The grueling winter has made the anticipation of spring all the more compelling this year, as we face delay after frustrating delay. Soon we'll be deep into the plants, trees and shrubs, planting, pruning and carrying off winter's detritus.
Today we received an update from a persistent gardener on the West Coast that served as an entertaining distraction as we await our turn with the pruning shears.
Randy Anderson is a Norwegian bachelor television writer/producer, Stan's college roommate, and long-time family friend. He owns a beautiful '30s house in L.A. that has been featured previously on this blog. Randy has been working to freshen up his backyard, with the assistance of some local talent, in preparation for his sister's annual visit.
Characters in today's episode are Dave, a middle-aged handyman/landscaper from Wisconsin who has reached Randy's soft spot; Dave's wife, Nicole, with children; Gracia, Randy's sister from Minneapolis; and assorted local laborers. Photographs of their new work are unavailable. We have augmented his report with various snaps from our previous visits.
We join Randy in the garden as he writes:
Updates:
-- Almost two days were spent selecting, buying, transporting and planting a tree to replace the now-gone oleander. I picked out a most excellent tree at a Calabasas tree farm (long, long ways away!). Dave insisted we drive out there, so I could approve the tree he thought would fill the bill:
A "Desert Willow." In middle age. To fill in the high and wide space created by the removal of the giant, ugly, dirty old oleander.
While we were at the tree farm, Dave says, "Why don't we take a look at their Japanese Maples just for fun? They're very cool." We'd admired this type of tree during our tree-research phase, leafing through books and surfing the Net, thinking a Japanese Maple would make a nice "accent tree". Then we found out the price of the babies. Uff da.
Well, Stan and Kathleen, I couldn't resist.
I bought one that's over 30 years old, and got it at half-price because tree farmers sell by the size of the box, and Phil the Tree Farm Guy said he never got around to transplanting this particular, prize Japanese Maple into a proper, bigger box so...$1,000 value...but he'll sell it to me for $500...!!! The thing's like a work of art. (Kathleen will know this tree...it's like royalty among trees.) I knew Dave really wanted a Japanese Maple as part of his overall design, so, hell, I gave in...put it on the darn credit card!
Anyway, the big kahuna, the Desert Willow...was chosen to fill in the hideous "eyespace" created by the demolition and removal of the old, nasty oleander that's been in the corner of the wall for 40 years, providing privacy but little beauty. Dave took the oleander's root ball -- huge and gnarly! -- home with him; he'll make a coffee table out of it.
The Desert Willow weighs two tons!
So Monday afternoon, Dave rents a truck and drives back out to the tree farm, while I head home in the Pathfinder. They load the Japanse Maple into the rental -- no problem there -- but the Desert Willow must be inserted into the truck with a friggin' fork lift!
Then Dave drives to Los Feliz, parks the huge rental truck in the middle of my street, and then he and his two Hispanic worker-bees try to get the Desert Willow out of the truck, onto a GIANT hand truck, push it up the driveway, under the carport, up the lawn and into the hole...in the dark...
...well, that was the plan anyway.
The Desert Willow weighs two tons!
So Monday afternoon, Dave rents a truck and drives back out to the tree farm, while I head home in the Pathfinder. They load the Japanse Maple into the rental -- no problem there -- but the Desert Willow must be inserted into the truck with a friggin' fork lift!
Then Dave drives to Los Feliz, parks the huge rental truck in the middle of my street, and then he and his two Hispanic worker-bees try to get the Desert Willow out of the truck, onto a GIANT hand truck, push it up the driveway, under the carport, up the lawn and into the hole...in the dark...
...well, that was the plan anyway.
Uh, didn't happen.
It's a very long story that's funny now.
But at the time...it wasn't. It got really dark...I'm directing traffic as the guys struggle mightily to get the Desert Willow out of the damn truck. It took forever, just to do that. But now there's a tree in the middle of the street, traffic is really backing up now -- horns honking -- and...the tree won't budge across the asphalt!
So Dave gets in his SUV and parks it perpendicular in the street, backs up to the tree and ties a rope onto the bumper and around the tree box.
