New watercolor from Porto

On our recent trip to Portugal, we acquired a new watercolor for our collection of travel souvenirs that we've been building in our living room. We found a piece that captured the bright colors of Porto as seen from across the Douro River, and with a rabelo, the iconic boat traditionally used to transport barrels of port wine from up river where the grapes are grown, to Gaia, where they are aged. George had it framed as a birthday gift to Tom.

Front landscape reboot

In our thirteen years in our home, we have done a ton of work to make the backyard a beautiful space, but we've never done much with the hodgepodge of plants put in front of our house by the original builder. Now we've finally taken that on, with the help of Stephen Baldonado at IGarden Design. The hodgepodge has been ripped out and replaced with a much cleaner and less thirsty palette of plantings., including kangaroo paw for color, flax (Phormium 'yellow wave'), Salvia clevelandii, Agave attenuata, and blue fescue. A small madrone tree (Arbutus 'marina') adds an anchor of interest in the upper left corner.

We also replaced the front fence, which had gotten rotted from years of being watered by sprinklers. We ripped out the patchy lawn and replaced it with gravel, and a few potted succulents, watered by drip. See photos of the whole project before, during, and after.