Checking in on the gardening

I took these photos in August and September to check on the progress of my flowers and little garden.  I was gone for a lot of the summer, so I am giving equal credit to our friend Luke who housesat and generously took care of the plants as well.

Now that we're settled into autumn, the flowers are winding down.  I do still have a lot of happy zinnia, cosmos, and marigolds.  The butterfly bushes have some flowers left but definitely aren't in full glory anymore.  My mom and I bought some perennials at my local nursery's fall sale and they're settling into the ground now.  A few are looking a little shocked, so I'll wait a bit and put pictures up once they perk up.

proof that butterflies loved my butterfly bush!

flowers from the yard... cosmos, zinnia, butterfly bush, marigold

butterfly bush, canna lilies, zinnias

some of my little sungold tomatoes

The pumpkin vine really rocked it out this year, making the shed look even better!

morning glory growing up onto the shed

a pepper!

my finest batch of pumpkins ever (the only one really)

slightly overgrown zucchini

my cute little bell peppers

Catching Up: Projects

It's been a month since I last posted anything... time to start catching up!  I've been to Vermont, Connecticut, back home for a couple of weeks, and now I'm midway through my monthlong stay in Boston.  With so much going on, I think I'll break it down and do a few catch up posts.

I haven't done a whole lot of projects, so I'll add in some pictures of my flowers and new garden! 

I finally finished the "wallpaper" backsplash which needed to be done after the cabinet/fridge switcharoo left that wall piece exposed.  Also up for admiration is the new shelf above the stove.

I had to replace the old shelf because it wasn't long enough to reach the cabinet we hung (remember the fridge used to be there).  It went to good use though, we cut a piece off to fill the gap between the two cabinets (you can barely see it in the first picture.  I couldn't decide how I wanted the new shelf to look, and eventually decided to roll with my inspiration to match the wooden piece I used for the dog bowl stand.  I painted the exposed wood wall behind it, and voila!  

Welcome to the ice cream parlor.  I love it!

Speaking of ice cream parlors, a friend and I were inspired to paint little pop art ice creams to hang in the kitchen above the hallway door... these two are in progress, we still have to put on the finishing touches and paint the third canvas.  Mine is the one with the blue background - I still have to add the cherry!  We had a great time painting.  The project started around 11pm and while I swear no alcohol or drugs were involved, we ate tacos, mini pizzas, and other munchies as we painted until we looked at the clock and saw 3am!  Hence, the missing cherry and unfinished whipped cream!

Before the great drive to VT, I made these two little sundresses for my friend's baby.  Naturally, I do lots of things backwards... notice how one pair of straps buttons inside and the other buttons on top.  These are great little dresses to throw on a kid.  They stitch up quickly too since it's one piece! 

As of June 7th, the butterfly bushes are blooming, the cosmos are coming up,  canna lilies are up, zinnias are on their way, and the redbud tree finally has its leaves.  Before I left for my month in Boston, I was frantically trying to lay out an irrigation system on my 3 main flower beds.  I got 135' of drip hoses and am hoping for the best.  I will be so excited to see how everything looks when I get back in July!

My next door neighbor has the most lush, plant filled yard.  It's truly enviable.  He's always trying to give me plants and it's awesome!  Except when I'm about to be gone for 8 weeks during the hot dry summer! I told him in no uncertain terms that while I was really excited about doing a garden, it just wouldn't be a good idea since I wouldn't be around to take care of the plants.  Within 30 minutes, he had brought over 3 tomato and 4 pepper plants and they were in the ground.  I also finally installed the trellises and planted the morning glory seedlings that I had started a couple of months before.  Also in the leftover and neglected seedling tray were a number of shasta daisies which I planted too.  As if that weren't enough, I figured since I had a garden started, and our friend/housesitter would be watering it anways, I might as well throw in my seed packets... nothing to lose!  However - if it works out, it will be a SUPER crowded garden - I put in a pack of zuccini seeds, a pack of corn, and a pack of pumpkin seeds.  

