Mill Village Bungalow

Cut the grass finally

2010-05-11T22:11:00.003-04:00

After some unexpected but much needed rain interrupted grass cutting plans other days, today I finally got the back yard cut. The grass in the areas I am trying to reseed seems to be slowing sprouting, but I think I may end up needed to seed it in again to get it to look like much. I still need to get the string trimmer out for the edges, but on the whole the back yard looks better. Now I'll just have to try to cut the front yard later this week. The forcast is calling for rain tomorrow morning, which will interrupt any yard work plans if it is true.

Yesterday on my lunch hour I found a neglected 'Oregon Pride' hydrangea at Lowes and was able to get it for 1/2 price. I made several visits outside to water it for the rest of my work day and by the end up the day it had perked up quite a bit. Last night we had rain and cooler temps, which helped a lot. I did trim a few branches where the leaves were already looking crunchy back to healthy looking leaves. Might as well get the soon to be dead parts off so the plant can expend its energy on the healthy limbs.

Below is a before and after picture of the hydrangea. Top photo is about 20 minutes after purchase and below is 4 hours later.

Trying to pick this back up again

2010-05-05T01:25:00.004-04:00

I'm going to try to start doing the blog again... I think sometimes I try to document everything, then it becomes work, not fun. I have to remind myself that not everything needs a photo, etc. Other times there hasn't been anything worth writing about going on at the house.

Since I last wrote a few major things have happened:

- In June 2009 I had the falling down shack in the back burned down. The workers never came back to finish carting away the debris like they were supposed to, so this left me with a bunch of cinder blocks stacked where the shack used to be and a fire ring. We have used the fire ring several times since to burn limbs. Handy, but not attractive. This area of the yard remains essentially unimproved.

- In Novmeber 2009 I hired two workers from Craigslist to do some of the unfinished projects. I finally got an outside outlet and was able to put up real outdoor lights, but no animatronic deer this year. We also finally got the new light fixtures hung in my mom's room, my room and on the porch. The old porch fixture could not really be removed, so we took off the shade part and disconnected it. We then had to make a new hole in the ceiling of the porch and put the fixture up slightly away from where the old fixture was.

- The county came and dug the ditch in front of the house MUCH deeper, making the front yard look not so great. Amazingly, they didn't get all my daylilies or daffodils. Then, the county came back to redo water pipes and dug up another part of my front yard and installed a big ugly concrete circle in my front yard. Now the front yard really looks bad.

- We had a much colder winter (2009-10)than we usually do with several snowstorms and low temps in the teens for over a week. I lost a lot of my herbs and almost all my terra cotta pots over the winter. I am now (spring 2010) trying to rebuild my herb garden.

- Over the winter my external hard drive crashed so I lost almost all the original photos of my house and my yard. No, I didn't back them up in unreduced form. Yes, that was stupid. I am very upset about this and have IT guys working on my hard drive. I get depressed just thinking about it.

- Spring 2010 came fast with a very early last frost, in March. The weeds came even faster and my whole back yard was covered. I had to resort to using a chemical weed killer on the "grass" part but that didn't even kill all the weeds. I had pulled at least 40 30 gallon bags of weeds out of my yard this spring. I am once again attempting to grow more grass.

- I finally broke down and bought a lawn mower so I can mow my own grass.

a little work around the house

2008-08-03T22:19:00.003-04:00

I have't writtne much lately as not much has been going on other than constant watering trying to keep the yard alive. We got a few brief rain storms over the past few weeks, but not enough to really help the plants. I did get the water bill that included the day when the hose was left on all day and broke. It is maybe at most $10 higher than this time last year and I don't even think it is that much bigger, so that is a relief.

