Keith: [00:00:00] Hey guys, today, we're going to talk about thinking outside the box. And when I say thinking outside the box, getting outside of the box more like it max bean or house a box, be in our house, it's get up off the couch and get outside. It's a great way to relieve stress and in the time of COVID or flu or anything else breathing fresh air just in general.

Good for you. And at the

Joe: time of this recording, it's fall. Finally.

Keith: Exactly. Getting out when it's when the temperatures are right Time to put the pumpkin on everything. Exactly. The pumpkin in your coffee, pumpkin, you can rub it on your body. Every everywhere you look, it's pumpkin-flavored something.

Pumpkins just fear fall. I think they are scared for sure. Yeah. So getting outside in the fall, [00:01:00] getting outside in the spring just creating a space an outdoor room, basically. I think is important someplace where you can get out, and you can really enjoy life. And do you know, light gardening sometimes?

Being outside doesn't have to be yard work and hard work. Sitting in a chair, pulling a few weeds, having a cup of coffee, sitting down in the evening, having a cocktail.

Joe: You mentioned in an earlier podcast the Japanese saying of bathing yourself in green. And there's something to like just a peaceful state of mind for when I go sit outside, and I can see all the plants in the backyard, and everything's green everywhere.

It is just a lot more peaceful.

Keith: it is for sure. And it doesn't take a lot of time to get those rewards. A small stroll through the backyard or sit outside for a few minutes. This time of year, we'll get our fire pit going.

And I'm burning pine and sometimes just twigs and sticks and pine cones that are out in the yard. So sometimes it's not an Oak hardwood-based fire. So sometimes it, it's a fire that burned for 15 minutes, you sit there and have a cocktail or have a cup of coffee or something and It's really [00:02:00] relaxing to have

Joe: a couple of guys over.

And I like to call it, offer up burnt offerings as a friend of mine used to say a little bonfire in front of your mouth. Exactly. Then a

Keith: campfire. Yeah. And if you're going to be smoky, you might as well have a cigar. Yeah. Yup. Absolutely. Sometimes creating that space, and when you think about it from a room perspective, it doesn't have to be. It could be your straight up the full backyard, a couple of chairs in front of a fire pit.

All you need. But sometimes creating a room-based feeling. You've got this space. It's totally private screen plannings on one side so that you're not seeing that neighbor add an offense or an, or a trellis and some vines. So that you actually create a small intimate space that you can invite people into, or you can go out and have a little sanity from your wife, from your kids or your neighbors and your job, what are some

Joe: good growing vines that make sense that won't take over your entire yard?

Keith: Kudzu, no katsu now that's the one that does take over the neighborhood,

Joe: [00:03:00] my entire backyard. And it's climbing in my trees. And I had some guys over, and we were smoking cigars, and one of them was the head of the. Neighborhood HOA. And he was like. You should really trim those. Those are going to kill your trees.

So now my trees are covered in a vine that is dead leaves in the middle of like perfectly everything else is

Keith: green and terrible. Yeah. So there's all the calamitous are nice. They bloom in the spring and summertime. It's a nice small vine. There's an evergreen Clematis. That's more medium to large.

It's got a nice tropical evergreen folly. It's one of my favorites. And then it blooms in the spring. It's got one-inch white flour. That's fragrant. And usually, when somebody has one, and it blooms, we'll sell one to their neighbors because the fragrance is so nice. And it wafts over into the neighbor's yard.

It's that large of a plant. Do you need to

keep

Joe: them a certain distance from your house because they will climb your house?

Keith: Certain vines have will actually attach themselves to the house, IVs cross vines, another one cross, the vine is perfect, but it will [00:04:00] attach itself to the house and the building.

Some people like

Joe: that, look, it's

Keith: bad for us. I don't think it is anymore. It depends on the type of side, and you wouldn't want to put it on Mason, night's siding or something like that, the brick with brick or some of that stuff, it's okay. On a wood fence, it's going to be okay.

It's probably going to. I don't think it's going to shorten the life of the fence. But once you go with that, look, you're probably going to have to stick with that look kind of thing. It's hard to power wash the tentacles that are going to hold on. And the air routes that are gonna pull to hold onto them, to the fence.

But people with pergolas,

Joe: is there any vine that people like, though? Yes.

Keith: So grapes are great on pergolas because they hang down from the pergola, and you can pick them. They're messy. They can be messy. Yeah. The evergreen Clematis is a great one. I've got an evergreen Clematis that comes up about 10 feet and goes over about 10 feet.

So it's a pretty large vine. It'll cover a garage. If you did a little small pergola over a garage, it'd come up over a garage, and a half and [00:05:00] go all the way over and all the way down the other side, one buys. You don't need one on each side. Yeah. Typically I would recommend one on either side if there's that option, but it will go all the way over and hang down on the other side.

So it's a decent size.

Joe: vine. Oh, there's something like really coolest sounded about going outside on your pergola and just eating grapes, though. Yeah,

Keith: Yeah, absolutely. And the whole edible landscape thing is nice. Blueberries are one of those things you could use as a privacy hedge.

But they create a border. They give you good fall color. And then they produce tons of fruit. I've got a friend that's got 20 blueberries, and she probably picks 30 pounds, 40 pounds of blueberries a year. It's absolutely ridiculous amount. What do you

Joe: recommend here in our area for, by way of hanging plants,

Keith: hanging plants?

Mixed hanging baskets are always good. When you get three or four different plants and if one of them fails for too dry or too hot, the other three maybe, finding that that's what they're looking for. So when you have one that doesn't do as well, and you've got three or four in there, the hanging basket kind of keeps on growing up.

[00:06:00] You're constructing your

Joe: outdoor room. You got maybe a trellis with some vine. You got some other plants. a couple of walls. How do we get

Keith: So the, we've got screened plants, things like our providers or tea, olives a plan that's gonna get, eight to 12 feet tall.

You could trim it as a tight hedge or let it grow out more leafy. They create your walls. You've got a trellis, you've got a screen planting along one side, and it doesn't have to wrap all the way around. It's not as you don't want to create a box and block yourself in, but create that wall where you're getting some privacy, maybe even from your house, where you can slip away from your teenage kids for an hour.

Yeah, block a neighbor out that's gotten. It was too noisy or too nosy. The step of walls, we've got a product. It's a ground cover product called step a bull. There are probably 12 or 12 or 15 plans. That you can use as a ground cover. You're, you either have a stone ...