SNAP!
The rope breaks as his SUV is burning rubber and spewing smoke out the exhaust pipe -- and the rush-hour cars are piling up and honking and I'm trying to explain to the angry drivers that it'll "only be a minute" as Dave re-ties the rope and tries again to drag the Desert Willow across the street...and out of harm's way...the old wooden tree-box crumbling...when...
...WHOOPS!
The tree slowly starts falling over and the two Hispanic guys are struggling to hold it up and I jump into the fray to help...and --
DOUBLE WHOOPS!
The tree falls down on top of me, I take a header, my left sneaker flies off, and now I'm spread-eagled on Rowena Avenue under my beautiful new tree -- with the car horns honking relentlessy -- and Dave's German wife standing on my front lawn giving useless advice in the dark, with their three-year-old in her hand, and their one-year-old hanging on her right tit, breast feeding...
...I scramble to my feet -- scrapes, bruises, and strawberries all up and down my legs and arms, dust myself off and calmly say:
"Okay, you guys deal with it, I gotta go."
Because --
-- I was late picking up Gracia at the airport!
I run to the Pathfinder and my cellphone rings --
-- it's Gracia: the plane landed early!!!
I race to LAX at 70 MPH (no traffic, thank God!) and get there in 19 minutes. A record!!
We get back (after I had Gracia in stitches telling her the "tree story")...only to see that the Desert Willow is now parked at the curb, under the lamp post near my drivewy.
Guys, it took them an hour to get it 10 feet to the curb by my driveway!
Dave smiles and says, "It's staying there overnight"...tomorrow he'll go over to Home Depot and hire a big crew of illegals on the cheap to drag the tree into the hole in the backyard.
Well, it essentially took all of the next day -- and a bunch of happy-to-work Hispanic aliens -- to drag my beloved new tree into the hole.
BANG!
It's finally in ...and man, does it look beautiful...
...nary a branch broken (Phil, the tree farm owner, said the Desert Willow is "bullet-proof", and the branches are kinda rubber-bandy, thank God for that...as the tree took a beating, and fell over many times).
But now it perfectly fills the eyesore space-hole left by the removal of the huge oleander, and no one can see into my backyard anymore, from across the wall. Privacy restored! With a big, beautiful tree that sports a gorgeous caramel-brown trunk.
Okay, so that's the Desert Willow tree story, and all true.
Back to the pergola:
Like I said, the pergola goes straight out into the yard from my bedroom...ending at about the same distance as the old concrete patio. The "ledger board" of the pergola is fastened above those two wrought iron French doors -- soon to be modified by Dave, the skilled iron-worker. Flagstone patio, with crushed granite as grout...its shape an irregular jigsaw puzzle that fits the eye nicely..with a stepping-stone path (more "buckskin" flagstones) leading from the driveway across to the patio/pergola.
Dave demo'd the old, dumb and ugly, brick flower bed outside and beneath my office window...and built a new, smaller, curved flower bed (concrete, with wood facing) so he could "purchase" more lawn space (grass!) back by the gas and water meter box. The camellia tree next to the big evergreen (bonsai'd, remember?) was uprooted and removed so Dave could do this. The camellia now sits in a giant box, waiting for a new home (still haven't figure that one out).
Today...Gracia, Dave, Dave's German wife Nicole, the two worker-bee Hispanics (Jose and Alphonso, whom I call "Joe and Al"), and moi, began to re-do the whole garden. (Scores of potted plants and flowers are strewn across my backyard lawn). Still not done. But Nicole picked out all the plants and flowers (a truckload of stuff! -- $$$$$$), and drew a keyed map of where everything should go, along with a DVD with numbered pictures of each plant and flower...I think I told you this.
So anyway, today was all about digging, plant removal, soil amending, planting and transplanting, etc...with Dave straw-bossing the Hispanics as they laid out the irrigation pipes.
We're probably half-done with the planting.
Still, even at this mid-point, the whole backyard has been magically transformed...and that Desert Willow makes it all work.
Now, listen to this...