We bought two new lights, one for the porch and one for mom's room. I figured the light in mom's room would be easy to put up, until I got down the old fixture and found that there is no box up there. The strap had just been attached to the ceiling and now the drywall is flaking away at the edges, so attaching a new strap that way was out of the question. I've got a call in to Neil to come out and put in a box. The porch light is even worse. The base of the current fixture is underneath the vinyl. I cut it away a little bit and from what I can see, it looks like the base may be further covered with a piece of wood. So, changing that fixture will require removing at least one piece of vinyl and possibly some wood, then undoing the fixture and replacing it. This is beyond me, so I'm waiting for Neil on that as well. I bought 4 new light boxes the other day with the idea that when Neil does come I'll have him add a box to my mom's room, the porch if needed and while he is at it, maybe my room (guessing there is no box up there) and see if he will have the time to do anything about working on getting a light in the laundry room.

We were at Lowes yesterday looking at lights. I want to replace the bathroom light as when I was last changing the lightbulb, the fixture just seemed old and like it had been overheated at one point. I know it is just a cheap little fixture and I was hoping to find something else to just toss up there. So far, I haven't really found anything that is just what I want, so the old fixture stays up for now. While I was at Lowes, I did find an inexpensive oil rubbed bronze door knob that is perfect for the closet door in the dining room. It went on with no problems and looks much nicer. I also found ceramic lightswitch and outlet covers marked way down and bought those for the bathroom. They look nice as well. I looked briefly at knobs for the kitchen cabinets, but the cheapest thing I could find would cost me about $60 to change them out and I'd be left with a few extras, so that won't be done any time soon.

Today on my way home from yoga, I stopped at Home Depot to get some lighter paint for my mom's ceiling. She painted it the same color as two of the walls and I've always felt it just looked too dark. I ate lunch and was changing into painting clothes when I totally threw out my back. I currently can barely stand up and spent most of the afternoon asleep after taking a muscle relaxant. Painting the ceiling is on hold and I'm glad I got the doorknob switched out this AM as I can't do anything now.

new living room floor lamp

2008-07-20T22:36:00.002-04:00

The lighting redo is continuing... We got a new floor lamp at Target today, which we put in the living room. This allowed us to move the one mica style floor lamp in the living room into the dining room. We then moved the halogen light in the dining room into my mom's room to replace the halogen lamp that she had that got broken. I think it all looks very nice, but now of course I want to get a second of the new living room lamps, a Tiffany style mission design lamp, to put at the other end of the couch.

I'm still looking around for lights for the bedrooms and I can't find anything that I really like for my room at all, so that is on hold as usual. I found a light long time ago that I liked for my mom's room and I'm currently bidding on it on ebay. I have also been very dissatisfied with the kitchen light for a while. The fixture itself is fine, but the glass was broken when we moved in and we replaced it with a really awful, cheap glass shade. I had wanted to get a new fixture until I found a really great glass shade on Rejuvenation. I think it will be perfect and the fixture they show it on looks a lot like our kitchen light. I am going to see if I can find anything similiar to it locally, as I'm not too excited about having a big glass shade shipped cross country.

I still did not get the kitchen floor cleaned, but I did finally get the front door cleaned. The steel door was new when we moved in and there was a sticker still attached to the door. I was able to peel most of it off, but never could get the residue off. I wanted to try some Goo Gone on it, but every time I thought about it, I couldn't find the Goo Gone and I only saw the Goo Gone when I was doing other things. So, finally got the residue off, I hope, and have the Goo Gone whree I can find it. The door was looking pretty dirty, so after reading on the internet, I cleaned it with Formula 409, which did a pretty good job. There are still a few dirty parts and I'm going to try a Mr Clean Magic Eraser on them and see if that helps.

It was way too hot to do anything out in the yard today other than give everything a good watering and hope for the best.

big roma harvest

2008-07-20T00:09:00.004-04:00

I had my biggest ever roma harvest today, 3 1/2 pounds! I had planned to make a roasted vegetable tomato sauce tomorrow, but with the additional tomatoes, I went ahead and used my older romas to make a basic tomato sauce and will work on the roasted sauce tomorrow. I have also harvested 3 lemon cucumbers so far, gave one to Bobbie and the other two I have kept for my mom. There is a chance I may have a pretty good harvest of them and if so, I might try to pickle a few if I can find a recipe that will work with a small amount.