Here's one of the morning glory babies as of June 7.  I'm hoping that by the time I get home, they'll be all over the trellis!

April showers brought my May flowers!

The weather has been so great the past week that's I've been spend a lot of time outside - before we get hit with the summer heat.  I shared the work on the shed already and now I'm going to show off my work from the past couple of years as my perennials are popping up!  I've planted many new ones too, but they aren't much to look at yet so I'll share pictures of the new additions later.

Canna Lilies with Elephant Ears in the background

Astors with fading Daffodil greenery in between

I'm very excited about the cosmos re-seeding from last year.  It was so unexpected to see, I actually plucked a couple thinking they were weeds but then noticed the whole area had them and recognized the cosmos foliage!

Kopper King Hibiscus

Snapdragon

May Night Salvia

Hydrangeas (they will be a surprise since I forgot what the blooms look like thanks to being gone last spring and summer!)

project: shed - continued

We had another beautiful day so I spent most of it outside working on the shed.  Yesterday, I got it all prepped for paint so I was ready to go this morning!  Despite forgetting to bring my paint swatch with me, I did get the right paint color on my shopping trip this morning.

In the interest of full disclosure, I have to admit that I have only painted the half of the shed that we can see.  The back and other side are on hold because of all the vegetation and fallen limbs back there.  It would be another big project just to gain enough access to pressure wash and paint!  I might do that in the fall.

This is how the shed looked on April 7th, with falling shutters and gigantic boxwoods.

The tree guys came on April 8 to take down the two aged redbuds and take out the boxwoods in front of the shed... a great improvement - sort of - now you can really see how crap our shed looks!

This morning's fresh coat of the top strength primer that Kilz had to offer.  It's looking good already!

I love the new color!  I still have to do the second coat, but here's a peek at the new look.  I'm not planning to put shutters back up because non-functional shutters that are just screwed to siding make me twitchy.  Especially when they clearly aren't sized to even pretend to cover the window!  

Instead, I'm going to get a trellis for each side of the window so that I can grow some peas and morning glory flowers up it and I plan to paint the trellis to match the door.  I'm also going to make a flower box for under the window and paint it to match the door.  I've had this idea of making a garden in the now empty space in front of the shed... we'll see how quickly that happens!

Most importantly, here's a photo of the beautiful flowers that Bob sent for Mother's Day.  True, I'm not a mother to human babies but we have 3 furry babies that I take care of!  I'm also taking the opportunity to show off our cool couch and the wall installation I did this winter!

These are the very lovely farmers market flowers that my mom brought over for the Mother's Day brunch I had for her and my mother in law.

Yay for the TreeMan!

I got up early thinking it would be a nice relaxing ho-hum day at home.  I'm feeling mostly better except for pain in my wrists and hands (which is better than yesterday, so that's great!)  The day turned out to be far from ho-hum though!

I picked up some sub work at the ballet this weekend, so that will be two shows Saturday and one show Sunday.  I feel pretty good about going to work for a couple of days and am desperately hoping that my hands feel normal tomorrow.  Luckily there isn't really any shoe tying or buckling during ballet costume changes, so I should be ok with my sub-optimal fine motor skills.

I spent the morning looking around online at area rugs.  Our beloved dog Tommy is getting older and HATES to walk on hardwood floors.  I got a runner for the hallway a few months ago and he's finally deemed it safe to walk on.  He decided to sleep on our bedroom floor last night (which only happens about 3 times a year and usually just during a storm) so now I'm thinking again about getting an area rug for the bedroom floor so that he'll feel safer and more welcome.  I found an option from FLOR that I'm really excited about!  I don't need a rug quite that big but I love the shape and I could cut it myself out of an area made of fewer tiles.  I feel like this rug has a slim to none "husband approval" chance but I went ahead and ordered a few swatches to look at, so we'll see.  Did I mention that the swatches are pink?  Pink is the new black, it looks good with every other color, even orange which is the color of our bedroom!

