Snow Guards and visitors

Here's just a little update to show the snow guards we've added to the roof - the shot below shows that garage roof, but we installed the same system on the house roof as well. You can imagine what problems that snow falling from the house roof could do to someone trying to come to the front door, so we decided to get this taken care of before fall. These guards will hold the snow back and let it melt slowly and come off the roof in small pieces - rather than in one huge avalanche! Chris Stearns at Alpine Snow Guards http://www.alpinesnowguards.com/ was so helpful. We really like the fact that the guards installed fairly easily and they use the same clamping system that was used to install our PV solar panels. Thanks Chris - they look great!
The next three pictures show you some of our recent visitors. We've had a lot of deer coming through in the evenings lately. We have a momma and two fawns that have walked through a couple of times. The littlest one stopped to chomp on my new red chokeberry shrub, so I had to shoo them along! Here's one roaming solo . . .
One of the reasons we wanted to plant a raingarden was to assist with wildlife habitat - especially birds and butterflies. Below is what I've really been hoping to see. I'm not an expert on insects, but the plant in the picture is Butterfly Milkweed - also known as red or swamp milkweed. These plants are critical to the Monarch butterfly. I don't really know if this one in the picture is a Monarch, but nevertheless, the butterflies are loving this plant!

Yes, fence me in!

Here's the updates on the fence. This is the general fence we have along the property line. Right now you can see the baseball fields quite clearly, but after a year or two, we'll have some landscaping to soften and screen the view - AND give us some privacy in the back yard. This fence just gives us a backdrop for the landscaping and keeps the baseball kids out of the yard. The first picture below is from the ball fields looking back onto our property. The second one is a view from the back porch, and the last one is another close up of the baseball field side of the fence. It's just landscape timbers and 5/4" PT decking painted barn red, and 2"x4" welded wire fencing for the infill.

Rain Garden

Here's the semi-completed raingarden. We will be adding a few more plants and it will obviously look much more established in a year or so, but you get the idea. We'll also be switching out the small stones for much larger ones around the perimeter to highlight and outline the shape of the actual rain garden. The back part outside the stones is not really part of the garden, but receives mulch anyway until the Elderberry shrub hedge grows up and fills in.

I guess this is what they mean by "the cheap seats"

As you can see we've been busy taking away in order to add to the backyard. All of the dirt you see here was once non-native invasive shrubs (we seriously think some of them were man-eating). These things were wicked, thorny, vines and shrubs and we had the excavator pull them out with a back-hoe so that we could put in some more ecologically sound species along the back property line. As much as our friends think we should just put in a set of bleachers and charge admission for the baseball games, we decided against it and will instead put up a privacy fence (think Fenway Park's big green wall) and some native shrubs to give us a softer and more natural look along the property line - without fear that if the kids walk too close to the landscaping that they might get pulled in and swallowed by the vines a la the Robin Williams movie Jumangi.

You can see the wetland pond in the picture if you look closely. There is a white pvc pipe that flows into the pond. We'll be planting wetland trees, shrubs and plants in this area to try and bring in wildlife such as birds, butterflies, dragonflies, frogs, toads, and turtles. We already have some frogs and turtles, along with deer and rabbits!

View from the ball fields . . .

Landscaping - sort of . . .

Here is where the wetland pond will go. It's basically a detention basin for the water that comes off of our driveway and our neighbor's property. We piped it underground to this location

The clearing that we did to the left of the shed added about 4000 sf of area (40' x 100') to our back yard. This area will be used for a wetland and part of the general back yard. The area to the right of the shed that we cleared is about 50'x40' and much of that will eventually become a vegetable and fruit garden.

Here you go . . .

An update on the sunshades, as promised. You can see below a shot of the sunshades in progress. The single windows on the first floor all the way to the right and left are finished -you can see the shadows being created around the windows by the sunshades. On the long set of windows in the center of the house, you can see that the three to the right are complete and in shadow, while the two to the left are not complete and have no shadows.

Here's a close up of one completed . . .