Spring Has Sprung – 2018

March 12, 2018 / Matt Talley / 2 Comments

With the official start of Spring – as determined by the fact that my wife was reading a book, enjoying the sunshine, and drinking wine in the yard – we had a busy weekend at La Maison Du Talley:

Moved all the power tools in the shop against the wall for temp storage duty
Ordered material for attic finish
Set up new iPhone (old one a brick!)
Checkout at Pratt to be able to independently use their fabrication shop.
Moved everyone else’s crap out of my basement and temporarily into the garage
Said dirty words about all the other people’s crap being stored in our home
Cleaned the basement completely out
Pruned the apple trees in the backyard
Restacked the firewood wood pile
Cleaned and prepped attic for floor installation
Published two YouTube videos
Set up new condenser microphone in home office/studio
Breakfast with my mom and wife
Went to the Moonshiners 36th Annual Jeep Swap Meet
Did not buy a new-to-me 1946 CJ-2A project Jeep
Stayed Married
Did not buy a motorcycle or boat at the swap meet
Stayed married – there is a theme…
DID buy an ARB on-board air compressor and a duel battery mount – and got a sweet deal!
Signed up for three classes at Pratt for this spring: Block printing, wood carving, and letterpress
Padded and protected the wood floor and built-ins in prep for attic finish
Cleaned the hot tub
Edged and mowed the front and back yard
Spread Weed&Feed on the back yard and parking strip
Re-seeded the front yard

Weekend Activities

July 12, 2017 / Matt Talley / Leave a comment

Seattle is in early summer full bloom. The sun is out and the temperature is perfect! These conditions led to a really good weekend:

Slept had friends stay with us Friday night and Saturday morning
Big yummy breakfast
Picked three big bowls of ripe Lapin cherries
Ate a lot of cherries
Went over to my mother’s house
Took care of house projects for her
Had a yummy dinner
Nice bottle of red wine was opened and mostly consumed
Read American Gods aloud with Stamps-With-Foot before bed

Brunch with Friends
Went to the Sunday farmer’s market
Bought cheese and honey!
Went to the garden store
Bought a bunch of flowers for the yard
Walked the puppies
Planted flowers
Scattered weed&feed in the 1/3 of the back yard that is void of Ireland-green grass
scattered and raked grass seed.
Murdered dandelions
Picked up a mountain of puppy-made landmines 🙁
Mowed the yard
Installed new tire cover on Jeep spare
Put Jeep on the car lift – also now refereed to as “The Jeep Sex Swing”
Changed oil and filter
Only 42 more Oil Changes and the lift pays for itself!! 🙂
Lubed the chassis
Checked and topped off all the fluids
Made happy noises
Had a Coke and smile afterward while sitting in the shade
Printed out GAINT ’84-’86 Jeep Maintenance Manual
Let my internal OCD monster out to play
Custom labels and tabbed separators were made…
Added folders with Maintenance Manuals to shelf in the garage
Watered the garden, yard, and newly seeded dirt patch
More reading
Sleep

Long Holiday Weekend and the Official Start of Summer in Seattle

July 6, 2017 / Matt Talley / Leave a comment

Our 4th of July weekend went really well this year. To kick things off right, I found out on Friday afternoon before the weekend that I could have Monday July 3rd off. A surprise and unplanned FOUR DAY WEEKEND!!

The 40th Annual Seattle Wooden Boat Festival was being put on and I took a Lyft down to south Lake Union and the Center for Wooden Boats on Saturday morning and hung out till about 12:00. I have mixed feelings about the show/fest this year and will expound on those in a follow up post, but while there got to see some boats and talk shop with a kayak builder and sail-maker. Before leaving the house, Stamp-With-Foot made me promise not to buy a boat. I succeeded in that, but I did look at a cute little 16’ sailing skiff that made me feel fuzzy and a 22’ day/weekend sailor…

I also saw Opus again – my favorite weekend boat/trailer sailor in the PNW. She is a Wee Seal MKII, designed by the noted Australian/Scotsman Iain Oughtred. Her owners weren’t there, but I still enjoyed seeing at such a sweet little boat. If Opus were for sale, I don’t think that the promise to my wife would have been kept…

We went to a colleague’s early 4th of July BBQ on Saturday afternoon/evening (the 1st of July). It was down in Enumclaw and had an AMAZING view of Mt. Rainier from the deck and rest of the property. There was beer, laughter, wine, 4-wheelers, BBQ, and fine people. The fireworks started at dark and no one lost any fingers and nothing burned down, so a successful party.