I have gotten nothing done around the house despite the fact that it is way too hot to work outside. We haven't had rain in 10 days now. The grass/weeds are still green but the plants are really suffering and I think I need to up the watering on the camellias. I had some really wilty plants I watered this evening. Tomorrow will be my big watering day and I'm going to try to really soak everything. I got eaten alive by the mosquitos this evening doing the watering and finally broke down and sprayed the yard with the Bug Free Backyard stuff, but only in the shady areas. I hate doing this as I have a really good population of bees this year, which I think is helping the cukes and all the other plants. I've also seen a few ladybugs. I don't want to hurt them, but the mosquito situation just gets worse and worse. Tonight there were CLOUDS of them around me when I bent down to water some of the shrubs. I'm hoping that this evening's spraying will help with the mosquitos and not hurt the bees.

I was playing around on the internet this evening looking at ourdoor lights, as I really want to replace our light. Bellacor was having a big sale and I got a light that looked great online at about 1/3 of its retail price. I hope it is as nice in person. I'm a tad worried about trying to install it, as the current light seems to come through the vinyl on the underside of the porch roof. I'm hoping there is a box under that, so we can easily hook in the new fixture. I do think it would look better if its base was on top of, not under, the vinyl.

more rain last night

2008-07-10T19:21:00.002-04:00

I heard thunder all night while I was at work last night, but we never actually saw it rain, though our cars were wet when we went outside. All the way home, the road was damp, so my hopes were up when I got home. I was truly shocked to see 1" in my rain gauge! I didn't water yesterday morning because everything still felt damp. Obviously I didn't need to water this AM and this PM it seems like things are still okay. I'm hearing thunder again tonight, so I'm hoping we may still have a shot at more rain. The grass is actually starting to green up just a bit, or may it is just the weeds!

I'm not feeling well today, but I was able to go outside this evening and make a green bean harvest. We are having them in a stir fry for dinner. I also saw my second baby cucumber on my cucumber plants, so they are hanging in there. I do believe that my squash are done for though. Due to the bug issue this year, which I think killed them, I don't know if I will give them a shot next year.

first pesto of the year

2008-07-07T21:57:00.001-04:00

I havested about 2 cups of basil on Saturday and today I finally got around to making my first batch of pesto for the season. I used some of it to make pesto pizza, enough for dinner tonight and a lunch later this week. I did not water at all today due to the rain this weekend, but I will need to water at least the container plants tomorrow morning.

second day of rain

2008-07-06T22:27:00.002-04:00

Yesterday afternoon's rainstorm came to about 1/2", so it was about 1" overall for Saturday. This AM I woke up to the sound of a pounding rainstorm and had to sneak a peek at the tomatoes, who all seemed okay before curling back in bed. Today would have been my big watering day, but we got enough rain that I didn't need to. When I did get up, I checked the rain gauge and it showed about 3/4" from the overnight and AM rainstorms.

Again this evening we had a storm that hit just when we had gotten back from the store. This storm wasn't as long, and we got about 1/6". Still 1" yesterday and almost 1" today has been great. The weather report is still calling for rain for the next few days, so I really hope the storms keep coming.

really pouring now

2008-07-05T17:19:00.003-04:00

I finally decided I needed to run out and get some more staking tape, as my dahlias and some of the tomatoes needed to be tied up some more and they were calling for rain. On the way home there was HUGE crack of thunder that made me jump. I got back home and started tying up 'Pink Accordion' to a taller stake. It had started to rain when I was pretty much done with that, then I ran over and tied up 'Lavender Perfection' dahlia, that was starting to lean some and got back inside before it started pouring. Looking out the window I'm already wishing I had gone out a bit earlier, so I could have staked my 'Black Pineapples'. They are all young, so none have stakes and they are really blowing in this hard rain. I don't like the staking tape I got at Home Depot. I don't know if there is something wrong with it or if it is always this way, but it is thick, oily and not very stretchy. I'll get it at Lowes from now on.

