Category: Home
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Our newest backyard addition
Wooooooo we have a picnic table! Since we moved in 2 years ago I’ve been toting a folding card table between the front porch (where it belongs) and the backyard (where I occasionally like to work) and now I can be as lazy as I damn well please because we bought a wood picnic table!…
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Planting Peonies
Last week we got our first landscaping shipment! Our peonies were delivered in a little box inside two tiny plastic bags. I was completely weirded out when I saw the plants – they were bare root peonies and looked nothing like what I thought. I envisioned tiny baby plants that would go above ground, but…
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Snakes or mice?…what do you think we prefer?
The backyard of Los Rodriguez mansion has many inhabitants. We know that Chupi and Chori always fight for the throne, but there are also many other creatures just trying to make a living out there. El patio de la Mansion Rodriguez tiene mucho habitantes. Sabemos que Chupi y Chori siempre pelean por el trono, pero…
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Tennessee Falls
We had the best weather yet this year this past weekend – it was beautiful! On Saturday Javi and I decided to take advantage of the warm temps and cool breeze with a trip east near Cookeville to do some hiking with the doggos. It was a perfect day – sunny but not too hot…
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In the studio with I.C.Will
A couple of weekends ago the NYC hip hop artist, stellar educator and good friend Ian Willey (I.C. Will) came back to town to my dad’s studio to do some recording for his new album. He’s hoping to release the album by this August and it’s by far my favorite yet! He came up with…
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Signs of spring!
It may have snowed over the weekend (and last night apparently in some parts of middle TN) but we’ve been seeing signs of spring all around our house and neighborhood and it makes us so excited. The first to come up are the daffodils lining the boundaries of all the yards in South Inglewood. Unfortunately…
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Planting trees
When we moved into our mansion back in 2011 one of the first things we did was to remove a couple of huge, dying hackberry trees around the house. It was a matter of safety since these trees were rotting inside and leaning towards our home. At the time, we squared the situation with ourselves…
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No more cleanup!
We finished the landscaping cleanup!! I cannot believe how good it looks. We could leave it like this forever with nice clean patches of dark soil and never plant anything and it would be an enormous improvement to what it was. We had a jungle growing off the front and sides of our house, and…
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They are alive!!
It has been about 3 weeks since we sowed the first seeds in our raised beds that we covered with the cold frames. As we mentioned in a previous post, this round of sowing was an experiment since it was way too early to sow anything without the frames. We were hoping for the best…
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SEEDS!!!!!!
All this gardening preparation has been done in order to host our garden “super stars”….the SEEDS!! We are starting almost everything from seed this year which is a big challenge for us, and thus the hard work preparing everything to the best of our abilities. Toda esta preparación que hemos hecho ha sido para acomodar…
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Miami on a rainy day
Friday was our day to relax and see Miami before the wedding activities began on Saturday. In the morning we got together with our friends (and the bride and groom) Katie and Eddie to check out their home and to finish up some details regarding wedding photography. We checked out some of the sites we…
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Sabores Chilenos
One of the first things that came to our mind when we knew we were coming to Miami was…Chilean food!!! and after the very first meal, Miami delivered! We don’t have a Chilean restaurant in Nashville (not that we know of, if we do please share the information!), so when we have a chance to…
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DIY Cold frames
The weather in Tennessee has been a little weird. We have had several very warm days during the winter, and then a drop to freezing temperatures for a couple of days. The plants are confused. Bulbs are popping out happily thinking spring is here, but then a couple of below freezing nights hurt their leaves.…
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Hickory Slims at the Family Wash
Well, Hickory Slims has officially lost its second first show virginity! This was our first show as Hickory Slims but, as I’ve said previously about this group, we used to play together under the name Angus Whyte and the Irish Rednecks. We actually played at the Family Wash a couple times as AW&IR – below…
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Soil is the key to happy plants!
The new beds are up and ready and the old beds are “refreshed” and ready too! Setting up everything required some work but we believe it will pay off in the long run with TONS of veggies. The 2 old beds had left over dirt from last year and the new ones were completely empty…
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Fencing the garden
I don’t know about you but somewhere along the way we failed to teach our dogs to garden. I am sure they would be great at digging holes for planting, but I doubt they would dig exactly where I need them to. So in order to avoid any problems with the raised beds in the…
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Chori’s first snow day
This past weekend it “snowed”! The 1/4 inch we got here in our neighborhood was pretty exciting because we didn’t see so much as a flake last year. It was also particularly exciting in this household because it was Choripan’s first encounter with snow, which obligated a photo or two. I took my camera out early in…
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Prepping the new garden beds
Our vegetable garden is expanding this year. Last year I built 3 beds but only wound up using 2. This year we are using all 3 from last year and adding 1 ½ more. The big beds are 4 x 8 feet and the half is 4 x 4, and all of them are about…
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Cleaning the garden beds
Once we had the edging installed we knew exactly what the garden’s boundaries were and proceeded to the next step: cleaning out the weeds and bermuda grass. These beds needed a DEEP cleaning – there were loads of unwanted plants growing there and of course with the plants came roots. Also, because we neglected the…
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Installing edging
We have a ton of hard work to accomplish in our landscape plan to prepare for the arrival of the plants. We ordered most of our plants online and they will ship when our zone (TN) is ready for planting. Since we moved into the house, weeds and Bermuda grass have taken over the old…
Los Rodriguez Life 