Monday and Tuesday were spent in our yard, my shop, and the house fixing, building, moving stuff around. I hired some labor on Monday the 3rd and spent 8 hours cleaning the yard, moving bricks, pulling weeds, re-finishing the patio table, cleaning the hot tub, moving boulders, and making 2 runs to the dump. I swear the people at the city dump know me so well by now that I will be getting Christmas cards from them.

The yard came together about 9:00pm the night before our scheduled BBQ on the 4th. We had friends, family, co-workers, neighbors come over for charred meat, chips, dip, booze, desert, and laughter. The holiday was also my backyard’s coming out party. She was finally ready to join the world and everyone fawned over the green, luscious grass. It made me so proud! It was also the puppies first time being allowed in the backyard unsupervised. They rolled and sniffed and frolicked like I made the yard just for them. There were no fights (human or puppy), no one got sick, everyone left full, no grass was destroyed, no cuts or scrapes, no fires, nothing blown up, and we had some very tired happy puppies that night – so another successful party.

Tuesday After Work 6-27-17

June 27, 2017 / Matt Talley / Leave a comment

Came home after regular work day at my J-O-B. Was tired, a little frustrated, and grumpy. Put on my work boots and overalls before going out into the yard. Mowed, edged, trimmed with the weed-eater, applied infill grass seed in the yard and to a couple of patchy spots in the front parking strip. Finished off with weed&feed, then turned the sprinklers on to activate. Murdering Dandelions and making the grass grow green makes me happy.

Watered the garden – the corn, tomatoes, and peppers are doing very well so far! Stamps-with-Foot called me into the house to eat. She made breakfast for supper – my all time favorite!

I got caught wearing my work boots in the “fancy dining room” at home. Wife made angry wet cat sounds. I got in trouble.

Making the yard pretty for 2017

May 26, 2017 / Matt Talley / 1 Comment

Our back yard has been a mess for over a year: Stacked with left over construction debris, seriously over-grown raised garden beds, unturned compost bins, blackberries along both fences, piles of landscaping stones, weeds, etc.… The front yard was presentable, but only just barely. 2016 was the year of house and garage construction and 2017 was meant to be the year that we focused on the yard. Surgery delayed that a bit and the state of the grounds at La Maison du Talley was getting embarrassing.

I had a couple of guys come out and take a look at our mess to see what it would cost to get it back in home-show worthy shape. I didn’t like either answer. Without going into too much detail about the different bids, the low one was $3500 and the high was almost $5000. There was no way in Hell that the frugal DNA coursing through my veins, passed down from both the Talley and Webster lines, would biologically allow me to spend that kind of money on grass, mulch, and a few flowers.

After I was well on the mend and cleared by my physical therapist, I did some planning, logistic estimation, material cost math, and decided to do it myself with a bit of casual day labor. I also decided that the mature ornamental cherry trees I wanted for the parking strip would have to wait, that I didn’t need to bring in topsoil and plant grass seed. I scaled back the dream a little bit, bought 86 rolls of sod, 19 bags of mulch, 8 bags of garden soil, some boxwood shrubs, 15 Spanish lavender plants, and let my sweet wife buy all the pretty flowers that her heart desired.

In two days, the front and back yards were transformed! I hauled away 1600 pounds of yard waste, made one dump run for trash, one run full of recyclables, and we spent less than $1000. We will spend the next few weeks watering and fussing over little details, but by July 4th, we should have Ireland-green grass, pretty flowers, healthy fruit trees and the BBQ grill roaring. Money and time well spent.

