Neighborinos (s1e10)

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What are doing?

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Hey team.

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Oh, hello.

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Hi, . Hey guy.

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How's it going?

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How is you?

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Good, easy.

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Oh, what can we get for you?

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No.

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Good beer.

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Water.

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Wine.

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No, no, I'm fine.

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Okay.

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LaCroix?

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Uh, yeah.

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Okay.

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LaCroix.

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Yeah.

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And then this is the jar from, when you made pickled onions for us forever ago.

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Oh, cute.

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I forgot to bring it back for a long time.

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I'll just set 'em yeah.

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Great.

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how the heck was your day?

Topher: 00:00:46

Portland has an amazing garden culture stuff grows so easily out

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here with mild weather, which is sunny in the summer and really healthy,

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happy rain all the rest of the time.

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And then especially where I live out on the east side, the

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houses are older, which means.

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That they're closer together.

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The plots are smaller and they're closer to the street.

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So you just see your neighbors a lot.

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When they're out there working on their yards, it's where you meet people.

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It's where you catch up with people.

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See what they're up to.

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I wanted to bring some of that Portland garden, energy to the podcast.

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So decided to drop by the house of my friends, Jake Ande.

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They just recently bought their first house.

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And they're trying to figure out what to do with the backyard.

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One thing to note my husband, who you may have heard me mention on the podcast

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from time to time, his name is also Jake.

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That is not this Jake, but they're both lovely people.

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So come on, let's head back outside and see what Jake Ande are up to.

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So here's what I'm feeling.

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We have this big backyard space.

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I'm gonna drink our Croix while we're talking to yes, we

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have this big backyard space.

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We don't know the measurements.

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It's it's a new house.

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Mm-hmm , it's a, describe it for us, our little tiny cottage in east Portland.

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So sell it.

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It's a 700 square foot adorable cottage, one bed, one bath, which

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works perfect for Jake and I

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. Um, It has this big backyard.

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I mean, what, twice the size of the house.

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I don't know.

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It's big enough that like this outdoor space is when we saw the property.

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We are such outdoor people.

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We wanna be able to live outdoors.

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Yeah.

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And be out here all of the time.

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Even when it's raining, we'll find a little cover.

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There's a Perga lot in the back and the cutest little porch.

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And we've got our little chairs wrapped around the deck.

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We have two fire pits that we'll use when it's not fire season.

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Jake's currently putting the apples that are falling from the apple tree into the

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bucket, but he is oh, for four on shots.

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So by . Oh, for.

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My beer pump still.

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So what I'm gonna do, , I've just made a terrible drawing for Jake and

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I of the apple tree and the chairs.

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Jake had a fancy little computer, probably CAD system.

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Have you made a single one?

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Yep.

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There we go.

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Yeah.

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How many was that?

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Eight.

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Yeah, I think so.

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And him and I, I did a similar, terrible drawing.

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Yeah.

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And then like, does this kind of make sense though?

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Like here's the fence, here's the.

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What do you see for garden boxes?

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. So basically the question here is we've got this big outdoor space Uhhuh.

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It's all grass right now.

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Yes.

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The existing stuff that we're looking at is we've got a

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really venerable old apple tree.

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Yep.

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We've got some.

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chairs in sort of like a semi-circle underneath it to enjoy

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the shade when you have guests.

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Yes.

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And then at the back of the grass lawn, you've got a shed.

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Yes.

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That might eventually become a sort of like outdoor work environment or like a

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office attached office, detached office and aspirations to put like, almost

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like a Tiki bar in the back by the shed.

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Yeah.

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So man.

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Have you only made one?

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Yeah.

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What are we like?

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I'm not even keeping track at this point.

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We're just not, we're not gonna count this in tosses anymore.

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We're gonna count this in time.

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Yeah.

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Like out of how many minutes . Yeah.

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And usually my ING's pretty damn big.

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Maybe if you did overhand mm-hmm tough call.

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If she got it in the first one that would be for you.

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Um, yeah, so.

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anyway, the thought is with all of that shade over there, it makes a lot of sense

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to make that kind of a hidden chill area.

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Yeah.

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Um, where, and it's at the back of the lot.

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So, you know, you can, it's the maximum amount of space

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you can get from the house.

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Yeah.

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And I, for me, in particular, I think I need to like take it in tiny little parts.

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So something that I know that I can do is get these garden boxes built and have.

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For the fall and get the soil going and we can get, and so some greens, it meaning

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the whole transformation of this space.

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I need to start little where Jake is a beautiful dreamer and he is like,

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oh, we will do this and we'll do this.

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And I'm like, I, I just, all I can think about is this one space, basically we

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want, we wanna break ground to start.

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Yeah.

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. So we're thinking garden boxes first.

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You gotta start somewhere.

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There we go.

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Like Jake says break, gotta break ground.

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How are you guys thinking about where to put the garden boxes

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we've drawn this terrible picture?

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Well, did you just sort of pick it based on where it was on like a wide

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ruled piece of spiral note, PA paper?

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Or no, we've been, I we've been looking at the sun.

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Yeah.

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The way that everything moves.

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So this would be a great spot for vegetables and, um, herbs.

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This gets meaning, meaning, cuz like it's sunny.

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It's a lot of sun mm-hmm throughout the day from morning and film night.

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Well smack dab in the middle here is the most dependable sun and the least shade.

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Yeah.

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Um, so if we're gonna maximize our growth, put it right in the.

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Which is tough, cuz it's right in the middle.

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So then the question becomes, are we breaking up the space?

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Are we, you know, is it the centerpiece of the yard or is it a

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natural, you know, transition point?

