Stephanie pointed this out to me last weekend. We had allowed our neighbor’s bamboo to creep into a patch of dirt next to our patio, because it acts as a really nice screen and maybe even more importantly, takes no maintenance.  But while we’ve always known it’d eventually start to spread further, we were shocked when we saw this monster.  Keep in mind that it’s a good 2′ back from the rest of the stand - it’s freakin’ huge!  I think it’s the bamboos’ way of telling us to get out of the way, because it’s taking over!

Stephanie finished putting in many new plants, so our barren wasteland is starting to look like an oasis.  After a winter of Portland rains, this should be looking pretty lush by spring.

These pictures make the hauling up of 4 yards of compost look easy!

The planter bed, with the new crape myrtle and jasmine plants.  You can see our next door neighbor’s planter bed, too.

We ran electricity out to the patio and installed our old dining room chandelier. Low wattage flicker bulbs add to the ambience, as do our new Craigslist bargain table and chairs (only $100 for the set - woo hoo!)

Julio used a conduit bender (for the wiring) for the first time, and the thought it was a lot of fun. Earlier in the year his company remodeled his office, and he was able to salvage tons of old electrical conduit and boxes. That came in handy for all the practice he needed to get it right.

Our friend Scott came over with his truck and yanked the nasty junipers out of our planter bed.  Our neighbors all seemed to be really happy about this…

 The “treehouse” effect we get in the summertime.

 Our bare patch from last summer got completely overgrown with grass and weeds.

You can see the giant apartment building behind our house.  The patio cover serves a secondary purpose of giving us privacy from the building.

The new sod definitely looks better than what we started with.  It was a full day ordeal lugging the sod up the steps and around into the sideyard, but it came out pretty good in the end.

Ready for sod!