. He only wants love.
5. The Olive Tree of Endurance and the Honey Badger Plant - There are approximately two and a half plants in our backyard. The half plant is a long dead shrub that is so firmly rooted in the ground, I haven't removed it for fear it is a load bearing shrub, and its disappearance would cause the house to collapse. The other two are alive and at least one appears to be planted on purpose. Let me first educate you on the climate and soil consistency of our backyard... Our backyard consists of rock. There a small smattering of dirt around these rocks to give it a level-ish look, but it is 99.2% large granite boulders (four out of five dentists told me this). It is full south facing with no trees or other shade structures making it surface of the sun hot during the day, and then, because this is the foothills, ice cold at night. Even the one cell plant-like algae on the rocks looks like its suffering. There is no water. When it does rain there is a small swamp in the front corner of our house, but none of it makes it to the backyard. And then there are the periodic hurricane force winds that come up from the valley and try to knock the house down. In short, nothing should grow back there. Three things do however: some type of bush that looks consists with a dwarf olive tree, a monstrous plant vaguely resembling an Oleander, and blackberry vines. Is it the later of the three that is naturally occurring due to birds that eat the berries from plants farther down the valley and then poop in our yard. Blackberry vines are very invasive and hard to kill. We do our best to beat any new growth back each month and this leads us to the final reason nothing should grow in our backyard. Once a year, we poison the crap out of the backyard to keep the blackberry growth at a manageable level. Why anything grows in our backyard is beyond me. That being said, those two bushes are doing just fine. The olive bush looks like it might not be a "intentionally planted" plant and has stayed roughly the same size with a handful of leaves. Those leaves fall off in the winter and the same ones grow back in the spring. It is the very picture of endurance. The oleander is a much more enthusiastic plant. We've tried to dig it up several times (as its trying to strangle our AC unit) but can't manage to get its gnarly root base out. We've settled for cutting it back to its 1ft nub of a root and then in a few weeks its back to its 6ft high thick green leafy self. It too has been poisoned repeatedly and doesn't care. Honey Badger Plant don't give a shit.
6. The Glass Beach - Just outside the backdoor the ground is littered with different color pebbles and glass stones. The pebbles are all different sizes and looks like someone was tossing samples down to figure out which ground cover they liked best. There are no other rocks in any area that match these which leads us to wonder if this was an actual attempt to put in ground cover. It's very, um, eclectic.
7. The Buried Tomb of Dead Leaves Gone Past - A few months ago, I noticed a patch of very smooth cement on the side of yard. I tried to dig around it a bit and it just kept going. Walking down the side of the yard further I noticed another patch of smooth cement about 25 feet from the previous patch. About 20 feet from this is the drop of a storm drain cover that happens to be on the corner of our proper. There used to be an easement but apparently this is now a defunct drain (in theory). However, the drain pipe for a storm drain should be several feet underground. Not a half inch below the dust making up your side yard. We're still not entirely sure if this is the storm drain. We've had a couple experts look at it, but it seems likely it is and it was several feet underground, until the builder built our row of houses leveling off perhaps a little too much. We took into account this may be the case and planned to build up that side of the yard with dirt to give the plants some space to grow. Hopefully this will not be an issue.

In our attempt to figure out some of the mysterious things in our backyard we've used google maps satellite images which have not been updated since before we bought the house. In it there is a mysterious part of the fence which looks purposefully torn down and tire tracks leading into the fields and valley behind the house.
At one point I speculated that they tore down the fence to get some big equipment in to do some work, but as my husband pointed out, its a very long way from any street access to drive equipment and its got to get up the hill, so perhaps not. It will remain a mystery.
All of these little strange bits add up to a very unique and interesting backyard and, in a strange way, I'm sad to see it go. To celebrate the last day of our backyard as is, we decided to have an outside picnic. Due to dry grass, we parked the BBQ in the front drive, and grilled some ka-roberts (fancy kabobs, according to A.J.), then dined in the back with a couple of friends. Good time was had by all. Not such a bad send off for our weird and strange backyard.  