This is the first really hard rain I remember in it seems like months now.

rain at last!

2008-07-05T12:44:00.002-04:00

We have gotten 1/2" of rain this afternoon. It isn't all that we need, but it is so much more than we have gotten, so I'm happy for that. I'm hoping that it won't be all for the day.

This AM I was out in the yard and there were bugs ALL OVER my squash. No wonder the plants have not been doing well. I think I may just pull the squash plants. I don't really need anything that attracts munchy bugs to my yard. I did reseed the squash today, but that was before I found all the bugs, so I'm going to think about it overnight.

I also discovered today that what I thought were new flower pods on my Stella d'Oro daylilies were actually SEED pods. Two had split open and only had a few seeds left in them. So, I collected the few seeds I saw and sowed them out in a little 4" pot. I'll have to look up growing daylilies from seed, as I think one of my others has set seed as well. I'm always looking for more daylilies for the ditch!

I also moved 2 of the 3 purple hydrangeas outside for at least part of the day. They are doing well, but the 3rd has a bad case of the wilts and is staying indoors were I can mist it regularly. If it starts to look worse, it may go back in the water.

I have decided that I really want to do something serious about replacing the porch light, which I have always hated. I'm going to have to look around online and see what I can find. I'm still not sure what size light would look the best, but I think at 8"- 12" would probably be the best as far as scale goes.

I hate fireworks

2008-07-04T23:01:00.003-04:00

I have been a bit slack about keeping up with the blog lately, as not much has been going on other than the almost constant watering. I've been getting some nice tomato harvests lately, but I'm still waiting for enough ripe romas to try to make a tomato cream sauce. I don't want to sauce the big heirlooms, as they are supposed to be for fresh eating and saucing the cherries would be too much work. We had the roasted cherry tomato pasta dish again and it was very good again. We will probably have it next week as well. Last night fore dinner we ate two of the eggplants. I do want to try and make an eggplant and tomato dish that we had last year that I really liked. I found the recipe again, so maybe later this week.

Today I got a really late start on the day, but did give the yard a good watering. It was in the mid-90s today and I got hot and tired just from that little bit of outside work. I did repot the 'Blushing Bride' and 'Merritt's Surpreme' baby hydrangeas I'm growing into trade gallon pots. They can grow out in those until next spring. I am also working on getting the 'Double Pink' rooted cutting to start living outside. The last time I left it outside all day it almost died, so I'm trying a much slower approach this time. In other hydrangea news, I potted up the 3 cutting Mrs Phillips gave me from her purple hydrangea. They had been in water for 3 weeks and grew roots a ways up their stems. I actually had to cut leaves off one cutting, as the roots extended past the leaves. They will try a few hours outside tomorrow as well.

Hydrangea 'Penny Mac'

I'm tired and would like to go to bed, but there are constant fireworks. There have been fireworks for the last two nights and I'm sure it will continue for several more nights. These aren't even the pretty ones, just the ones that make a little explosion and the awful whistling ones. Times like this I wish they were illegal.

The really ugly house across the street from us had been on the market, but it never sold. Then they put up a for rent sign ($690/month- wow...) and it was rented in about a week. We saw the U-Haul for the new residents and have seen a van there, but we still haven't seen them.

Dahlia 'Lavender Perfection'

first attempt at tomato sauce

2008-06-28T20:06:00.006-04:00

Today was once again hot and I watered twice. I also got a pretty good harvest, including a lot of the romas that were suffering from blossom end rot. I figured they would not keep too well once picked, so I would need to do something with them ASAP. I didn't have a ton, but I decided to try to make tomato sauce. I used a modification for a recipe in the book Mediteranean Harvest.

I sauteed 2 cloves of garlic in 2 T of olive oil, with about 1 t minced onion over medium heat. Then I added all the tomatoes, about 1/4 t minced red pepper, 1 sprig of thyme and some basil leaves. This was then simmered over medium-low heat for maybe 10-15 minutes (I didn't have that many tomatoes). I don't have a food mill, so I pulled out one big chunk that looked like the end of a tomato, then ran it all through the food processor. I think it tastes pretty good and is spicy! I'll have it over pasta for dinner on Monday night.