I also started tearing apart the cushions on the patio furniture so I could soak the foam parts in bleach.  They're ugly and I want to make new covers for the foam inside them (which is about as gross looking as the chair seat in the before photo.)  I also tried cleaning one of the chairs and it turned out really well!

before

after... like brand new!

Towards the end of the outdoor furniture / bleach project, the TreeMan called and said he could come over in a couple of hours because of a cancellation this afternoon!  This was VERY EXCITING because he just did the estimate yesterday afternoon and said it would probably be a couple of weeks.  He knew I was eager to get the gnarled redbud down while the cherry tree was still blooming, so he snuck us into the schedule when they got the opening!

The guys took out the 2 gnarled old dying redbud trees, all the Bradford Pear babies behind the fence, a fully grown Bradford Pear baby on the side of the yard, 3 GIANT overgrown boxwoods in front of the shed, and the saplings by the house.  (for those not in the know, Bradford Pear trees have pretty but stinky flowers, the bastard spawn of Bradford Pear trees do not flower and are pokey with thorn type protrusions on the branches)

before - with the 2 extra large rotting redbud trees in the foreground

after - what a great view!

The redbud trees were dying and hollow inside!  Good thing we took them down!

shed before... with 3 GIANT shrubberies

shed after... one good power washing away from a spiffy new paint job!

On the Mend!

I'm feeling a lot better and am on the road to recovery!  I wish I knew what was going on, but the doctor hasn't really figured it out yet.  I'm getting more blood stolen from my arm tomorrow morning and they're going to run more tests and hopefully we'll find an answer soon.

I'm SO READY to start doing cool stuff again!  I'm not one who ever gets bored, but this past few days I've really been getting close to boredom since I'm at home with all the time in the world to do stuff, and am unable to really do things.  My hands are working better, so I'm thinking the map project is next!

I'm also thinking that this is a great time to work on the projects that we need to hire other people to do!  I love this gnarled old redbud tree, but for the first time, I've noticed that we have a completely gorgeous giant double flowering cherry tree behind it!  The redbud is dying and has dropped two large branches in the last year, so I'm going to have it taken out so that we can better see the cherry tree, dogwood, and Japanese maple behind it!

can you find the double cherry behind the ivy tangled gnarled redbud?

This is another project I'm hoping to push through soon... our treacherous but totally awesome pergola.  Hey carpenters, see any structural issues?  hehe.  I'm thinking that adding lots of screws and replacing the cracked and bowed columns will make it safer.  We love the size of it and it seems costly to try to build a new one.

it's listing out just a little : )

we have 3 of these holding the 20' x 20' structure to the fascia board (hopefully they're also attached to the roof joists or something as well)

some of the pretty flowers growing in our yard right now!

This is the latest of my grandmother's orchids to bloom!  Mom soaked all of the orchids for me on Friday night, and she took this one down which I never do.  It just gets water poured into the plastic tray underneath so I just leave it hanging.  When she took it down, we were both amazed to see 3 fully formed flower stalks just days away from blooming that had been growing facing out the glass door out of sight!  She put it back with the blooms facing us and today they popped open!  I'm thrilled and I guess getting to see these blossoms this is the silver lining in my mysterious illness.  I never would have seen them if she hadn't taken the whole basket down!

My walking iris plant bloomed again today!  The blooms only last a day so it's a precious fleeing excitement!  It's growing lots of little buds and this is only the 3rd day in 2 weeks that I've seen blossoms, so it's still very new and exciting.  This was also my grandmother's plant.  It's HUGE, about 3' across and all spiky and tropical looking.  It's really cool!

If I believed in that kind of stuff, I would think that my grandmother is still looking after her plants.  They were pretty much her favorite thing and she had LOTS of them!  We split the plants up amongst the family and we all seem to be having good luck with them so far.   She died in November and so far, I've had blooms on the walking iris, cactus, and 4 orchids (one of which bloomed from November until the end of March!)

