A Backyard Tour

It was sunny today (I really had to squint, It’s been dark since last November and I’m not used to all this light!) so I went outside to take some pictures of our house and yard.

The Big Guy ordered me out of the front yard. He’s in the middle of repairing damage on the side of our house caused by rainwater getting in around some poorly installed flashing over one of the new windows that we had installed two years ago. He doesn’t like me taking pictures of him while he’s working on something.

So I went to our lovely backyard. Neither one of us do much work that could remotely be called landscaping. Or gardening. Plus we have two largish dogs. And then there’s the ongoing conflict between The Big Guy and I about the pruning and eradication of trees and bushes which, in their natural untamed state, might somehow interfere with either radio waves or the cleanliness of concrete. We are somewhat polarized on this issue. I’m completely against it, eradication that is, and he’s all for it.

As a result, our back yard is a hodge-podge of unkempt and badly pruned trees, misshapen bushes, large areas of bare dirt, grass that has evolved over the years to resist the ravages of dog pee, a patch of garden (ha ha!) surrounded by string to remind the dogs they’re not supposed to go in there, a pile of broken up concrete, a Really Big Radio Antenna Tower (“RBRAT”), various runs of pipe through which power lines and coaxial cables go to the assorted antennas, and well you get the idea...

It’s not all bad. Birds seem to like our backyard!

Here’s a... umm, what should I call this? A roof on 4-by-4s? Well, under this roof we have a neat stack of brand new (and wet) boards that will eventually replace the rotted boards on the water damaged portion of the house, which I can’t take a picture of because The Big Guy ordered me off. You can also see some very pretty blue lawn furniture stacked there. That was my big painting project last year. If you look at the edge of the roof you can see a bright green line. That’s the sun shining through a thick layer of moss (we live in what was once Temperate Rain Forest, there’s moss everywhere!) If you look at the back of the roof over the lawn furniture you can see the lower portion of one of The Big Guy’s radio antennas.

This is Andy. I have lots of good pictures of Andy. It’s so easy to get him to pose. You just put his tennis ball somewhere and he will sit or stand close to it and look at you with this photogenic expression on his face just waiting for you to pick up and throw the ball. I took this picture while I was crouched down with the ball on the ground beside my right foot.

In this second picture he’s starting to realize that I’m not going to throw the ball, I’m just going to keep snapping pictures. He’s a little frustrated and is getting ready to bark.

Here’s the view towards the back (north-west) corner of the backyard. Tyler is inspecting the evolved grass beside the garden (ha ha!) which is surrounded by string to remind him to stay out. You can also see the base of the RBRAT. At the very back is the dog condominium which Tyler and Andy never use since they live inside the house with us.

You know, the grass looks a lot better in my pictures than it does in real life. And I didn’t even tinker with them with my photo editing software, except for some cropping, and maybe I tweaked the gamma on a couple of them a little bit. It looks like the grass in Hobbiton, home of the hobbits in Peter Jackson's Lord Of The Rings, The Fellowship of The Ring – much too green to be real.

This view is looking eastward towards the house. You can see the bottom of the RBRAT in the foreground. About half way towards the house there is an orange tub. This tub is protecting the base of another radio antenna from the ravages of dog pee.

Here’s a shot of Andy admiring the pile of broken up concrete in our back yard. Actually, I put his ball on top of the pile so that he would sit still beside it. In between the concrete and the RBRAT you can see some sort of odd white pipe elbow sticking out of a round upside down pail that is partially buried in the ground. This is where some of the assorted power and coaxial cables emerge on their way from The Big Guy’s office in the house to the RBRAT. If you look at the roof of the tool shed (the really dark building) you can see the bottom of yet another radio tower through the badly pruned tree branches.

This is Tyler. He is very difficult to take pictures of because as soon as you point a camera at him he runs over to get his ears scratched. I have taken lots of blurry snapshots of the top of his head. He always seems to look sad in photos. I don’t know why, he’s really a very happy dog. In this photo I managed to get him to look up from his inspection of the evolved grass and took the picture before he ran over. He’s going very gray because he’s eleven years old.

That’s it for the tour of the backyard. Maybe tomorrow, if I’m real sneaky, I can get some shots of the front yard and of the radio antennas on the roof of the house.