As I'm sure I have mentioned elsewhere, I grew up in North Dakota and Sauny grew up in Missouri. Big green lawns are a must out there.

      But now we live in what could be called a Mediterranean desert. It is my understanding that we average about 20 inches of rain a year, usually between about November and February. We usually get NO rain from April through October.

Photo-9	Photo-10	Photo-11	Photo-12

      Green lawns are not prized here by people that understand this. We do get misplaced midwesterners here that try to re-create their homelands. I have a neighboring home that a previous owner had converted to a "xeriscape" lawn, requiring very little water. He tore it all out and put in a big grass lawn. He will find out what happens the next time we have a five year drought and we are forbidden to water our lawns.

      Perhaps I'm trying to justify why I have constructed so much redwood deck. I have two small lawns left. I use a hybrid Bermuda grass that is quite hardy and at least somewhat drought tolerant.
      It took a hit in the January freeze but is coming back.

      Photo-9, above, shows the underpinnings of the redwood walk from the library to the front of the house.

      Photo-10 shows a closeup of one of the piers. They are made according to instructions given to me by Donald Grant, 5th year architecture instructor at Cal Poly (California Polytechnic State University). These dimensions are approximate. One takes an 8" x 16" piece of 30# tarpaper, wraps it into a cylinder and staples it top and bottom.
      First one cuts plumber's tape into one foot sections, then bends them into a U with a gap about 1 1/2 inches, to fit a 2 x 4. Then one makes around twenty of these tarpaper cylinders and places them on some hard ground. Next one mixes a sack of Quikrete or Sakrete and puts three or four inches of concrete in each. Insert one of the U's into the concrete and agitate it to smooth the surface of the concrete. Center the tape in the concrete with 2 to 3 inches sticking above the surface. Allow to harden.
      Remove the tarpaper. It can be re-used. When there are enough piers to proceed, mount them on a redwwood stringer with deck screws.. Put the first one about a foot from the end and then at 32 inch intervals to about a foot from the other end.
      Put the stringers in place, 32 inches apart, and block them up so the piers are a bit off the ground. Level the stringers so the walk will be flat. Using a spade, create a small depression under each pier. Make up another sack of concrete and with a spade, put a blob of concrete under each pier, making good contact with both the pier and the ground. Allow to harden thoroughly.

      Photos-11 and -12 are of the huge deck my son, Daniel, and I built at our fourplex, showing the manner of construction.

      The front of the house faces roughly west, into the perennial afternoon wind from the ocean, down Los Osos Valley. Being where we are, at the bend of the street, we get everything that blows down the street. Originally the "lawn" sloped down to the sidewalk making it easy for all the junk to wind up on our lawn. Also, being adobe, when we tried to water it, the water would run right off into the street. To prevent this, I built an eighteen inch high wall with 2 x 12 and 2 x 8 rough redwood. Then I brought in good dirt and filled it to make the lawn level. Photo-13 shows the street that funnels the air right to us. And Photo-14 shows this redwood barrier.

      I decked the boulevard between the sidewalk and the curb and installed two boxes for some kind of street tree. We had had a flowering plum but it did not do well in the shade of a monstrous Monterey Pine. The pine became diseased and we removed it. We had alreaey remooved the plum. So we installed two Eugenias that had beem trimmed into two balls. Unfortunately they were both badly bitten by a night at 21 degrees in the middle of January. They are slowly coming back! Photo-15 shows the struggling trees.

      Outside the entry way I put in a large planter, again with 2 x 12 rough redwood. I installed a light post and ran the power down, under the sidewalk, to one of the boxes at the curb and installed a weatherproof outlet in case we wanted to decorate them at Christmas. These are both controlled inside the house by the porch light switch. My sister Irene lived with this for a time and I put a support on the planter so she could have help when stepping down.

      Everything looks terrible right now. Everything is struggling to recover from the cold blast they took in January 2007.

      We don't get a lot of rain here, but a good roof is mandatory for the rain we do get. Sauny and I roofed the library when we finished it.

      Sometime later we thought it would be prudent to replace the aluminum roof on the two story addition. See Photo 13.

Photo-13	Photo-14	Photo-15	Photo-16

      Finally we thought our almost thirty year old roof on the original house had done its job and should be upgraded to "Presidential" shingles. We had learned our lesson, we were not young anymore. So we decided to bite the bullet and, this time, hire it done! A bunch of young men descended on the original house, tore off the roof and installed "Presidential" shingles.
      Now all our roofs are done with 40 year asphalt shingles. Neither of us should have to face that again!