Matt’s Birthday Gift To Me This Year

Tomorrow, June 21, is my birthday. Matt and I usually do nothing on our birthdays for obvious reasons (you know …Matt stayed at home for 13 years and all). So in general, our birthdays are rather a relaxing day at home where the person being born can choose the restaurant (s) and movie (s) for the day. Very low key our birthday.

As far as gifts, Matt and I stopped asking each other what birthday gift we wanted many years ago because rarely does anything we want turn out to be a good gift idea. Since we couldn’t go on trips or anything outside the house, all I wanted was more money in my monthly home project budget to put into any project I was working on at the time. 😀 That’s why that class has become common for many years. Boring, but it worked for me.

But this year is different. This year, I really know what I want on my birthday. I would like to consult with a landscape designer who can create a CAD drawing showing our one acre lot perfectly designed with landscaping, hardscaping, lighting installation, and more. You know what I’m talking about, don’t you? I’m talking about weird drawings like this…

You know I’ve been confusing some ideas out there lately. Became a little obsessive about some of them, like think about how to have a piece of water in the small “yard” area outside the breakfast room (five rooms) windows. The more I look at the ideas I posted the other day, the more I like the idea of ​​the sculptural fountain…

… Or the idea of ​​a sugar cane fountain, as long as I can include a platform where the birds can stand in shallow water to drink and bathe.

I’m also looking at driveway ideas. I’m so glad I posted about my consideration of aa chip seal driveway, because I know everyone has good input! And I was not disappointed. After reading about your experiences with chip seal lanes and streets that some of you have, I thought again. Especially those experiences about softening the asphalt and/or blowing in very hot weather made me think we might have a better idea for our route.

So at this point, I’m considering a gravel trail. I like the idea of ​​having a permeable passageway (which means no standing ponds of water after storms). And if I install using hard plastic grids that hold gravel in place, and use a little gravel to fill in the grids, the driveway can be wheelchair accessible. Here’s a video showing a grid label called Core being used for a trail, and you can see how a wheelchair and bicycle can easily go through gravel.

And here is a very quick video showing how it is installed.

I love the beauty of a gravel path, but I don’t think Matt can access it. But after spending a little time last week researching these different types of grid products used to make gravel passages more durable and durable (the grid keeps the gravel from moving), and found that they also made it wheelchair accessible. , seems like a nice option.

And then I was also thrown around the idea recently to join my own walking track on our one acre lot.

Gravel would be a great idea for that project as well if I could use grids to keep it in place.

So here are the things I mentioned on the blog, plus I gathered general ideas for landscaping to find things I like and things I definitely don’t like. For example, I know that on either side of our front sidewalk from the front porch to the street, I like to plant beds on either side that look like the left side of this sidewalk.

And I’ve also learned that I really like flower beds that line how to have a clear separation between the bed and the grass. In other words, something like this…

So while I have all these random ideas floating around in my head, I have no idea how to put them into a cohesive plan using plants that are good in my area, or that will grow under our large oak tree in front yard.

I need someone to help me. And after spending about two hours yesterday looking through photo galleries and reading customer reviews of all the landscape designers in the area, I’m sure I’ve found my man. I have already contacted him, and I will set up an appointment next week.

I was so excited to see what he meant !! I hope he gets my confusing ideas and can do something so good that I can spend the next two years participating in one project at a time.