I was able to fix the part that had blown off the hose and gave the front yard a good watering today. Things in the back are looking okay. I got some new fiberglass planters at Sams Club Thursday night and have planted up the 2 'Black Pineapple' tomatoes I was never able to place out. I'm now growing FOUR plants of this tomato, so I hope it produces well and that we like it.

water bill may be the biggest problem

2008-06-26T00:47:00.001-04:00

After coming inside and typing up a few things and worrying, I decided to go back out with a lantern and check out the situation literally on the ground. I think, other than my water bill, that I may have dodged the bullet. Our super-dry ground may have helped because the very areas that were squishy when I first turned off the water are only moist to the touch just about 10 minutes later and the two plants I was most worried about are surrounded by dry mulch. My forsythia seems like it got some water, but probably just a nice deep watering, as the top layer of soil doesn't even seem that moist.

Now, of course, I am still imagining a $500 water bill. I'm going to call the water company tomorrow (not that I think it will do any good).

disaster in the side yard

2008-06-26T00:29:00.001-04:00

I went to wash my hands a few minutes ago, and the water pressure just didn't seem right. I thought... what if I somehow forgot to turn off the water this afternoon when I was done watering the front yard, so I went to check.

My worst fears were confirmed, I had left the water on. The spray nozzle on the water wand was turned off, but the ground underneath my feet squished where I walked. The hose that connects diretly to the hosemobile has been blown apart in some fashion, I'll have to investigate it in the morning.

Currently I am worried about two things: 1) my water bill- which is going to be huge as the water was running for 12 hours, though I don't know how long the hose held before it blew and 2) my plants in the area that was soaked for that long. I am most worried about the forsythia, as it is closest to the area where the hosemobile is and where the water would be coming out. The water would have poured on this area. I am also worried about my 'Gentian Dome' and 'Mini Penny' hydrangeas that are also in the general area and my creeping phlox. I am hoping that the fact that the ground is so dry will work in my favor and that some of the water will have run off, to be absorbed in other areas and that none of the areas will have become waterlogged. Obviously, I won't be watering in these areas any time soon.

It will be daylight before I can really access the damage and it may be a week or more before I can tell if the plants were damaged. I'm going to hope for the best.

finally- new hose

2008-06-23T19:57:00.002-04:00

Not the most exciting thing to write about, but something I've been meaning to do for a long time... The "never kink" hose I bought last fall should have been an "always kink" and has been driving me nuts for months. Of course, I lost the receipt so I can't take it back, even though it has a 6 year warrenty and has started to leak.

So, the plan for a long time has been to get a new hose, but the ones that seem to work well cost about $25 and lets face it, I can get a 3 gallon hydrangea for that (or 6 gallons of gas). So, no hose for quite a while. Today I was at Wal-Mart and went in through the garden center. They had 50' "professional" hoses with a lifetime guarentee for $19, so I figured why. This time I'm stapling the receipt to the paper it came with with the guarentee, so if it fails I can take it back. I did some watering this evening with the new hose and it seems to work well. It is a bit heavier than the other hose, so I may hook it directly to the hosemobile and use the other hose and the one I drag around. That, and rolling up the old hose to shove it in the back of the yard (since I DOES still work, it just sucks), are tasks for Wednesday AM.

In other exciting news, I got my sun hat today! I was following a discussion on Myfolia about garden hats and someone linked to the Sungrubbies.com site and I couldn't resist this hat. Okay, so it is probably not the MOST practical garden hat, but it will give me lots of sun protection and look great!

not much other than watering

2008-06-22T21:58:00.003-04:00

It is that time of year, there isn't much to be done in the garden other than watering, harvesting and weeding. I'm sure there are areas I could weed, but trying to kill of the poison ivy is enough for right now. On Friday AM, I cleared the area I plan to plant the fatsia in. I pulled out a bunch of honeysuckle and cut back all the privet that was growing in the area. Once it is a bit cooler, I think I'll need to dig out all the privet stumps and add some compost to the soil. The soil in this area gets really dry from all the tree roots. I still haven't decided if I am going to plant the fatsia this fall or let it grow on in the pot for another year.

