Well, Well, Wellington

Look at Wellington! Is he so cute? YES! He doesn't really look that different from this angle, but look:



Here's his little front porch. His coleus has grown so much! And there's the Japanese Maple, one of the only original plants still in the front yard.

Here are some of the plants we put in. In the back is one of the Lady Banks roses. It's going to grow up over the fence and be full of blossoms! Then there's coreopsis, penstemeon, fox glove, campanula, euonymous and a teeny pine tree. All of the spelling is right out of my head and I'm too lazy to see if it's right. But that's okay, because Wellington is so easy going, he doesn't even care!

This area of Wellington is very interesting. It's the neighbor's garage which is built on the lot line. The paint is pealing and some might consider it an eye sore. I think it's quaint. Admittedly it could use a little "blockage", so we started growing vines up there. The husband put bird houses on top of the vine stakes. I think it's cute! And the good part is it can only get cuter.

Wellington is very proud of this little sunflower he grew with only a little help from me.

And here's one of his morning glories. It was grown from a seed and it blossomed!

Here's a view from up top. That's the blossom on the right. That vine is going to grow up that railing. There's another one on the other railing, but it's not blooming yet.

This little guy is a creeping fig which will eventually obscure the quaintness of that garage wall.

Here's what the sitting area is looking like. We'll probably put in a fire pit for the colder months and a water feature for the warm months.

Even the piglets got spruced up!

That's it for now. Next time I'll update more of Wellington's frontal features.

New Trees!

Here is a little glimpse of what's happening at Wellington. On Saturday, September 4, 2010, the guys planted two new trees. The left one is a Forest Pansy Redbud. The right one is a Southern Live Oak. Is Wellington positively smiling? YES!

Since this photo was taken, Wellington has acquired sixteen new shrubs and two other trees. 11 dwarf pittosporum right across the front in line with the trees, three dwarf bottlebrush that are the cutest things, and two Fringe Flowers on the far right. The other two trees are dwarf crepe myrtle trees right in the front by the road.

He's happy!

MOVE IN!

This is Wellington. He's finally ours. It was a long gruelling process, but worth it in the end because LOOK!

This is what Benicia looks like when you're on the pier.












Here's the view from my bedroom.











Pantry.

Nook in bedroom,

The daughter's sink in the downstairs bedroom/bath.

And her doorway.

Kitchen.

and

here

is

the.

.

Front door.

Master bath with rain shower and soaking tub.

View to balcony from master.

Baking cupboard

.

and

here

is

the

Backyard and alley.

I just about love that Wellington.

(You may notice what appears to be superfluous verbiage in this post. It is added as a means to keep the captions with the correct photo because Blogger often does not recognize hard carriage returns and I'm tired of it! But that kind of griping doesn't belong in the blog.) (So please ignore.) (Unless you were wondering about the superfluous verbiage.)

Benicia Wildlife

I was just thinking - I love wildlife. I wonder what kind of wildlife I'm likely to encounter once I move to Benicia. So I did a little research and discovered that there's a wildlife refuge in Benicia called Benicia State Recreation Area. There are so many birds and mammals there I absolutely can't wait to move into Wellington and ride my bike over to the Benicia State Recreation Area where, apparently, I'm likely to discover such wildlife as:




Only kidding. This is a bandicoot. Isn't he cute? He's a marsupial omnivore (of course he is) that you're only likely to encounter in New Guinea or Australia. I'm not holding my breath. But look at this one:



He's called a salt water harvest mouse. I wonder what he's harvesting.
.

And these two guys are very closely related on account of their tendency for gnawing on wood: the California golden beaver and the muskrat. It's interesting to note that in the article on Wikipedia regarding the Benicia State Recreation area, they claim the California golden beaver migrated from the California Delta to the Benicia State Recreation Area in 2007. I wonder why and I wonder how they know.










As if that wasn't cute enough, I'm gettin me an otter! There are river otters in this park and that's my favorite otter. I saw a dead one once.

And to keep the food chain balanced, they've thrown in a coyote.












As far as birds go, I'm likely to see any of the following:












These three are all "rails" and I think that means they're noisy, which is fine with me. The first one is a Virginia rail (which I thought was a dance and really should have nothing to do with California wildlife). The second one is the black rail (what were they THINKING?). And the third one is the California (yay!) clapper rail.


This beautiful little guy is called a saltmarsh common yellowthroat. Then there's the Suisun song sparrow which is not only local, he's alliterative and that makes him doubly special.

Alright. That sounds fine for now. Let's get me a house.

Landscape Diversion 1: Golden Catalpa

Our first Landscape Diversion is the Golden catalpa, which is a SPECIMEN TREE requiring sunny exposure and well drained soil. But the great part is that it will withstand poor soil and pollution. One source said it blooms from mid to late May and the flowers smell bad, but I like the foilage. Someone's gardening journal said that the flowers smell really pretty and look like orchids.

You have to prune it to keep it from getting really huge. Here's what the flowers look like:

Here's how it looks when you keep it bush-like.



And two examples of what it looks like as a tree. One with flowers, one without.



I like it!

Daily Diversion 2: Pots and Picket

Here are some more ideas I got. First of all, the walls along side the steps are fairly narrow and

are probably not able to hold flower pots, but here's an idea. Why not put some squarish pots in front of those little walls?

It makes them look cuter. And you can put window boxes right on top of the porch walls, too.

And here is an example of a picket fence I like. Not only are the pickets pretty good, but the little retaining wall is a nice concept. I like the idea of building up the front yard just a bit, adding a retaining wall, fronting it with some rock like this, and putting the fence on top of that.

Also, I'd like to get rid of the old mailbox and put a nice one up by the front door. Something like this. But with 335 on there.

The Road to Wellington

The road to Wellington has been a long and windy one, paved with MLS printouts and the sweat of my brow. Sometimes mixed metaphors come in handy. I'm not sure this was one of them, but there it is.


The first house we ever wrote an offer on was (don't say it out loud) Lomita. Lomita was one in a million and unfortunately for us, someone else thought so first. So in the spirit of Early Bird Gets the Worm, First Come, First Served, You Snooze, You Lose - we lost. It's a sore point with us, so we won't be mentioning it again.


Next came Congressional. (Don't say that one either.) Come to think of it, all the above adages would fit with this one as well. Although we thought we were quick on the draw, someone else was a wee bit quicker and a wee bit more flush, if you know what I mean.

After Congressional was Rockville. While some people wouldn't agree

with me that this was a house worth loving, it was. If you don't take into account its mold issues. But in my defense, as soon as the mold issues were disclosed, we cancelled the escrow which never really was. Poor little house. Nice lot, though. Right on the golf course. And five palm trees. You can't beat five palm trees.

There were lots of other "almosts" in there, but I don't have room for all of that. Let's just say this: I counted a while back and the husband had been to see 30 homes since we started looking in August or September, and I've been to about three times that many. So you can't say we haven't done our homework. I think it's time for us to snag a house and jump inside. And Wellington is just the house to snag.