 

Backyards without borders

This is our backyard now:

You might notice the distinct lack of fence. This is not entirely our fault, but it does happen to represent our sole contribution to the backyard up to this point. When we moved in the fence was already partly falling down. This was in the home inspection report - Just in case we happened to miss the 50ft of fallen down wood in the middle of the 110ft fence line. Honestly, you might have been too distracted by the dry rot on the back door.
Apparently the popsicle stick fence the builder put up couldn't quite withstand the hurricane force winds that come up from the valley. Shocking.
Regardless, since we had from the very beginning intended to completely landscape the backyard, it seemed silly to replace the fence until we were ready to build. Thus the fence was left in its state of partially standing...for a whole three months.
About three months into owning the house, we get a letter from our home insurance company letting us know our back fence is unsafe and unless we fix it they will revoke our insurance. To paint the picture a bit more, this is the same insurance company that didn't care when shit was coming out of our ceiling because of badly installed toilet upstairs three days after we moved in while the inside of our house was being painted. The same company that didn't care that our dishwasher, refrigerator, garbage disposal all died within weeks of moving in. And would be the same company that would refuse to cover our sewage pump when it broke in another month from the arrival of this letter.
Our fence that backs up to acres of wilderness, with no access to any other houses or roads unless you are already trespassing on our property and have made it past the many hidden pot holes, rocks, loose gravel, thorn bushes, and rattle snakes that make up out back yard. Yes, that fence. It's unsafe? Really?
Picture painted? Good. You can imagine just where fixing this fence rate on our scale of "shower that won't turn off" to "what's that smell coming from the light you just fixed". None the less, the insurance company had a valid point from their perspective and we didn't want to lose the insurance in case it would one day actually cover something. After much discussion we agreed the only logical thing to do would be to dismantle the entire fence, thus remove the problem.
A few months later the insurance company followed up saying we needed to provide proof of the repaired fence. I politely told her, we decided to just remove the fence instead.
This seemed to confuse her....

Agent: You mean, you didn't fix the fence?
Me: Nope, we just took it down. We plan to re-do the whole backyard anyways in another year. Seemed pretty pointless. 
Agent: So there's no fence?
Me: No 
Agent: Then what do you have there?
Me: Nothing. Its just open. 

<....awkward pause....>

Me: Do we need to have a fence?
 Agent: Well, no, I guess not. 
Me: So do you just want me to send you a picture of the empty land where the fence was?
Agent: Um...

<....awkward pause....>

Agent: Let me ask my manager and get back to you.

A few days later I was asked to send a picture of the empty land where the fence once was showing that there was no longer a fence. See? Don't we all feel safer now. 

Seeking Approval

When suburbia invades a new open land area, I imagine a bunch of rich old guys get together around a table and have a conversation like this:

Old Rich Guy 1: How can we market the new housing development on the edge of the boonies as fashionable?
Old Rich Guy 2: I know, put the entire county under committee control, so we can tell people what color to paint their house. 
Together: BAHAHAHAHA.

No, Seriously. Our entire city is controlled by CC&Rs. For those of you who don't know what this is, its basically a list of rules you have to abide by that ranges from how many snakes you can own (1 reptile), where it can live (not outside), to what color you can paint your house (apparently not always the same color as it was when you originally bought it). Some of the rules are pretty hilarious (we can choose to own either cats or dogs, but apparently not both) but mostly it just means that you have to get everything you do to the outside of your house approved by a committee before you do it, or they'll fine you (if your neighbors turn you in).
Thinking our neighbors might notice the large amounts of construction equipment needed for our backyard, and not wanting to compete with the guy who keeps a pigeon outside, we decided to get the design approved.
This involved submitting the design in triplicate (20 pages of 3x4 foot sheets of drafting paper), pictures of the area as is, and samples of any materials being use.
Right. Well we did the first two and decided to submit anyway.
In our defense, the sample of materials is a bit broad. Did they want a sample of the miniature banana trees? Can't we just promise not to get a pergola in hot pink? Do they even make hot pink pergolas?

It turned out to be not a big deal. The committee seemed very nice and even helpful, pointing out that portions of our yard might not get enough sun for what we were planting there. While I still don't particularly like the concept of CC&Rs, its nice to see its applied in a reasonable way.

Hooray for approval! Breaking ground next week!

The steep path back to reality

Flashback a year previous...

A.J.: The back door and the frame has dry rot. 
Me: How much do you think that will cost to fix?
A.J.: I don't know. $500? Maybe more. 
Me: Yikes. Can't we fix it?
A.J.: You know how to install a door and new frame?
Me:   No, but they come in kits at Home Depot. I saw it on DIY.
A.J.: You really want to try?
Me: How hard can it be?

