Family night, date night, or solo night

Looking for a Saturday Night adventure?

Come join us at the Deer Creek Trailhead at 7:00 pm for a full moon hike on October 12th.

For more information, please call (435)671-1791.

Brought to you by Heath @ HeathsHomes.com

Free fishing day and a whole lot more

With summer finally arriving, you can enjoy all kinds of great summer activities at Wasatch Mountain State Park.

Tour Huber Grove, take a hike, enjoy FREE FISHING DAY, leaf prints, flute music, Friday evening walk-abouts, ongoing geocaching, and more can all be fulfilled on your summer bucket list right here in Midway.

Call Wasatch Mountain State Park with any of your questions.

435-654-1791

Brought to you by Heath @ HeathsHomes.com

Outdoor living at its best in the Heber Valley

Outdoor living is a big part of living in the Heber Valley. Outdoor living spaces not only provide aesthetic pleasure, a place to entertain, and practical uses, they give us a place to relax, decompress, and be healthier. Studies show that outdoor living spaces can help us reduce stress, boost our immune system, increase concentration and aid those with ADD and ADHD, and also help alleviate depression symptoms.

The following homes are currently for sale in our valley and feature amazing decks, patios, walkout basements, and outdoor living spaces that you and your family would love! Take a look!

3682 square feet

5 bedrooms, 2 1/2 baths

Master suite with fireplace and private balcony

Listed by Jalayne Basset with Equity Real Estate - Luxury Group

2619 square feet

5 bedrooms, 3 baths

Fireplace on main floor and pellet stove in walkout basement

Listed by Christie Wilson with Keller Williams Park City Real Estate - Heber Valley

4554 square feet

5 bedrooms, 3 1/2 baths

Huge wrap around deck, basement walks out to covered patio, master suite has private deck

Listed by Kevin Cole with RE/MAX Masters

1896 square feet

3 bedrooms, 2 baths

Cabin in the aspen with large covered deck, beautiful 

farmhouse kitchen

Listed by Jalayne Bassett with Equity Real Estate - Luxury Group

1753 square feet

3 bedrooms, 2 1/2 baths

3 level open floor plan, exposed, rustic ceiling beams with amazing tile work throughout

Listed by Greg Stephens with Summit Sotheby's International Realty - Park City

3825 square feet

5 bedrooms, 4 baths

Beautiful cabinetry and wood finish work throughout, yard backs up to the community trail system

Listed by Randi Thompson with Summit Sotheby's International Realty - Park City

3642 square feet

4 bedrooms, 4 bath

end unit townhouse with nightly rentals allowed, spacious bathrooms and great views from all levels

Listed by Daimon Bushi and Dash Longe with Windermere Real Estate - Utah (Park City Branch)

4553 square feet

6 bedrooms, 4 baths

Luxury twin home has impressive finishes, all bedrooms have walk in closets, huge vaulted ceiling with massive windows frame the perfect view over the entire valley.

Listed by Heath Harvey with Innovative Real Estate

Now you've seen outdoor living at its best in the Wasatch Back. Enjoy the views, the fresh air, and all the health benefits of living here. Give me a call or text if you are interested in seeing any of these incredible homes. I'd be glad to get us an appointment. 

801-631-3430

Brought to you by Heath @ HeathsHomes.com

Moonlight Snowshoe Hike

A Full Moon Showshoe Hike is January 18th at the Visitor Center in Midway, Utah. Please register online at friendsofwasatch.org. All proceeds to to support events and programs at the park. Children must be at least eight years old to participate. Snow shoe rentals for both children and adults are available for an additional cost ($6 and $4). There will be two guides for each hike.  

Please check in at the Visitor Center no later than 6:45 pm. The hike will start promptly at 7:00 pm. Refreshments will be served after the hike. Come join us for a fun family event. There are three different levels of hikes available depending on ability and age.  The cost for adults is $7 and $6 for children. You can click here for more information.  If you have questions call Nancy O'Toole at 435-671-1453.