Days 1 - 3

Despite being in full recovery mode from work and also trying to shake my wicked cocktail of flu and sinus infection, I dove straight into project after project on Day 1 of being a Housewife.  I didn't plan to do so many things, it just sort of happened as one success would inspire me to do something else!  I'm going to include the age of the projects as I list them out - I have some really old projects that I'm getting to!

Day 1:
I felt guilty about quitting my job and staying home, but also such an increasing sense of happiness and I felt the stress receding and tranquility and possibilities coming in!

I went to my first monthly neighborhood garden club meeting.  Several of the ladies asked if I was new to the neighborhood and I sheepishly admitted that we've been here for 6 years!  It was really fun and I'm looking forward to actually making some friends in the neighborhood.  I grew up in the woods with only a few neighbors, so I have no frame of reference for what it's like living in a neighborhood with lots of people.  Our neighborhood was built in the 50's and being at the garden club meeting (especially now officially being a housewife) gave me a real feeling of going back in time - though no one was wearing a nice dress and pearls : )

Projects:
- 4 years - dragged the extra roll of chain link fencing, roll of wire, and extra fence posts to the street... they were gone within minutes, and I wondered why I hadn't done it years ago! (I love the street fairies!)
- 3 years - dragged our old extra grill to the street with the extra propane tank.  The propane tank disappeared in minutes and the grill was gone within the hour.
- ongoing - weeded a flower bed in front of the house
- ongoing - got 4 paint samples for the shed which needs painting very badly
- 1 year - swept off the back patio area and got rid of all the broken pots and other trashy stuff

the patio afterwards, so pretty!

a close up of one of the tulip beds on the patio.  so cheerful!

Day 2:
Feeling great! (even though I'm still recovering from my illnesses)

Projects:
- new - planted petunias in my front porch flower boxes!
- 2 years - met with someone to see if they thought our lovely but falling apart pergola could be fixed up or was becoming unsafe and should be taken down.  He said that it could probably be fixed but we'd need to replace several columns and add more in the middle because the span is too much - he also was not pleased with the fact that it's held to the house with just 3 bolts attached to the fascia board (it's 20'x20')
- 1 month - ordered a magnetic sheet to put my giant pac man wall stickers on so they can become fun fridge magnets!
- 1 year - ordered a map and pins so I can put our travels on the map and laugh about all the places we've been to in the past few years (I know my dear husband will not want to see this project completed, he's tired of traveling)
- 2 years - screwed eyes into the frame of one of my grandmother's paintings and put wire on another, so I finally got to hang up two more of her watercolor miniatures!
- 3 years - finally shortened the living room curtains.  When I made them, I just folded some purchased curtains in half and sewed a casing and they've always been too long.
- 9 months - finally started the curtains for the master bath.  Last year we put pretty white and cobalt blue tiles on the floor and I've been wanting to replace the brown and orange curtains ever since!  I got one curtain done and left the other to do in the morning!

the living room curtains before and after... why didn't I bother to shorten them sooner?

Day 3:
I felt great as I soldiered on with the bathroom curtain project.  Curtains are SO BORING to make and I suppose that's why I never bother to do them right (until now).  I was really tired and I think that's from overdoing it on Thursday and Friday while still trying to recover from being sick.

Projects:
- new - started this blog!
- new - got pretty fabric to make covers for our ugly patio chair cushions!
- 1 month - sewed the button back on my knitted slippers (seems simple and not noteworthy, but I seem to never find the energy to do any sewing for myself, even as simple as sewing a button back on)
- new - got seed packets and trays and started lots of seeds... sunflowers, candytuft, shasta daisy, zinnias, sweet peas, and morning glory!
- ongoing - planted 5 new May Night Salvia plants with the two I already have
- 9 months - finished the bathroom curtains!

our bright and cheerful new curtains!