Wildlife, The New Focus

The new house has a spectacular view of pecan trees and nearby pond. Foxes, deer, hawks and all manner of birds. I'll post more shortly, but both of these were taken from the living room window. The first is a nesting Yellowbelly Slider in the front yard taken from the second story. The second is a red-bellied woodpecker in the pecan tree above the turtle nest.

Landscaping and The Power Of Water

Ok, so we finally got the driveway done and moved in. The final touch was some landscaping. And when I use the word "some" it's intentional. There were already over a dozen mature pecan trees around and near the road, there was the pond and then there were things like a crab apple, a grape vine and some miscellaneous dogwoods and oaks about the lot. But, to spruce things up, I decided to go for some evergreens around the base of the house, lots of grass to cover up the construction damage to the old grass and some blue juniper near the driveway entrance to give the driveway something.
Again, nothing major as you can see from the picts, ahh, but mother nature can be a cruel one. The plants were put in place as was the grass. The landscaper said, "water the grass" and so I tried (that's a LOT of grass to water.) They apparently did not water the juniper by the road as it died within 5 days. (Yes, we're having fun with the landscaper on that one.) We saved all the plants around the house, not sure yet what will happen with the grass.

Updated Photos And Finally Completed!

Lots of folks were wondering where we stood on this project as I've been kind of backdating stuff for the blog to get the full project documented or at least kind of documented. So, for your perusal are some more recent shots of the interior.

The first shot is looking down from the upstairs office area towards the kitchen. The wood really shows up from upstairs. The second shot is of the living room with the fireplace just prior to furniture being placed. Again, the wood shows up quite well. The third picture is kind of blurry (note to self to update) and looks up toward the office area. The fourth is of the master bedroom and shows the maple, cedar, poplar, pine parquet floor. The fifth is of the office. Lots more to add of the first floor and other areas, but this really shows the a lot of the wood.