...I tossed a spitball idea out to Dave about a possible "mini-patio" near the north end of the fence...so guests could lay on a chaise lounge in that area during the westerly afternoon sun. In mere minutes Super-Dave had a plan (change order! mission creep!!):
More flagstones, but this time with grass between the slabs...the Japanese Maple on your left as you sit there...and to the left of the Maple...a water feature for soothing effect.
Holy Moly!
My idea for this little "oasis" was that guests could then "follow the sun"...in the morning outside the guest house, to the "mini-patio" near the north end of the fence around mid-day, and then over to the pergola in the late afternoon.
I'm hemorrhaging money. No surprise there.
But I think, when it's all done, that it'll really be something and very well worth it.
Gracia and Nicole worked their butts off today (they get along famously)...I helped at times, but was basically the "gofer":
"Randy," say Gracia and Nicole, "we need more planting compost. Could you run back over to Armstrong Garden Center?"
"Yeah sure, you betcha."
"Buy five more bags."
"Five bags. Got it. Anything else?"
"No."
"You sure? I don't want to have to go back."
"Go! Five bags of compost!"
"Okay, okay, I'm going!"
So off I go and when I get back...of course they need more bags, and off I go again for more soil amendment.
Then, at the end of the day, Dave takes a look at what Nicole and Gracia have done and says:
"We'll need at least six more bags of compost."
(Guess where I'm going tomorrow!)
Sheesh. Twas ever thus.
Anywho, as the sun's going down today (everyone got tanned, or burned, in Gracia's case), Nicole goes into my kitchen and starts cooking dinner for all of us.
She leans the kitchen door and calls out to me: "Randy, where's your olive oil?!"
"Uh, I don't have any."
"Oh."
And yep, you guessed it...off I go to Gelson's to get olive oil.
Nicole had brought shrimp, rice, tomatoes, etc...and made some fantastic dish without a name. So we sat in my dining room, and ate gourmet food and sipped a fine Chardonnay (my treat), while the two little toddlers are running around and wreaking havoc on my house...but their lovely kids, and who cares?
Dinner eaten, Dave and I go outside, him with the two toddlers in tow, and we stand, smile and admire the work in progress...and I give him yet another check...
...meanwhile, the two ladies are still sitting inside at the dining table, nattering away about how it is to raise kids, what Randy should do with the kitchen re-model, and God knows what else.
Then the Hamres finally leave, to return in the morning for another round of planting and transplanting...and completion of the irrigation system. Then Dave has to do the finishing work on the pergola: metal detailing, lighting, a fan (huh?!), and again, God knows what else...then he'll begin work on the mini-patio...and build a new flower bed underneath the carport (something with railroad ties, who knows?, but I fully trust him).
...Gracia has firm opinions on "water features" and will probably make that choice.
So far no transplanted plant has died...we'll wait and see on that, but Dave and Nicole seem to know what they're doing in this regard. (Her father was a landscaper in Essen, Germany.)
I guess this is what they call "redistribution of wealth"...money siphoned from the Anderson family (me) to the Hamre family.
But heck, life is short and I'm having a ball...because it's such a creative, artistic endeavor...and I know my guests are gonna get a big kick out of it when it's all done.
(So get on a plane soon.)
Then, later this year perhaps, it's on to PHASE TWO...re-landscaping the front yard and sprucing up the front patio (did you know there's an extinct water feature there? Dave wants to revive it!)..
I'll sign off now, it's getting late...so I won't get into Dave's cool idea for extending the guest-house patio around and in front of the carriage doors (doors he might change). He wants to make it flat (remember, everything goes downhill on my grounds). I say, "Won't there be a step? Kinduva lip then? People will trip."
Dave says, "No big deal...we'll put lights on the face of the step."
Anyway...
Mission Creep!
Hey, it smells like a perfume factory in my backyard right now, as the mock orange is in full bloom.
CALIFORNIA BONUS: No bugs/mosquitos!
I call the pergola "Tranquillity Base." (And the zen-like water feature isn't even in yet!)
More updates to come, if you want them.
-- R.A.
It's a very long story that's funny now.
