BurnsFamily Blog

In the Northern hemisphere, weather patterns typically move from West to East (Left to Right).  A few days ago, it was bone-chilling cold here in Northern California.  Not cold like “oh dear, I’m gonna need to put my long-sleeve T-shirt on” kinda cold but “oh dear, I’m gonna need to put on another COAT [...]

WARNING: This is yet another blog post about our landscaping.
We don’t have many deciduous trees near us in Northern California. When were were building the landscaping plan, we tried to keep “color” in mind throughout the whole year. We were very pleased to see how the Crepe Myrtles changed colors at the first [...]

Julie and I went for a bike ride today — it was 70˚ and “Super Bowl Sunday”, why not? We headed to our favorite picnic spot, about 5 miles away — Vasona Lake County Park in nearby Los Gatos, CA. I’ve run there, been to a March of Dimes walk-a-thon, and we’ve watched the [...]

If you read our post on grilled pizza, you know we like to put fresh chopped basil on our pizzas. The problem has been buying basil that lasts long enough in the fridge to be useful for more than one pizza at a time. When we created the landscaping design, one of the goals [...]

We consciously picked plants and trees that would were “native” to California climates so that they would thrive with little-to-no fussing. We also picked specimens that would attract birds, bees, and butterflies.

Yum…Nothing better than handmade, grilled pizza.  We make the simplistic “margarita pizza” which is nothing more than fresh mozzerlla cheese, a little bit of sauce, and balsamic-marinated tomatoes. grill for 10 minutes on super-massive-blasting-hot, then sprinkle on fresh chopped basil and kosher salt.

We wanted a water fountain for our backyard but we couldn’t find anything we liked in the stores or online. So we decided to build one ourselves. It took a while to find out how to make one properly: refills itself automatically, features of a good fountain pump, requires little-to-no maintenance, the proper materials [...]

Welcome to our new backyard!
We expect to throw lots of BBQ parties, relax after a hard day’s work, and just general “spending quiet time”. We’ll give you the virtual tour to help explain what you’re seeing.

Welcome to our private garden! That cobalt blue planter you saw from the front porch provides the guest of “hints” of what they can expect to see  in the rest of the garden as you walk through…
It’s a nice, quiet place: the fence panels block the view from the street but because there’s access from [...]

Our goal was to be done by Memorial Day and to throw a celebration BBQ. Secretly we also set that deadline as motivation to make sure we finished and did all the little “clean up” tasks that always seem to linger and never get 100% done.
We’re proud to say that we hit our goal and [...]