Today I watered and harvested and photographed in the morning, then watered and photographed a bit in the afternoon. I did get some good shots.

Daylily 'Fairy Tale Pink'- first bloom for it this year

Tomato harvest- 4 Early Girl, 2 German Pink, 1 Cherokee Purple and cherries

Orange ditch lily

Tricolor sage

Veggie garden part 1- by the fence

Veggie garden part 2- in the yard

always more watering

2008-06-17T23:16:00.003-04:00

Yesterday I was not feeling well, so I didn't go to yoga. Instead, I did a bit of work in the yard after work. I mixed up some aluminum sulfate water, using 2 tbsp this time and warm water as directed on one web site and watered all the Endless Summers in the back yard, Gentian Dome, the Penny Macs and the potted Together. I'm hoping if any of them put out a late bloom this will help them have a nice blue color.

Today and yesterday I did some more work on the endless task of tying up the tomatoes. It has been so hot and dry lately that I'm not getting much fruit set. I hope this trend doesn't continue, becuase while I'll get 5+ tomatoes off each plant if it does, I'm hoping for a bigger harvest.

Daylilies are blooming, but I think they are getting close to the end. I've noticed that particularly on the ones in the front yard, some of the buds are drying up without ever opening. I think this super hot, dry weather has been very hard on all the plants. I did get some good daylily pictures today.

Route 66

Pushmataha

Smokey Mountain Autumn

Unloosed Joy

got a little bit done today

2008-06-15T23:34:00.002-04:00

The heat is really keeping me from doing much in the yard, but I got a bit of work done today. This morning I watered the entire back yard, but the front some how got forgotten so I have to try to catch that up tomorrow. I repotted my new Endless Summer into a 3 gallon container to live for the rest of the year while I figure out where to go with it. Cityline Venice went into a big pot I had gotten at Sams Club a while back figuring I'd find a use for it sooner or later. I think it is just perfect for Venice.

My other big project of the day was digging up Masja hydrangea. It was probably too small to really plant out last fall and it was killed to the ground over the winter. This spring it did come up, but seems to be struggling and not putting out much growth. I dug it up and it will live in a pot at least until next spring. I'm hoping that this will get it growing stronger before it goes back in the ground. I put my 2nd Together in the space where Masja has been. It is a much bigger plant, so hopefully it will be able to thrive there.

In the afternoon, I got some work done on the veggies. I pulled up the last of the lettuce. I currently have too many squash in the windowbox, so I dug up the smallest one and potted it up to give away. Then I dug up two that were really close together and moved one where the lettuce had been and put the other in an 8" (probably too small, but it was at hand at the time) pot. I'm hoping that I did not disturb the roots too much. If I don't get many squash, I'll figure it was because they did not have enough room.

Speaking of room, I had planned to try to thin the cucumbers, but their roots have totally taken over the whole pot. So, I built a trellis out of bamboo stakes and either attached or tied each of the plants on to its own stake. We will see if this works. Other people have successfully grown lemon cucumbers in pots, so it may not entirely be mission impossible.

I was trying to get rid of all the remaining pots of pansies and violas, so with two others that I had left I seeded one in with Genovese basil and planted 4 bush bean seeds in the other pot. My current group of bush beans are starting to flower.

My Jagged Edge daylily bloomed this weekend and it is really fugly. Not at all the expected color. I don't know if it was that particular bloom, heat and drought stress or what. I'm hoping some of the other blooms are a better color.

