Welcome to Rabbit's House and Garden

We had this house built in 2003 on an acre of land we bought in Moore, Oklahoma.
It was a basic house design which we tweaked a bit for our own needs.

We happened to be out on our anniversary in 2003 and saw this open house we liked; asked about acre sites and were sent just around the corner.
We saw this site and KNEW it would be our home. Within a week we were buyers and the work began. We visited regularly and even our golden retriever Drake liked inspecting the work.

One of the big sellers of the spot for us was the line of trees at the bottom of the acre to the east. Twenty feet beyond that tree line is the property line of the people behind us: they own the next tree line and the creek buried within that line. The nice part is that we get the view but are nowhere near being in a flood zone.

Sooner than we expected, the house took shape. The roof was done by the end of February and by June we had moved in!

WORKING ON THE GARDEN

This was the one eyesore in the yard: the two manhole covers that provide access to our anaerobic septic system.
I decided to try to hide them under a garden and drew and oval and planted some hardy hibiscus, some four-o-clocks and my favorite Lincoln rose. It didn't hide them when viewed up close, but it did disguise them a little from the house and meant that there was no need to try to mow over those covers. There was also a drainage problem as the south side of the yard had a pretty steep grade and no growth because it was where the utility lines ran underground. My friend Kathy Martin is an environmental engineer and she told me to get some hay and stack it across the top of the grade to prevent further erosion, so we did and it worked.

The following year, we decided it was time to have a dedicated flower garden and add a focal point to the back yard.

We used a hose to sketch out the shape of the new flower bed and hired Randy Rogers to do the work for us.

As his workmen began to break ground, we uncovered a bunny nest!

Drake was so excited! He insisted on poking his big nose into the nest and counting baby noses every day.
Oddly, he thought their mama was an intruder and kept trying to chase her off.
Once or twice the babies got out and Drake kept trying to put them back. I helped put the biggest one back one day, while Drake watched carefully.

Eventually, the mom got tired of Drake's interference with her family and being chased and moved babies and nest outside our fence.
Drake was completely outraged! For the rest of the year, the babies could visit the yard all they wanted, and even dine within reach, but he would chase any of the adults.
By the end of April, our new garden was done.

In May I put some plantings in place:
a Tropicana Rose, a Colorado Sage, and Elizabeth Rose, and some iris and other perennials, as well as some annuals for color.

By midsummer, we realized we needed some serious storage for outdoor tools and supplies, so Randy came back again to build the foundation for a shed.

Then the shed company came in and put in the shed.

We painted it grey and off-white trim and Chuck decided to add a deck to the front so we'd have a safe step outside the door.

Drake liked to pose in front of the flower garden and would also sit on the deck to look over the yard.
Everything remained settled for the next couple of years so that by 2006, the garden was looking very nice.

In 2007 we had some great storms to the east and I caught some fantastic rainbows over our treeline.

One of my carving groups held a seed exchange and I got these fantastic black hollyhock seeds,
which I planted to the east of the Lincoln Rose and it really popped!

The flower garden just kept improving.

In early 2008, Chuck and I decided to define our north side with a shrub bed.
Chuck dug all those holes in one day,
and after we added a ton of mulch we were able to leave it for most of the summer to settle in.

By this time we had Gander to keep Drake company and they had marking contests all over the garden.

I had put a wren box up on one of our trees but had a surprise tenant who used it all summer: a Hyla versicolor tree frog.

We found a local company to extrude concrete around the shrub bed, which really improved the appearance.

My flower garden had improved with time and I decided to add something I had seen at the Rose Emporium in south Texas:
a bottle tree.
It's supposed to be good luck as the bottles trap bad spirits and I think it adds some color and sparkle to the garden.
I used one of the many branches we lost off our trees in the 2007-2008 ice storms and set it in instant concrete.
Drake had passed away and Simon joined our family. He and Gander posed for this photo:

We got more extruded concrete done in the front yard and we added an awning to shade the front window from the harsh west sun (into our study).

After the summer sun did its work, my bottle tree simply broke into pieces, so I scored this super deck column from the home improvement store.
I used a string to mark off the spots to drill for deck spikes for the bottles.
The top blue bottle is actually an amaryllis forcing vase!

The year 2009 has been full of our biggest project:
we decided to add a patio extension and pergola to the east side of the house.

First we hired Baldwin Enterprises to build the pergola to match the siding of the house.
They sent out Jeremy Palmer who built the entire thing by himself in only two days!

We hired Randy Rogers to build our patio and he started in early June by bringing in tons of crusher run to build up the base.

This water feature was added to the space under my studio window.
I got Indonesian Opal (the blue stones) for the base for this big chunk of Mongolian Basalt.
It bubbles water all the time, and adds a restful sound to the patio area.

Randy and Cecil built steps in the front of the patio area because the drop between the patio and the grass was so steep.
Later we decided to build up the ground instead, but for the rest of the summer the steps remained.

Randy and I drew up the shapes for the raised flower, herb and shrub beds that were going to surround the patio area and after the majority of crusher run was in place and packed, the bed building began.

It really heated up in July, but the work continued.
The bed shapes were finished by the 4th of July weekend,
and the pergola was really making a difference in the temperature of the porch and the interior of the house.

The shade helped when Randy and Cecil began to glue the paving stone onto the concrete patio.

Cecil started to build up the raised beds in mid-July and within two weeks had them done.

Comic relief all summer long was Simon.
No matter what the temperature was, or what anyone was doing, Simon spent his days keeping Randy and Cecil company.
He would drop his toys at their feet, lay under the trailers or trucks, beg for snuggles, or just stay nearby.
He loved the sand they brought for the patio blocks outside the old concrete patio area, and kept digging little 'nests' to lie in.

By the end of July, most of the patio floor work was getting done, though Simon objected to losing his sandy bed, and kept following the sand anywhere a bit was left to lie in.

Randy brought a bunch of clay to start building up the ground level to the base of the new patio and beds.
Oklahoma clay is tough stuff: Randy used his little caterpiller to move the clay around but also he showed us how NOT to do it! Oops!

The next step was real soil. We filled the garden beds, which let me plant things I'd kept in pots all summer.

Simon was still helping:
with the last of the beds filled and planted, you can see his contribution to the labor in lining his fetching balls under the shade umbrella.

In the meantime, summer was having a great effect on the round bed.
I had scattered giant cosmos seeds given to me by my friend Judy Berg, and they all came up and bloomed.
This is as lush as it has ever been!

We put the new gas grill on the patio and decided it would still be useful but out of the way between the two bedroom windows.
My herb bed is flourishing in the lush soil.

The last of the patio work was finished by mid-September:
capstones on the beds and at the edges of the floor.
Now all that is left to do is wait for some dry weather to put the last layer of polysand on the patio and finish the soil and sod around the patio.

Simon misses his buddies but they'll be back soon!

Thanks for visiting!

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