Archaeology

In the backyard we're going to knock these out and put in an elevated open deck area (obviously not period but popular in Florida) with pergola. The steps are too narrow, a little scary when you're carrying stuff.
















Shed location. The lawnmower is now in the dining room. J is measuring the backyard in human scale, like when you see a quarter on an object in a photo. Where he is standing there is a garage foundation that's well entrenched, cinderblock 3 feet deep but no floor. There are driveway ribbons in this photo, buried under 5" of St. Augustine grass and dirt. We've removed most of the scrub trees here in time for hurricane season but the big dark one still leans over our neighbor's house. One mystery is all the plastic and metal tent stakes we've found in the back/side yard.












The POs seem to have had no regard for tree placement and maintenance. Every tree on the lot is growing, whether planted or volunteer, in a strategic location to the power, phone or cable lines, or into the foundation. Two months ago the city came and did its chop job on the ones under power and phone lines, cutting all heck out of one tree. It now looks like a stick with a saucer on top, they left so little of the limbs. Not the tree's fault of course but of the PO who allowed it to start growing there. I'm not sure if the historical ignorance of these trees is what led to the wall crack in the house fixed in the 1970s. The house is actually brick but due to 1. the sand/clay soil or 2. naughty trees a large crack developed in the living room exterior and the house started to separate. The solution was to wrap the entire house in steel mesh, tack it down to the brick, and cover it in cement-type stucco (tho it's not waterproof stucco and the mesh sometimes rusts through). This fix seems to be fine though there is a mess of bricks in the crawl space as one section of the wall was removed. Above the porch the stucco/mesh is the only thing separating the attic from the wide world.
In any case, it's tough to dig anywhere in our yard from the dense network of roots. Glorious trees:















Next on our list:
Paint house
Expand vegetable garden, build elevated beds
Path through yard (front thru gate to back?)
Build shed
Build deck
landscaping of some sort
re-work the kitchen. House was a rental, and poorly maintained. No one realized that the kitchensink/dishwasher greywater was going through the wall and onto the joists instead of out through a pipe. One day I was watering the tomatoes outside the kitchen wall while J was washing dishes and I heard trickling and dripping and called the home warranty people. The rot hole in the joist/wall is big enough to stick my head and a family of rats and a legion of cockroaches through. And also we have cramped cabinetry in the kitchen.