Can't make January 18th work? Then think about the Romantic Moonlight Snowshoe Hike on February 15th. 

Brought to you by Heath @ HeathsHomes.com

Local Winter Activities

You can participate in the 119th annual Christmas Bird Count on January 5th at the Wasatch Mountain State Park Visitor Center, and you don't even have to be a bird expert.

This is a great way to get out and enjoy the fabulous outdoors that surround our beautiful county. Check out all the other winter activities available right here in our backyard offered by Wasatch Mountain State Park.

Brought to you by Heath @ HeathsHomes.com

Winter in the Park

Here are quite a few great, outdoor, winter activities available for you right here in your backyard. Take a look and put a few on your calendar. I guess we better get out and enjoy this winter weather in our beautiful valley. We waited all summer for this!

All of these events are at Wasatch Mountain State Park. Call Kathy at 654-1791 if you need more information.

Brought to you by Heath @ HeathsHomes.com

Outdoor Lovers Unite

Outdoors men and women, help bring some Wasatch County trails back to life! Join the USDA Forest Service to work on some hiker-biker-horseback rider trails near the bottom of Daniels Canyon.

Where: Meet at the Heber-Kamas Ranger District Office at 2460 South Hwy 40 in Heber City.

Who: You, your mom, your dad, your 7 year old, your neighbors, your coworkers, your significant other, your friends from the gym. Everyone is welcome.

When: Saturday September 30th at 8:30 am.

What to bring: Closed toed shoes, long sleeve shirt, pants, small pack for carrying water and snacks, friends, and family.

What will be provided: Tools such as tree trimmers, loppers, and hand saws, as well as personal protective equipment.

It's the perfect kind of day to get out in this gorgeous valley we live in and give a few hours of your efforts to make it even better. If you think this is a good idea, please share it!

Brought to you by Heath @ HeathsHomes.com

Add value to your home by using 1 of these 4 methods

Expanding your living space into the great outdoors is one of the top four ways living landscapes can add value to your property and extend the usefulness of your home. 

Yards can be outdoor family rooms and are becoming a more and more important element for those of us that like to spend time outside and provide a safe place for our kids and pets to play outside as well. Merging indoor with outdoor living to increase living space is a huge trend right now and will in most cases increase the value of your home and make it more desirable to home buyers as well as yourself.

Adding curb appeal is something also commonly talked about when discussing ways that living landscapes can add value to your property. A first impression is very important to most home buyers and the front yard and front entry is the ticket. Studies show that improving curb appeal by beautifying the lawn and front landscape can boost property values by as much as 17 percent.

The third way to make your living landscape work for you is by adding trees. Mature trees are a positive point for home buyers. According to the Society of Arboriculture, each mature front yard tree adds 1 percent to a homeowner's sale price and a large specimen tree can add as much as 10 percent to a property's value. That 1 percent may not seem like much, but given that the usual commission of a real estate agent working for you receives 3 percent of the sale price, that little tree investment is pretty awesome.  The research suggests that if you plant 3 trees to increase your price by 3 percent, then you've technically paid for a real estate professional to help you with the contracts, deadlines, and hassle of selling your home.

The other top four method to add value with living landscapes is to actually plant and nurture them. Living landscapes impact monthly utility bills. The U.S. Department of Agriculture tells us that strategically placed trees can save up to 56% on annual air conditioning bills and in the winter, evergreens that block winter winds can save 3% on heating costs. Even your lawn is beneficial and can impact your energy efficiency. According to the Alliance for Water Efficiency, cumulatively, eight average sized front lawns can provide the cooling equivalent to air-conditioning for 18 homes. 

So as you decide what living landscape projects you want to undertake to increase your property value as well as your own outdoor family happiness, consider these statistics from the National Association of Realtors:

Seeding the family yard will recover 417% of the project cost.

