Projecting Forward

Atlantis and Grand Sierra are offering a fair amount of freeplay these days - so my weeks include two or three trips to Reno weekly, depending on the offers.  I'm pleased as punch to say after some loss, I regained and have stayed mostly even the past week or so.  The play is fun - nice to get out of the house and playing on the casino's money makes for a fun day.  Fun to see friends - may not know people super 'well' but not seeing people for weeks on end has left all of us slot players grateful and glad for the gift of slot friends. 

I'm home today - next trip to Reno will be Saturday - and while I vowed to work on organizing the office, I've been doing other stuff.

For me, the huge things on the list are the things I procrastinate on terribly - and upon getting started, it really wasn't that hard - I finally (FINALLY!) projected our 2020 taxes and gleefully realized that the amount I've set aside to send the IRS at the end of this month won't be needed.  We're going to change our withholding on our IRA withdrawal for the rest of the year (and going forward) - and that increase will more than cover what we'll owe when combined with what has already been withheld.  This is a HUGE event - because those funds will now be moved back to savings and have increased our savings balance enough to pencil in a higher number for landscaping.

We've been doing our 'homework' on planning the backyard and it's super hard.  Because of the EXTREME winds (really, they make the Tracy high winds we'd get once a month or so look like a breeze), we have to consider options for ensuring whatever we use as ground cover won't blow off and away.  And because we love to garden - we love piddling around, dead-heading blossoms and weeding, pruning, etc. - it's hard to know what to do.  Most yards here are plants with decomposed granite around them - the DG is compacted down so it (mostly) stays put.  But the things about it's composition that make it 'stay put' are also things that make continued planting problematic.  We would need to pick plants we are OK with forever because trying to 'add as we go' would involve digging up the DG, replacing it (after planting) and then needing to compact the DG back down.  Otherwise, it will end up on the golf course or on our back patio when there are high winds.

And so far, 'high winds' (as I call them vs. the almost tornado or cyclone winds they resemble) are happening weekly.

I'm torn about the decisions we need to make and finalize for the landscape company - and I just keep going over and over.

We trekked to a local nursery earlier this week and made a list (and took a lot of pictures) of plants we like.  We hope to give our landscaper a 'plot map' showing what we're thinking - precise location of clusters of plants - mostly perennials with some shrubs added in.  The landscaper already spray painted 'walkways' and 'planted areas' on the ground so we have a rough idea.

We plan to have a pretty bench near the northwest corner of the yard - it's a beautiful view and we enjoy going out nightly to look at the rabbits that come out at dusk every day.  We'll need that bench secured into the ground.  We're also thinking of some kind of water feature - while I'd love to do something amazing like a 'stone wall with a sheet fountain' we'll likely buy a pre-formed 'fountain' of some kind - for a bit of water sound.  Bird baths are also being considered but so far, I haven't found any available that I like.  I'm not big on 'traditional' - so I need a modern take on how to give birds a place to drink and hang out. 

I think writing this post helped me finalize (in my head) an approach - we'll pick the plants, have them planted, get the DG to be the ground cover in those spaces and see where we're at next Spring.  Odds are the plants will fill in beautifully and we'll have plenty of dead-heading, pruning and weeding to keep us busy.  We also plan to do some planters (we brought all of our patio pots with us from Tracy - though we sacrificed all the soil that was in them - to add pops of annuals for color at the front door and on the back patio.  And maybe in a corner or two of the yard.

Season 3 of "Marcella" is out on Netflix so I have to get back to watching it - it's complex and when I don't follow it closely, I end up torturing J. about 'what just happened?'   Poor guy.