I mentioned in this post about landscaping our front yard that we need to rebuild the fence blocking off our back yard.

We have a half-wall coming out from the the back wall, acting as a retaining wall all along the side of our property. Eventually, I’d like to extend the retaining wall all the way to the street, tear down the brick half-wall and rebuild a full wooden fence that is normal 6′ height and stretches from the house to the neighbor’s wall.

Many reasons for this …. among others, to keep unwanted creatures out of our back yard.

Oh, yea. That happens.

Remember when we had a big pile of poop in our backyard? Completely inexplicably?

I still visually check for poop every couple days. Just in case. Because lord knows that half wall isn’t going to keep anything out.

We also have bird poop on our mailbox and rabbit poop in our front yard. Anyone know what squirrel poop looks like? That seems to be the only one we’ve not yet been gifted.

On a related note:

We’re working on getting the girls all excited to see squirrels and rabbits and birds in our yard. They’ve started responding to “Girls!!!!! Look!!!!!” Kind of the way Hazel does, actually.

A few weeks ago, Andrew told me he had carried but the cats out front to show them the rabbit! I’m sure they loved it, but, as I told Andrew …. I don’t really want them learning that outside is fun.

We would really prefer for them to stay indoor cats. There are *probably* coyotes or similar in the undeveloped hills nearby, and if the cats just go on thinking outdoors is scary then they hopefully won’t try to get out.

The next day, Andrew told me on his way home from work late at night, driving up the hill to our house, he saw a coyote in our neighbor’s front yard! Just around the corner from us – only 30 yards or so from our house!!

Awesome.

It was probably on the way to poop in our back yard again.

want to read more?

• Schubert HQ progress: As-is house tour
• new chairs for the sitting room
• Bringing us gifts
• mowing our front lawn for the first time
• Schubert HQ progress: upstairs gallery wall