But at the time...it wasn't. It got really dark...I'm directing traffic as the guys struggle mightily to get the Desert Willow out of the damn truck. It took forever, just to do that. But now there's a tree in the middle of the street, traffic is really backing up now -- horns honking -- and...the tree won't budge across the asphalt!
So Dave gets in his SUV and parks it perpendicular in the street, backs up to the tree and ties a rope onto the bumper and around the tree box.
SNAP!
The rope breaks as his SUV is burning rubber and spewing smoke out the exhaust pipe -- and the rush-hour cars are piling up and honking and I'm trying to explain to the angry drivers that it'll "only be a minute" as Dave re-ties the rope and tries again to drag the Desert Willow across the street...and out of harm's way...the old wooden tree-box crumbling...when...
...WHOOPS!
The tree slowly starts falling over and the two Hispanic guys are struggling to hold it up and I jump into the fray to help...and --
DOUBLE WHOOPS!
The tree falls down on top of me, I take a header, my left sneaker flies off, and now I'm spread-eagled on Rowena Avenue under my beautiful new tree -- with the car horns honking relentlessy -- and Dave's German wife standing on my front lawn giving useless advice in the dark, with their three-year-old in her hand, and their one-year-old hanging on her right tit, breast feeding...
...I scramble to my feet -- scrapes, bruises, and strawberries all up and down my legs and arms, dust myself off and calmly say:
"Okay, you guys deal with it, I gotta go."
Because --
-- I was late picking up Gracia at the airport!
I run to the Pathfinder and my cellphone rings --
-- it's Gracia: the plane landed early!!!
I race to LAX at 70 MPH (no traffic, thank God!) and get there in 19 minutes. A record!!
We get back (after I had Gracia in stitches telling her the "tree story")...only to see that the Desert Willow is now parked at the curb, under the lamp post near my drivewy.
Guys, it took them an hour to get it 10 feet to the curb by my driveway!
Dave smiles and says, "It's staying there overnight"...tomorrow he'll go over to Home Depot and hire a big crew of illegals on the cheap to drag the tree into the hole in the backyard.
BANG!
It's finally in ...and man, does it look beautiful...
...nary a branch broken (Phil, the tree farm owner, said the Desert Willow is "bullet-proof", and the branches are kinda rubber-bandy, thank God for that...as the tree took a beating, and fell over many times).
But now it perfectly fills the eyesore space-hole left by the removal of the huge oleander, and no one can see into my backyard anymore, from across the wall. Privacy restored! With a big, beautiful tree that sports a gorgeous caramel-brown trunk.
Okay, so that's the Desert Willow tree story, and all true.
Back to the pergola:
Like I said, the pergola goes straight out into the yard from my bedroom...ending at about the same distance as the old concrete patio. The "ledger board" of the pergola is fastened above those two wrought iron French doors -- soon to be modified by Dave, the skilled iron-worker. Flagstone patio, with crushed granite as grout...its shape an irregular jigsaw puzzle that fits the eye nicely..with a stepping-stone path (more "buckskin" flagstones) leading from the driveway across to the patio/pergola.
Dave demo'd the old, dumb and ugly, brick flower bed outside and beneath my office window...and built a new, smaller, curved flower bed (concrete, with wood facing) so he could "purchase" more lawn space (grass!) back by the gas and water meter box. The camellia tree next to the big evergreen (bonsai'd, remember?) was uprooted and removed so Dave could do this. The camellia now sits in a giant box, waiting for a new home (still haven't figure that one out).
Today...Gracia, Dave, Dave's German wife Nicole, the two worker-bee Hispanics (Jose and Alphonso, whom I call "Joe and Al"), and moi, began to re-do the whole garden. (Scores of potted plants and flowers are strewn across my backyard lawn). Still not done. But Nicole picked out all the plants and flowers (a truckload of stuff! -- $$$$$$), and drew a keyed map of where everything should go, along with a DVD with numbered pictures of each plant and flower...I think I told you this.
So anyway, today was all about digging, plant removal, soil amending, planting and transplanting, etc...with Dave straw-bossing the Hispanics as they laid out the irrigation pipes.
We're probably half-done with the planting.