Very @#$%ing hard! Even with help, it was pretty much a disaster. Technically it works, but requires three oxen to open or close.
This was pretty much the first thing we fixed on the house and it was an exceptionally good lesson in the first rule of home repair. If you can't live with it being on pieces on the floor for a few days you should probably ask for professional help.
We had looked at the backyard design as a project that we could do in small pieces over years, even possibly do parts ourselves. As we interviewed different contractors, we knew it would be expensive, so we had them keep this idea in mind. Do it in phases. If you can cut cost with a similar idea, pitch it. Everything in the design was negotiable.
The estimates varied a tiny bit between contractors, but even missing a partial roman temple with pillars, it was still expensive.
We talked about which parts we thought we could do ourselves (like the vegetable garden), but every time I caught myself thinking "How hard can it be?" I would find myself looking at that goddamn door and feel the universe laughing at me.
Due to the way things in the design overlap, there wasn't really a good way to do the first phase cheaply. It started with we just want the patio. Well then the grading and the drainage has to be done. Also the posts have to be poured for the pergola even if you're not doing it. At this point the cost was high enough that adding on the actual pergola was almost negligible.
And, hey well you're at it, might as well put in the lights and fans on the pergola.
And if you're putting in sleeves and stubbing off the gas, you might as well pull it over to the BBQ area and hook it up so you can use it.
And you know, grass is only a thousand dollars. Since we're putting in sleeves for the irrigation, we might as well put in the grass and add portions of the irrigation.
Heck, just add in the vegetable garden at this point because the contractor is going to do it better and cheaper than we will be able to stumbling through our outback version of The Back Door.
You can see where this is heading I hope?...No?....

Me: O.K. At what point should we just do the whole backyard and just get this over with?
A.J.: Yeah. That'd be nice...
Me: Did we win the lottery and I just didn't notice?
A.J.: No. Sorry, but no. 
Me: Well, shit then. Phase 1 it is!

We did toy with the idea of doing it all at once and just taking out a loan, but I'm a chicken and the mortgage still frightens me. It doesn't need an entourage.
Having chosen a contractor and a scoped phase that was more reasonable, we proceeded with the next step: Getting the Design Approved. 

The Design

Some people see the statue in the block of marble, the picture on the blank canvas, the instructions in the box of IKEA furniture. I'm not one of those people. I can barely be bothered to check if the door is actually open before I walk through it. My lack of spacial perception has lead me to make some questionable choices about what my convertible car can and cannot carry with the top down - but in my defense, all items have survived transportation!

In summary, I could not design our backyard. I had ideas, but for true direction, this required my husband, A.J. After measuring the backyard (more time was spent discussing the proper way to measure something, than actual measuring), he constructed a blank diagram of our backyard and printed out copies for us to draw on and discuss our ideas...
...And after A.J. finished his design, I looked at my blank diagram and agreed his idea was much better. Even if it did include a putting green.
After a few weeks of procrastinating we acquired an architect. After giving him our design, he came back with almost the exact same design. Just in a form that didn't look like we scrawled in on a bar napkin. 
It should be noted at this point that our back yard is a bit large for traditional "landscaping". At around a quarter of a acre and on the edge of several acres of wild land, it lends itself more to "let's just see what grows and occasionally beat it back with something sharp" approach. Given this much room, our design included everything that we've ever seen on the DIY network. Fire pit, check. Spa, check. Vegetable garden, Patio, Pergola, Spa, Lawn, Trees, CHECK! Oh, and a putting green.

Excessive you say?

The architect added to all of this a partial roman temple with pillars. Crazy has company.

After reviewing the initial design and making some minor changes, we were ready to find a contractor!

It has potential

There was no phrase uttered more often by anyone who saw our house when we first brought it. There were bits missing from the inside; there were bits missing from the outside; oh and there's no backyard.
That's not to say it didn't have a backyard - it was just missing. We had just purchased the most expensive natural rock garden in town!
And while we focused on fixing the inside bits and the outside bits of the house, our imitation viking cemetery of a backyard sat, mocking us.

Real Viking Cemetery

Our Backyard

After almost a year, most of the house was fixed. Truthfully the house has just lured us into a false sense of security by becoming our own personal example of quantum entanglement. We have discovered that our house lives in this acceptable state of simultaneously being fixed and needing something else fixed. That's right: Our house is Schrödinger's cat. If you think everything is fixed, it is merely because you haven't yet discovered the other thing that is broken yet.
Not seeing the next broken thing on the house for all of two minutes, we quickly decided to start on the backyard.