Updating a landscape with sod will result in a 143% recovery of costs.

Adding a new patio will recover 102% of the investment.

Building a new wooden deck will recover 106% of the project cost.

It looks like any beautification or enhancement to your outdoor living space will pay off financially as well as let you enjoy the great outdoors to a fuller extent.

To read the full article I found about this topic, please go to www.LivingLandscapes.Matter.com. 

Brought to you by Heath Harvey @ HeathsHomes.com

What's your garden style? Part 2

Here is Part 2 to the weekender plant purchasing guide for your yard. Part 1 talked about Victorian, cottage, alpine, farmhouse/countryside and modern garden styles and what kind of plants to purchase in order to achieve the look you want. This post highlights formal, butterfly and bird, family-oriented, and high desert garden styles as we well as a little more general yard planning advice and tips.

The formal garden can be thought of as a well ordered paradise. It's usually symmetric with simple geometric designs. There are clean lines and everything is in it's place. It has a plan. A formal garden is not thrown together. Formal gardens feature repetitive plantings which create lines. Green leafy plants with foliage that can be trimmed and shaped, and the shrubs create the backbone for the garden. In many formal gardens, white flowers are the choice for floral color.

The most common way to get the formal garden look, is to start with a focal point then plant beds with rows of foliage plants that mirror image itself. This focal point can be a water feature, a gazebo, a topiary, a simple archway, a bench, an incredible tree, an urn, a sundial, anything really. Hedges are very common in formal gardens. They act as borders. Then the actual color is inside the hedge borders. You can fill in the the walkways with gravel or even brick to finish it off.

Plants that you can train into hedges for the formal garden are currants, privets (Ligustrum), boxwoods, yew, holly, arbor vitea, junipers, even dwarf arctic willows. Just anything that you can easily trim and that can handle pruning. Sages, rosemary, and other herbs are popular in formal gardens. 

Formal herb garden in Ireland at a culinary school.

When it comes to filling in the space inside your hedges, you can use any kind of perennial or annual you like. Usually the plants are neat and tidy varieties that are kept looking nice and full. Do this by planting close together and use a limited color palette of just two or three colors. Astilbe, hosta, hydrangea and begonias are commonly used for the shady areas. Lavender, roses, coneflowers, marigolds, asters, lambs ear and salvias are great varieties for the sun.

A great advantage to formal gardens is if you have a small space, you can make it grand by making it formal. You can even have a formal vegetable garden. You just need to make it symmetrical or a mirror image of itself.

There are a few things that you need to include in your garden if you want to lure all kinds of birds and butterflies and make them want to stick around. You need pollen and nectar rich flowers. Wildflower and old fashioned varieties are the best. You also need flowers that are in bloom throughout the season so there is always something for them to come to your garden to visit. It may seem daunting to always have something blooming but with a little planning it really isn't difficult.

Providing supplementary feeders as well as blooms full of pollen and nectar will ensure frequent visitors but if you want them to stay you need to provide water. Birds and butterflies require a water source. You can install a water garden, a bird bath, a catch basin, or even drippers for the birds and butterflies.  Muddy water puddles even attract butterflies as they are looking for salt and nutrients as well as water.

Buddleia, commonly known as Butterfly Bush, looks similar to lilac.

Some great plants that attract birds and butterflies are milkweed and butterfly weed (aeschlepia), alyssum, butterfly bush (buddleia), daylilies, bee balm (monarda), coral bells, lilac, Joe-Pye weed, zinnias, hollyhock, delphinium, scabiosa, verbena, and many others.

If you have a family with kids at home then having a family-oriented backyard and garden is pretty important. The key is balance - everyone needs a space. Adults need a space to relax without Dora and Diego sand toys in their way, younger kids need a safe place to play, and older kids need a space where they can enjoy being outside but supervision isn't needed. A family-oriented yard and garden doesn't have to be a space with a beat up lawn and a trampoline. It can be beautiful and mature as well.