Still, even at this mid-point, the whole backyard has been magically transformed...and that Desert Willow makes it all work.
Now, listen to this...
...I tossed a spitball idea out to Dave about a possible "mini-patio" near the north end of the fence...so guests could lay on a chaise lounge in that area during the westerly afternoon sun. In mere minutes Super-Dave had a plan (change order! mission creep!!):
More flagstones, but this time with grass between the slabs...the Japanese Maple on your left as you sit there...and to the left of the Maple...a water feature for soothing effect.
Holy Moly!
My idea for this little "oasis" was that guests could then "follow the sun"...in the morning outside the guest house, to the "mini-patio" near the north end of the fence around mid-day, and then over to the pergola in the late afternoon.
I'm hemorrhaging money. No surprise there.
But I think, when it's all done, that it'll really be something and very well worth it.
Gracia and Nicole worked their butts off today (they get along famously)...I helped at times, but was basically the "gofer":
"Randy," say Gracia and Nicole, "we need more planting compost. Could you run back over to Armstrong Garden Center?"
"Yeah sure, you betcha."
"Buy five more bags."
"Five bags. Got it. Anything else?"
"No."
"You sure? I don't want to have to go back."
"Go! Five bags of compost!"
"Okay, okay, I'm going!"
So off I go and when I get back...of course they need more bags, and off I go again for more soil amendment.
Then, at the end of the day, Dave takes a look at what Nicole and Gracia have done and says:
"We'll need at least six more bags of compost."
(Guess where I'm going tomorrow!)
Sheesh. Twas ever thus.
Anywho, as the sun's going down today (everyone got tanned, or burned, in Gracia's case), Nicole goes into my kitchen and starts cooking dinner for all of us.
She leans the kitchen door and calls out to me: "Randy, where's your olive oil?!"
"Uh, I don't have any."
"Oh."
And yep, you guessed it...off I go to Gelson's to get olive oil.
Nicole had brought shrimp, rice, tomatoes, etc...and made some fantastic dish without a name. So we sat in my dining room, and ate gourmet food and sipped a fine Chardonnay (my treat), while the two little toddlers are running around and wreaking havoc on my house...but their lovely kids, and who cares?
Dinner eaten, Dave and I go outside, him with the two toddlers in tow, and we stand, smile and admire the work in progress...and I give him yet another check...
...meanwhile, the two ladies are still sitting inside at the dining table, nattering away about how it is to raise kids, what Randy should do with the kitchen re-model, and God knows what else.
Then the Hamres finally leave, to return in the morning for another round of planting and transplanting...and completion of the irrigation system. Then Dave has to do the finishing work on the pergola: metal detailing, lighting, a fan (huh?!), and again, God knows what else...then he'll begin work on the mini-patio...and build a new flower bed underneath the carport (something with railroad ties, who knows?, but I fully trust him).
...Gracia has firm opinions on "water features" and will probably make that choice.
So far no transplanted plant has died...we'll wait and see on that, but Dave and Nicole seem to know what they're doing in this regard. (Her father was a landscaper in Essen, Germany.)
I guess this is what they call "redistribution of wealth"...money siphoned from the Anderson family (me) to the Hamre family.
But heck, life is short and I'm having a ball...because it's such a creative, artistic endeavor...and I know my guests are gonna get a big kick out of it when it's all done.
(So get on a plane soon.)
Then, later this year perhaps, it's on to PHASE TWO...re-landscaping the front yard and sprucing up the front patio (did you know there's an extinct water feature there? Dave wants to revive it!)..
I'll sign off now, it's getting late...so I won't get into Dave's cool idea for extending the guest-house patio around and in front of the carriage doors (doors he might change). He wants to make it flat (remember, everything goes downhill on my grounds). I say, "Won't there be a step? Kinduva lip then? People will trip."
Dave says, "No big deal...we'll put lights on the face of the step."
Anyway...
Mission Creep!
CALIFORNIA BONUS: No bugs/mosquitos!
I call the pergola "Tranquillity Base." (And the zen-like water feature isn't even in yet!)
More updates to come, if you want them.
-- R.A.
