Ed Icionsub

Most of the homes on my street are very conservative, plain and have very little landscaping. Only my next door neighbor and I have much interest in a natural and artistic look for our yards. I want to use some of her techniques to change the look of both my front yard and my backyard this spring. For example, she has a rustic wood arbor in her backyard, and a wood swing mounted to a board nailed between two tall trees beside her deck.

I’ve always like the idea of garden arbors and started investigating them online. I was surprised to find so many different styles and sizes available. I guess I need to start my search by deciding on whether I want a wood arbor or a vinyl one.

Of course wood can be painted, but I think the point of wood is to have a more natural feel. If you are just going to paint the arbor, you should probably get one that is vinyl and have it factory painted in the color of your choice.

Everything in my neighbor’s yard is a natural wood – I am pretty sure it is all cedar. Even the siding and roof on her house are cedar and the whole effect is very rustic. My house’s exterior is a red brick veneer, so it is not as rustic as hers, but I still like the idea of wooden arbors for a natural look rather than a color.

While inspecting a property out in the country, my client took me around to the back of his house and showed me his little backyard retreat. He had fenced a section of the yard to separate it from the rest of the farm, installed a shallow in-ground pool, and put up this quaint wood arbor. I thought it was very artistically done, especially considering he is an auto mechanic.

The best thing about January is that the Winters Solstice is behind us and every day is getting slightly longer. This is when the seed catalogues start showing up in the mailbox and I can get started planning my backyard gardens for the Spring.

We got started with some serious overhauling of the landscaping last summer and I think if the weather allows, I can get an early start on planting both a vegetable garden and relocating the shrubbery in the front of the house. I want to put in some raised beds and add some windowboxes across the front of the house. I have two windows in the living room, one window in the dining room and one window in the front bedroom that I use for my home office.

The one window in my home office is not suitable for window box planters because it is centered on the wall along my front porch. But the other three windows along the front would be great if I planted flowers that do well on an east facing wall.

I have imagined a row of three window flower boxes with lots of bright green foliage and perhaps some bright red geraniums. I know geraniums come in several different colors and shades of red. I want to get something bright, that shows up well against the red brick of the house and the fireplace.

As a kid, we would rake leaves into huge piles that lined the street and then run and jump in them. We would spend hours out in the yard helping Dad rake leaves. Then, after we had jumped around in them, making tunnels and covering each other up with leaves like you do with sand at the beach, my dad and our neighbors would light the leaves on fire and stand around in the street tending to the burning leaves. It was a big part of autumn and a big part of being good neighbors.

Somehow it is just not as satisfying to rake the leaves from the backyard into a pile and then have to dump them into oversized brown paper bags and wait for the county yard waste truck to drive through collecting the bags. It’s just become another mindless, isolated chore that has to be done. I miss the good old days of leaves burning and all the neighbors gathered around, telling stories and jokes and being part of a close knit community.

We knew pretty quickly that the economy was in serious trouble and the financial indicators were everywhere if you knew where to look for them. One tactic that some of our brokers tried to use involved expanding the properties they were willing to list to include businesses, not just land and its improvements.

I was very much against the brokers getting into selling businesses. There is a unique segment of our industry that specializes in business brokerage and there are very good reasons why it is considered a specialty. For one thing, there is an incredible amount of time spent by the broker on valuing the business and preparing an extensive marketing package. To prepare the marketing package requires a lot of paperwork gathering and analysis, and a lot of research.

The amount of data that is collected for any type of business sale is staggering and it is confidential data that must be safeguarded while parts are being made available to potential buyers. A good solution for storing and managing this data is using an online resource, such as the professional VDR solution for IPO process.

Because financing has been so difficult to obtain from American banks and investment companies, some of our buyers are turning to foreign banks and investors. The problem with dealing with banks in China or the Mid-East is that many of the legal documents must be translated for the foreign banks to review, analyze and present to their loan committees. For those kinds of deals, we can use the Merrill Brink translation services and have a high level of confidence that the data maintains its integrity.

I’ve worked with a technical translation services provider before and it can be very difficult or it can be very easy. I think the first time you try to do an international deal it will be difficult. But once you learn the process and get a deal done, the next ones are much easier.