The most important item in your yard is you and your favorite people. The best way to make everyone feel welcome and allow it to be a place to escape to is to design a portion to make everyone happy. Everyone loves to eat outdoors so making a place to grill and/or eat outside pleases everyone. This should be a priority in your plan. Your yard should be kid friendly, but not so much that adults can't kick back and enjoy the evening without sitting on water toys. So everyone needs to give and take. That might mean you must give in for room for the fort but take that dream of having an amazing rose border and raised bed full of perennials and shrubs. You can give the sweeping lawn for cartwheels and football practice, but keep and take your wishes for a romantic but tidy entertaining area.

One suggestion to meet everyone's needs is by thinking in concentric rings radiating out from the house. That first ring closest to the house is the ring for the little ones. They can be supervised and safe. Providing some kind of outdoor entertainment for them close to the house is needed. The next ring out from the house is for older kids. They can play within earshot and even within your line of vision if you are on the deck or even in the house looking out the window. The outermost ring is for the teen and preteens that want to enjoy the outdoors but want some privacy as well. Providing a space for them to relax and unwind outside will instill a love of being outside and enjoying nature.

There are all kinds of great kid friendly ideas on Pinterest and all over the web if you search for them. You can find ideas for huts, teepees, forts, playhouses, swing sets, little pools, sand boxes, tic tac toe boards, chalk painted fences, hopscotch pads, outdoor water kitchens, fire pits, backyard games, race car tracks, sensory and fairy garden ideas, marble runs, climbing walls, and thousands of projects the kids can make as well.

As far as plants go for a family-oriented yard, anything goes. Whatever look you want, you can have on that whole give and take deal. Try to be patient however when soccer practice ends up in your flower beds once in awhile. Lamium is a ground cover that is really tough you might want to try. Butterfly bush (buddleia) is also pretty tough and attracts butterflies. Lambs ear is great filler plant and is a pretty fun plant to touch, even adults like to give lambs ear a little rub as they walk by. Snapdragons are kinda fun. Kids can make little monster faces out of them by squeezing the sides together and make them 'talk.' There are chocolate smelling cosmo varieties, and what kid doesn't like sucking out the nectar of a columbine bloom? But honestly, don't be afraid to put a strategically placed barberry bush where you don't want kids to go. They will stay out of an area if there are a few pokeys.

A high desert garden is considered to be above 4000 feet in elevation and receives less than 10 inches of rain per year. According to www.usclimatedata.com, Heber City receives 16 inches of rain and Midway get 20 inches per year. So a high desert isn't exactly perfect for the Heber Valley, but there are many places in Utah that fit this classification. And, if you love the look, you can make a lush, beautiful, full high desert garden here in the Heber Valley.

Large fluctuations between the daytime and nighttime, as well as between the winter and the summer temperatures are a characteristic of high desert climates. That means bulbs like tulips and daffodils that require a cooler dormant period do great in high deserts. High winds and late spring frosts are also common in the high desert.

Don't think that high desert means you must xeriscape and don't think that xeriscape (water conserving landscaping) really means ZEROscape. High desert and even xeriscaped gardens can be very lush, full and beautiful when the right plants are chosen. A few tricks to high desert gardening is to water deeply every few days rather than shallowly every day and to use mulch as much as possible. Mulch keeps the soil cool, it insulates plant roots and also prevents water from evaporating too quickly.

The best way to achieve a bountiful high desert garden is to create small pockets of plants with a BIG BANG for the best visual effect as well as ease of maintaining. These pockets are investment zones that can be just miniature gardens throughout your yard. One pocket by the front door, maybe one closer to the street by the mailbox or driveway. Possibly plant another one in the corner between your garage and house. Seasonal color in these pockets have a lush and full look when they are blooming. 

Grouping plants according to their water needs and how much maintenance they require will save you work as well as save water. Planting investments zones full of plants that work well together is the best way to maximize your high desert garden.

