Pepper Spray for the Yard, Asiatic Lilies, and Our Mini Fence is Complete (Almost)

Perhaps I am getting a tad bit obsessive about the whole thing. In my spare moments, I find myself Googling search terms like "homemade dog deterrent" or "organic doggie no." I stare out the window, ready to catch neighbors in the act of letting their dogs use our flowerbed as a toilet. At three o'clock this morning you would have found me in the yard, sprinkling a mixture of black pepper, red pepper flakes, and cayenne pepper along perimeter, because I read on some gardening forum that it was guaranteed to keep dogs out. It made my eyes water, I'm sure it would tickle Fido's nose, too.

It's all meant to act as backup for the mini wrought iron fence I finished putting up. Please note that I took all pictures at a slight angle so you can't see that the fence is a bit crooked. I'll be straightening that out shortly. Here it is from the sidewalk (note the absolutely useless No Dogs sign):

And from within the yard:

I know, I know, I really need to cut the grass. Somebody last year, I won't say who, thought a push mower was the way to go. It's actually a pain to use, and won't even cut through the wheat grass or crab grass. So I've upgraded to an electric mower. I just need to get it assembled. And we haven't had any real rain in weeks, so everything is crunchy. So it's not looking its best right now.

A close up from within:

The purple shrubs are Diablo Ninebarks. They've more than doubled in size since I planted them last fall, and will get up to eight or nine feet.

Looking out toward the corner, at the river birth we planted last summer. To the left is a Centerglow Ninebark I planted a month or so ago.

In the distance, you can see the tacky black plastic I'm using on the parkway corner to kill weeds and grass. Not sure what I'm planting out there yet, maybe some more of these:

Oopsy, I forgot to rotate that photo. How about this:

The Asiatic Lilies are pretty much maintenance free, and we've had blooms going on for over a month now. It the dogs get to them, though, they're goners.

So yeah, I admit it. I'm obsessed with keeping roaming critters from destroying our investment. And even though I used the pepper combo early this morning, for good measure I just a few moments ago sprinkled the perimeter with a commerical doggie no product.

I'll let y'all know how it goes. The problem isn't the dogs, it's the people attached to the other end of the leash.

We Inherited a Grapevine, Now We Need a Plan

We inherited a grapevine when we bought The Box House.

It's growing on a length of chain link fence that we plan to remove in order to build a wooden fence and create a more private back yard. Right now, every person that walks by can peek over the fence and see what we're up to--and there's a great deal of pedestrian traffic on a corner lot. I like our neighbors, but every once in a while I'd like to be able to sit in the yard with a book and a glass of iced tea and not have to make small talk with passersby.

I almost hacked the grapevine back this past spring, when we actually thought we'd get our new fence built this year. But we decided not to do any radical alterations to the yard until we've lived here for a year, and experienced the house and yard through each of the seasons. (This philosophy didn't cover the yew bushes; those just had to go.)

So I've been watching the grapes all summer long as they have slowly ripened. I've never tried growing fruit before, and I realize that I'm horribly impatient. I've plucked a grape or two every week to sample them, and they've been tart and bitter and have left me with a dry mouth.

But in the last few days, they've begun to swell rapidly and take on a purplish hue. I tasted one, and it was sweet and juicy and oh-so-summery delicious.

It also had seeds, which I discretely spit to the side.

So it looks like we'll have quite a bit of grapes to harvest this week. I don't have a clue about what I'm doing, so need some tips on harvesting and a few good recipes. And now, after having watched--if not nurtured--this vine all summer, I need to figure out how to get it off the chain link fence and onto an arbor of some sort.

Gardening and Autobridge

Today we went to the Garden Fair. I had been looking forward to it for weeks. It's hosted by the local Garden Council, and numerous garden clubs from around town get together to sell both annuals and perennials, with proceeds going to the clubs and the Garden Council. And would you believe we didn't buy a single thing? The fair was smaller than I expected, and many of the plants looked just...okay. There were hostas selling for $12. After dividing and transplanting literally scores of them the last two weeks to other parts of the yard, I couldn't bring myself to spend that kind of cash for just one. But that's me, I'm cheap. What can I say?

Still, it was a nice day to get out. The fair was along Central Street, which is host to an assortment of cute little shops and boutiques. Not the kind of place I'd shop all the time, but definitely nice to visit or take visitors to dine and shop. We also went to several yard sales, decided not to buy a 120-year-old organ although its seashell motif matched my headboard, but did come back with a couple of Autobridge playing boards.

According to Board Game Geek, this is how it's played:

Autobridge is a bridge teaching and solitaire playing device and series of play sheets dating back to at least 1938.... While the specific materials and details of design have varied over the years, the fundamental design has remained. It is a board which may be opened to insert a sheet with cards indices and suits printed on it. The covering board is closed and the hand is played by opening windows. The player decides on their own play and reveals the next window to see what the expert recommends. An accompanying booklet explains the expert's recommendation. The system can be used to teach the completely naive novice to highly advanced players. Many supplementary sheets were produced over the decades. Mainly a teaching aide, there is no scoring, per se... Most versions found in online auctions appear to date from the 1950s.

Both the ones we picked up were copyright 1938; one has plated slides, the other plain silver. The silver one came with this notice:

This is one of the last of the famous Autobridge Textolite model playing boards. There will be no more available during the war. We regret that we had to give you unplated slides. Those in your board were made before the war and government restrictions now prohibit plating for non-essential purposes. If friends who see this set wish to buy one, please advise them that they may still be able to obtain an occasional one in some of the largest department stores. If they are unsuccessful, they can purchase directly from us a set containing our attracting Prestwood model playing board, made of masonite base and leather-grained fibre top, at $4.00.

I love finding war notices like this; many of my children's books from the forties talk about how they are printed on cheaper paper as part of the war effort. These little mementos are a unique sort of connection to what day-to-day sacrifices must have been like for my grandparents, who were in their late teens and early twenties during WWII.

I never learned how to play bridge, and even with this self-teaching tool, I don't see myself investing the effort. But I thought these Autobridge sets were kind of neat, and I plan to actually hang them on the wall in the porch stairwell. (I'm going for the Crackerbarrel Restaurant look with junk like this.) The two sets, with several books, manuals, and dozens and dozens of "practice hand" inserts, set us back $6.00.

My dad had learned to play bridge when he was still very young. He was raised by his mother and grandmother, and they taught him the rules so that they could use him as a fourth if they needed one. I don't know if his siblings play as well; I'll have to ask them sometime. But I like the image of my dad as a child, curly blond hair and bright blue eyes peering over the edge of a card table, his legs swinging because they are too short to reach the floor. He'd no doubt get a kick out of these boards.

While we were cruising the streets looking for a good bargain, we stopped to look at other peoples' gardens. Here are a few ideas I particularly liked:

A trellis made of twigs.

A wooden fence. We have been vacillating between an iron fence, or creating something like this ourselves, to fence off a portion of our yard to create a bigger "back yard." The wooden lattice looks more authentic to the bungalow/twenties era, and might shield us a bit better. Having a corner lot, where your yard is essentially exposed to every neighbor who walks by, can be a bit like living in a fishbowl.

What looks like terracotta (or possibly resin) architectural pieces on the facade of a two flat. Now something like this--but with a more deco flair--might spice up The Box House.

Looking at other peoples' houses and playing outside all afternoon didn't leave much time to work on The Box House today. Oh well, it's nice to take a day off occasionally.