Our yard is in bloom – Spring 2012

June 3, 2012 / Matt Talley / Leave a comment

Magical Spring has finally come to Le Maison du Talley. Our rhododendrons are back and in full pooping bloom after they were hacked back last year. The tulips, daffodils, and poppies have all decided to bloom at the same time. The Spanash, English and Provence lavender has taken root and flourished along the front fence. After a two year struggle with blossom-rot, the two cherries up front are full of flowers and green cherries. We have Mandarin orange blossoms, apple blossoms, apricots, figs, raspberry buds, a fence line of blooming roses, and 3 Meyer’s lemons on the dwarf tree in our backyard mini-orchard.

Stamps-with-Foot and I planted garlic and onions in the fall that are close to being pulled and we spent an afternoon planting tomatoes, squash, corn, and zucchini in two of our raised beds. After in initial problem with early blight last year, our two full beds of tomatoes went NUTS! and we had more that we could use or give away. We were more selective this year and planted just a couple varieties and only 7 plants. I hot-housed a bed of spinach, Swiss Chard, and beats all winter that is now in full production mode.

I plan to be home more this summer and really spend some time tending and harvesting, although one wouldn’t know it from all the traveling so far. I can’t wait until mid-August when I can sit in my cotton hammock, gently swinging over my Ireland-green grass, drinking a Dunkel Weissbeir, snuggling my wife, and patting our puppy while gazing out onto our yard and garden.

Ignoring the yard and building stuff

April 23, 2012 / Matt Talley / Leave a comment

Horror of horrors, I did not touch my yard this weekend. My lush, Ireland-green grass (I am a wee bit narcissistic about my grass) was left to grow and stretch toward the sky in the weekend sunshine. I spent all available daylight hours outside and didn’t even attempt to take the mower out, turn the compost, or battle with my creeping nemesis – the dandelions. Stamps-With-Foot did a little weeding on Saturday, but the bulk of our weekend was committed to getting the kitchen cabinets done enough so that we could do a test fit and install.

Success! My wife was a priming and painting machine: taking care of the microwave cabinet, the lowers, and the drawers. The lower cabinets were positioned into place and their rock-maple tops fitted (waiting on the drawer fronts and pulls to be finished). I cut all the frames for the doors, assembled the fridge cabinet, installed it with my wife holding the thing up in the air (hehehe), tacked together the trash/recycling slider, and cut the shelves for the microwave cabinet. When completely done, our cabinet space will increase by more than a third, will include al the latest and coolest amenities (slides, organizers, spice racks, pullouts, etc…), and the new cabinets completely match the original 1928 built-ins, both in construction and style.

I need to finish the fridge top cabinet, install the drawers, add a corner cookbook shelf, tack up cove-crown around all, and one final coat of paint. SOMEDAY, this will all be finished and we will have the most awesomest kitchen a tiny, period appropriate, craftsman house can have!

I added a pic of Brodie lounging in the sunshine, just because.

It is 71 BLEEPING degrees outside – WOOHOO!!

April 9, 2012 / Matt Talley / Leave a comment

Spring has finally decided to show up in Seattle! I am all giddy. Yesterday was Easter and the sun was out, birds were singing, my flowers are blooming, and my grass in Ireland green. I spent the morning, edging, mowing, raking, reseeding and assaulting my hated foe, the dandelions. I spent ALL DAY outside working on projects, fixing stuff that has waited for me all winter, working on a bookshelf for Stamps-With-foot’s sewing room, sharpening garden tools, and soaking in as much sunshine as possible. Brodie took up residence in his favorite patch of grass and alternately munched and napped. The end of his short snout got a little pink. I think that he is happier than I am about the sunshine. I am sitting inside at my J-O-B and I can see a little sliver of sunshine. I want to make a break for it!

As for Easter celebrations: There were chocolate & peanut butter eggs from my pretty wife, a Cadbury egg from my sister, and I purchased a hollow chocolate bunny, which I savaged, starting with its cute bunny ears… Brodie and I had a wonderful lunch of ham and ham, oh and more ham at my family’s place. Pork is bad for both of us and I was careful not to have any open flames around the house last night. Stamps-With-Foot is in Northern California visiting her sister and best friend in the world, so she was spared.

Driven Outside

Tag: Ireland Green Grass