So here are a handful of plants that work hard for you all season long, look great, and thrive in high desert climates.  Potentilla, coreopsis, daylilies, oregon grape, lavender, penstemon, daisies, knifofia (red hot poker), irises, sages (salvias), California poppy, snow in summer, spirea, currants, Russian sage, catmint, and Johnson's Blue geranium. 

So, now that you have some other garden and yard styles to think about, remember that you can ultimately do whatever you want. You don't have to stick with just one certain style. You can mix and match. Have a cottage style front yard with a Victorian back yard and a formal deck and patio area. You can design a rock/alpine garden on a steep side slope of your yard and let the remainder of the yard have a countryside/farmhouse feel. Throw in a formal veggie garden in a family-oriented backyard. Whatever you want, whatever makes you happy, whatever fulfills your yard and family's needs. 

Here are a few design concepts to think about. They come naturally to people that love gardening but may not be quite so obvious to those that are new to playing in the yard all year. 
- The summer sun pounds the south side of your home and yard.
- Because we live in the northern hemisphere, the north side of your home doesn't get the intense summer sun. 
- Morning sun shines on the east side of your house and therefore the east side is shaded in the late afternoon and evening.
- The west side of your property gets intense sun all afternoon and evening.

- With that knowledge you can plan where patios, decks, shade trees, benches, flower beds, swing sets, and other landscaping items work the best.
- If you want to plant an evergreen tree like a spruce or a pine, you probably want to avoid planting it close to your home on the south side. It may seem great that it blocks the hot summer sun coming in the windows, but that means it also blocks the warm winter sun that really helps keep your home warm during the cold winter months. If you want to plant them on the perimeter on the south side, that is great. Or evergreens are great on the north side of the home. You don't have to worry about blocking the sun and can add privacy if you need it. However, planting a deciduous tree on the south side of your home to shade those south windows is a great idea. It looses its leaves in the winter to allow the sun to shine in.

- If you want to plant trees for shade, they should be planted along the perimeter of the south and west side of your property for them to actually provide shade for you when it gets hot.
- If you want to provide a shady spot for the kids to play and just sit outside during the day when its July, the north side of the house is a good place to start or the east side of the house because it is cooler in the afternoons on that side.
- The plants that require part sun, not full sun, do amazing on the north and east sides of your house. 
- When you are thinking of a place to dine outside or entertain, think of how your house is situated on the lot and plan so that the western evening sun doesn't bake you and your visitors on those fabulous August afternoons. Provide some kind of shade structure, tree, or even move your dining area to another cooler part of the yard.
- You know those little tiny swimming pools for kids? Placing it on the east side of the house in the morning and filling it up, and then letting it warm up all morning long in the morning and early afternoon sun is great. By 3:00 pm the water is so warm from the sun but the house is beginning to shade the pool as the sun moves west so then the kids can play in warm water but not the blazing sun so they don't get sunburned. 

- When a plant's tag says FULL SUN, that means plant them on the south and west sides where they will receive the best rays for most of the day.
- It is sad to see fun yards or playgrounds for kids that are not very well thought out when it comes to the sun. There is a playground on Midway's main that has awesome shade trees planted on the east side of the property. That's all good but the south and west sides of the playground are completely plant-free. So, when the sun comes out and the kids are out playing, there is shade available in the morning. That's great but not really super necessary because the mornings here aren't too hot. But in the middle of the day and in the afternoon when it gets toasty on the playground, there isn't one lick of shade from any trees or shrubs.
- If we can be more aware of where the sun is, where to plant what, and make our yard dreams come true, then everyone enjoys being outside so much more. 

Happy landscaping, dreaming, planning, weeding, planting, creating, and enjoying this spring and summer!

PS, if you want to learn how to add value to your home by doing one of your favorite hobbies, gardening, click here for another one of my blog posts.

Brought to you by Heath Harvey @ HeathsHomes.com