Long time no blog (empty backyard)

Owing to the last throes of the legal proceedings which have allowed us to keep the castle in the first place—but which threw one last financial monkey wrench into the works—we've only taken one step in the last several weeks. (Actually this happened over a month ago now. Whew! We need to get back to work on this place.) We finished getting everything torn out of the yard...professionally. No more of this inefficient hacking away with the wrong tools...That was fun and a fine way to start, but now witness the blank slate, wiped clean:

viewed from the NW corner of the lot

...from NE corner...

...from atop the gardeners' ladder, looking NW...

OK, so it's not exactly beautiful...but it's ready for action. What will happen out here?

Not shown: The considerable chunk of the big tree overhanging the roof which the gardeners trimmed back, thankfully. I'm not sure how much less debris we can actually expect to accumulate up there, given how huge she remains...but it's the thought that counts, right?

Name that tree, cont'd

Acacia melanoxylon! Also known as the Australian Blackwood.

As I suspected, it spreads underground through its root system, in addition to dropping those little seed pods all over the place. They are considered invasive around here, but it turns out their wood is also useful for tons of stuff, including guitar-making. Hmm...

Painting update, mostly ceilings

It seems absurd, but it's true: Tomorrow is my first day of the 2010-2011 school year. So things are going to slow down for me considerably when it comes to the painting routines. Renie's got a few weeks of sanctuary left and she'll be holding it down with the rollers while I'm typing up syllabi...



Music: Rollin' Blues, by John Lee Hooker

By the way, the nasty kitchen ceiling vent in this video was clogged up with plenty of seed-pods from the big tree out back (who still needs a name). I thought it was a mighty cool Darwinian trick that a tree could sneak its DNA all the way into our kitchen. Through the roof, the ceiling, and everything! Talk about a will to survive.

More big tree paraphernalia

Incredible to think that such a huge mamajama could come from something this tiny:

Yet, it did. And these pretty little onyx-lookin' suckers come out of these funky curly-q's:

Still haven't identified genus & species...

Name that tree, cont'd

First stab at tree research with this site didn't help.

Whatever it is, it's quite common around here. They're all over this neighborhood:



I'm not sure why I need to know the genus and species, but somehow I do.

Name that tree

This tree dominates our whole house, above and below ground. We do not know much about it.

We'd like to know what kind of tree it is in the first place. Dad...? Are you able to help us here? Hint: in addition to copious leaves, it also drops these little brown fuzzballs all over the place. The ground is covered with them.

Also, we'd like to name it. Her.