Our new house....

[Claymonkey]

Just had a thought;

Imagine next year at Halloween - set up a scary maze in the back with smoke generators, sound effects, eerie lighting and a few well placed kids and grandkids in ghost and monster garb.

Bet we'd end up with every kid for a mile....

Quite a few grown up kids too I'd imagine

[ND66]

Congrats!

.

[Dr Mordrid]

Thanks Elie

Though, even if building pergola, the sitting arrangement of gazebo from the pic looks mighty nice... (at least for me...)

(pergola alley leading to gazebo placed in the "park", while it technically counts as a compromise, is a bit too much, right? ;P )

Dunno if I feel like building a 150 foot long pergola

Might just put bench seating like the gazebo's in the pergola though. Add a nice table and you have something. Hmm....wonder what I can get teak for this time of year...maybe $200 for a 4x8 sheet of 3/4" marine grade teak plywood. Maybe cedar or cypress.

[jms]

The house looks great! But insanely cheap compared to what we have to pay for houses here. A house like that would easily set you back 600.000$ - 900.000$ here depending on location.

[Brian Ellis]

You haven't shown a photo of your 0.5 car! Will you be having an untouched area for wildlife?

The drought we had this year has caused us to rethink our layout. We were unable to maintain the lawns which now look like Shredded Wheat, burnt brown. On the attached view (bad quality because NASA hasn't yet given us good quality, besides which it is 5 years out of date!), our official boundary is in red. The yellow area is a 2 m deep dry gulley outside the fence and is wild except for two compost containers at the top outside the gate. It very occasionally runs wet in a violent storm. The green area (~100 m²) next to it was lawn but we have ploughed it up and planted various fairly drought-resistant bushes requiring 1/20th the irrigation of that area of grass. We have chosen mostly flowering varieties that bear fruit attractive to birds (viburnum, lantana, solanum etc.). We planted them this Spring and they are already growing well, merging into the hibiscus hedge (the dark line at the bottom of the area). This shrubbery area will not be maintained and the leaf litter from the bushes will mulch down the weeds after a year or two. The blue area (~180 m²) to the left will be regrown as the only lawn, when the drought is over. At the time of the photo, we had three deciduous fruit trees in each of the front lawns (green areas at top), but I reduced these to 1 each side last year (1 apricot on the left and 1 peach on the right). Again, this is now Shredded Wheat and I've decided not to replant the lawn but to make them no-maintenance wild shrubbery the same as at the bottom. I plan to howk the lawn irrigation system, as first step, this month and have it planted by next month. The big area to the right of the blue lawn is the citrus orchard (9 trees) and veggie garden.

The bottom shrubbery is already attracting more bird species than before, especially Cyprus Wheatears and Masked Shrikes who are after the insects and various finches after the berries, plus hedgehogs after the inevitable snails. I hope it will form a micro-ecosystem, along with the front ones. This is why I'm asking whether you plan a wild area.

[cjolley]

Doc, I found an appropriately sized yard ornament for you.

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=180295129086

Shipping might be a problem but maybe FT could use it while that gets worked out.

[Fat Tone]

Great idea. I could use it to fire at or even fire the b*stards stealing my card details

[Nowhere]

Ahhh...glorious tradition of british stealth catapult

[ND66]

I think you overpaid a little...

Bid of $1.75 on eBay gets abandoned Saginaw home



With a winning bid of just $1.75, a Chicago woman has won an auction for an abandoned home in Saginaw. Joanne Smith, 30, recently was the top bidder for the home during an auction on eBay, The Saginaw News reported. Her bid was one of eight for the home.

"I am going to try and sell it," she told the newspaper. "I don't have any plans to move to Saginaw."

Smith said she hasn't seen the property or visited Saginaw, which has been hard-hit by economic troubles in recent years.

There's a notice on the door of the home saying a foreclosure hearing is pending, the newspaper said. She must pay about $850 in back taxes and yard cleanup costs.

The Saginaw News said it could not reach the seller, Southern Investments LLC, for comment.