The trend in residential landscaping has been to bring as much of the convenience of the indoors to the outdoors. This includes built-in grills with rotisseries, outdoor kitchens with sinks and running water, refrigerators and even outdoor fireplaces. The project we’re working on right now includes an outdoor fireplace, seat wall, low voltage lighting set into the walls and steps, all built around the client’s new paver patio.

We’ll post more about this project once it’s been completed.

????????On the north end of Appleton we recently completed a retaining wall and seat wall construction using Belgard’s Highland Stone. The steps were constructed using the “pedestal method”, meaning an area of block the full lateral spread of the steps was laid below the first step (on top of a 6″+ layer of crushed limestone), and each subsequent step was stacked atop that first layer. That means the very top step you see in this picture is actually sitting on top of eight layers of retaining wall block.

This doesn’t affect the cost of the project, but it does make it far more durable and stable than steps made using the “step method”, where each step is only sitting atop a single course of block and some compacted, crushed stone.

Highland Stone also comes in freestanding wall units, which have been split on both sides, making them ideal for seat walls. In the project pictured you can see an 18″ seatwall providing more privacy for people on the patio.

Finally, we constructed two columns on either side of the steps to add some grandeur to the patio entry. Line voltage outdoor lighting fixtures were converted to low voltage and mounted to those columns. To keep the look clean outdoors, we mounted the low-voltage transformer in the basement of the home next to the electrical service panel. A photo cell controls the switching on and off of the lights.

I’m not sure how you’d qualify a “landscaper’s tan”, but if it meant a tan that started at your wrists and ended at your fingertips, then I’d fit the bill.

I’m probably the most pasty-white landscaper you’ll ever meet, and I like it that way.  Probably like a lot of you, I’ve got light skin and my stubborn dermis just won’t take a tan.  It takes a burn very nicely; but try to  get my torso, arms and legs nicely toasted would mean having to bake constantly, with the occasional baby oil spritzer for good measure.

And the thing is, I’m no spring chicken, so having a great tan isn’t that important to me.  As the elasticity in my skin is slowly leaving, so is my vanity about having a bronze glow during the landscaping season.  And as my dermatologist is beginning to notice these little brownish patches (that he takes pleasure in freeze-burning off my face), it seemed that self-preservation was more important than a tan.

So I cover up.

And I mean everything.  Long pants, long-sleeved shirt, hat with a wide brim.  Every day.  Even when it’s 100 degrees.
I’d like to encourage you to do some of the same.  If you work in an office, you may not get much sun, and so you want to make the most of those vitamin D-giving rays the sun offers us - but did you know that you office dwellers are more likely to develop melanoma (the most deadly type of skin cancer) than those of us in the sun all day?  Researchers hypothesize that it has to do with the skin figuring out a way to develop resistance to those mutations that melanoma causes, just by being in the sun a lot.  And my father-in-law is a prime example.  Diagnosed with melanoma around Thanksgiving last year, he had his lymph nodes under one arm removed to stop the metastasization (is that even a word?) of the cancer.  Because it’s such an aggressive cancer, that he hasn’t had a recurrence since then is a really good sign.  But melanoma can kill you quick.

So please, be sure to cover up when you’re outside in the yard, gardening or landscaping.  And when shopping for sunblock, look for the new one from Neutrogena that contains helioplex; this new additive is supposed to help maintain the strength of the sunblock for a longer period of time and also help block UVA rays, something that almost none of the sunblocks on the market do effectively right now.