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If you've ever looked at a patch of land large or small and wondered how

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do I fit all my ideas into this space?

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And then if you've ever had to navigate that conversation with another

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person, what you're hearing right now probably sounds a little familiar.

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The thing is Jake and Nate are starting in exactly the right place, which is great.

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They're starting to think first about sunlight.

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And since sunlight is usually the thing you have the absolute least control over

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in any of your spaces, it's crucial before you make any decisions about what you're

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gonna do or what goes, where that you understand the quality of sunlight you.

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Jake.

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And they know that in order to grow vegetables, they're gonna need a lot of

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direct sunlight through a lot of the day.

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. That's what makes your vegetables happy and nutritious and delicious.

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But of course, there are a few other things to consider too.

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Once we'd identified where they were getting the vegetable

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quality sunlight in their yard.

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We started to think about placement.

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We were looking at a lot of those spots and there were some of those sunny areas

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that had a lot of dips, um, or ridges that would've meant that they would've had to

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either flatten that land out and move it around or construct some really innovative

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garden beds in order to keep things.

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We also talked about other things that they eventually

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wanted to have in their space.

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You heard them talk about a Tiki bar, chill out area in the back.

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Jake wanted some spots that he was gonna be able to bring in some

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local natural plants that wouldn't need much attention, but could kind

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of fill in and shape the space.

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And.

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Understanding how you'd navigate between all those different areas

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and the sitting area that they talked about underneath the apple tree.

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Once we had a lot of those variables in place.

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Jake brought out a few long pieces of wood, and then he just started to block

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out where potential vegetable beds could.

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That was really helpful because that process allowed us to kind

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of see things for really what the dimensions that they were gonna be.

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Eventually we got to something that they were really excited about.

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Okay.

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So sum it up for us.

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Like if we had to sum up like the decisions that we made in this one, what

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did, how are you guys feeling about sort of like, what did we try to do here?

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And then what did we succeed in.

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I think the main thing was placement vis Tovi all the other elements

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that are planned for the garden, but aren't gonna happen for a while

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. Yep.

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I think more than anything with the topography of the backyard and making

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sure that, you know, we're, , we're not having to do a bunch of earth

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moving just to set up some garden boxes . Dene, how are you feeling?

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I feel great.

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I think that something that if you could see it, we're standing in the back

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and we're sitting in the chairs near the porch and in the back, there's a

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shed and it's kind of just like a shed that matches the color of the house.

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Mm-hmm , but it's in like this big yard space that having this, the

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idea of where we wanna put the garden boxes in front of the shed that.

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Makes the yard one feel less intimidating because now we've

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got it broken into this area.

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That's really aesthetically pleasing mm-hmm and makes the shed look

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less awkward in the back as well.

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We also have like mismatched fences all around, you know, so.

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it just takes your eye away from that.

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It takes your eye towards this really pretty shed.

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Totally.

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Um, that, you know, is painted brand new.

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It looks like white and black.

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And so it, it kind of works really well.

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I love it.

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It really ties the shed into the whole space.

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Yeah.

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I think that's a great point that it kind of contextualizes the shed.

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It gives it a reason for being Uhhuh.

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It doesn't feel crowded at all.

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Yep.

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Like the nice thing is when you put things in your space, but you leave other areas

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around it and then it sort of almost feels like it's like legal, the things I have

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and they're not crowded in or anything.

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I think too, that once we get this going, like we were talking about,

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oh, we just gotta break the ground.

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We gotta.

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I have some movement on something here.

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Even if nothing else takes shape, we have garden before we have had garden boxes

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before, like we know we can manage that.

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So does that shed actually become a garden shed instead of, or a greenhouse

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or something it's in permeable, but does become a greenhouse rather

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than an office space like that.

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Doesn't wow.

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Love it.

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Like it doesn't matter because that's there.

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So even though I said it's not a centerpiece, like it is, and it.

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um, yeah, it becomes the main, at least the one thing that

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is always being maintained, worked on taken care of . Nice.

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Love it.

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You guys made all the decisions.

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I just poked this thing in your face and you guys talked it

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through that's good though.

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Okay.

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One, one last let's try and get, uh, let's try and get audio of you.

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one.

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You have one last, try to redeem yourself.

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God, cause you've only done one this entire time, right?

Topher: 00:11:59

No.

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Uh, I think I got two in, I didn't record the other one for

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success as far as distances.

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Okay.

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Okay.

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I'll try it from you get, yeah, you get best of three.

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Best of three.

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Yeah.

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One, one more apple and then make one apple in the bucket.

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You want me to pick it up?

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No, I got oh, the bucket.

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No.

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You can put it up.

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See?

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Okay.

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We're gonna heaviest first try number one.

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close over.

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Oh, bounce off the rim.

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Come on.

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bounced off this redemption shot or DNE.

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Do you just wanna try one, try to catch it for him?

Topher: 00:12:43

No, no.

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I think you should try to make one in this guy played beer

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pong with me for a couple years.

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He would I'm I'm embarrassing myself.

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The memories we had.

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Oh, all right.

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You needed four, but you got it.

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I'm gonna sleep.

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Y'all have good now.

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and with Jake redeeming the college beer pong skills

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that frankly, I think he, and I remember a little differently.

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Let's let them get back to garden planning.

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We are at fresh clippings on Instagram, where I will share some pictures

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of their brand new yard, Jake Ande.

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Thank you so much for letting us join you on plant time.

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And thank you everybody else for tuning in

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for clippings.

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This is tofa burns.

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I'll see you in the garden soon.

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perfect.