Endless Summer hydrangea- this is why I grow them!

massive hydrangea haul

2008-06-13T22:02:00.002-04:00

I was on vacation all last week and since getting back pretty much all I've done is water. Today I was off work and wanted to try to get some work done in the yard before the heat really hit for the day. Bobbie had brought over some petunias she found on super mark down and I used some of them to make up a few pots, replacing the pansies that are now dead. Wednesday AM I also pulled out some dead pansies.

After potting up a few things, I ran out of potting soil and we went out to Lowes to run some errands. Monday night I had been at the Woodruff Rd Lowes and seen a lacecap hydrangea 'Claudie' that was really nice, but I didn't get it due to money and space issues. I was hoping that maybe they would still have it and I could get it. When we got there, the store was pretty much wiped out and there were not many hydrangeas left at all. It turned out that ALL there shrubs were on sale 75% off. At that point, I just decided to get ANY hdyrangea that looked good and sort it out back at the house. All told it came to $30. I got:

3 Forver and Ever 'Double Pink' - 1 gallon
2 Forever and Ever 'Red'- 3 gallon
1 'Madame Emilie Moulliere' - 3 gallon (originally marked $4.98 instead of $14.98)
1 'Glory Blue' - 3 gallon
1 'Merritt's Pink'- 1 gallon
1 'Endless Summer'- 1 gallon

After that, we went down to the Lowes in Simpsonville to see if they had the same sale and what they had. NO SALE in Simpsonville, but they DID have the 'Together' totally double hydrangeas I had wanted to get for Mrs Phillips, so I bought 3 of them, 1 each for me, Bobbie and Mrs Phillips. My mom fell in love with a huge beautiful 3 gallon 'Cityline Venice' so I got that as well. Those FOUR hydrangeas came to more than the big haul on Woodruff Rd, but it was worth it to get the 'Togethers' and 'Venice' is a real show stopper right now.

Massive haul of six Forever and Evers- 75% off

I told Bobbie and Mrs Phillips that the 'Togethers' were 75% off... I gave them each a 'Together' and a 'Double Pink' and gave the other 'Red' to Bobbie. That had found some of the original Fovever and Evers in 1 gallon pots marked down to $3 the other day, so now they have some of the special ones too. During our visit to Mrs Phillips, we saw the most INCREDIBLE hydrangea. It is just the color I've been wanting, a deep purplish blue. It was so beautiful! She gave us 3 cuttings, which I have put in water to root. I'm hoping they root well, but I doubt I'll get the same exact color, probably partially due to her soil in that particular area. A total showstopper! She also gave me some cleomes, which I planted at the back of the annual bed.

Cityline Venice- couldn't let this beauty slip away twice

Part of the haul staying with me

planting camellia and so much more

2008-05-26T20:52:00.002-04:00

This AM I went out and did things with Bobbie, so no work in the yard beyond watering. After a quick lunch, we went out to plant the camellia. The digging went fairly quickly and I was able to get the camellia positioned in well. I also decided that I was going to plant the two Stella D'Oro daylilies I had bought on either side of the camellia. I think they help give the whole area a more finished off look.

While I was out working on the camellia, some boys from a house up the street came by to see if I needed my grass cut. After barginning with them just a bit, we settled on $15 (what I had paid the guy who cut my phlox) and they came and got it done in about 1/2 the time he had. I told them not to worry about trying to edge it, as I could do that myself. The whole yard looks so much better with short grass. Also, I had done some more weeding this morning and spread some of the seed soil, then seeded in some grass. The grass being cut almost but a little mulch over those areas, so hopefully that will help conserve water a bit. After the grass was cut, I could see a big section in the center of the yard that was just bare dirt. So, I spread some of the seed soil, trying to spread it a bit heavier than I did in the shade area as the underlying dirt in this area is awful, then seeded in some of the grass seed I bought that is for sun areas. This area is going to be much harder to keep moist, it will require at least 2x per day watering, but again it is a relatively small area and should be doable by hand watering.

After the grass work, we went over to Bobbie's to have supper and get some lirope. I am not good with a mattock and Bobbie ended up whacking it out for me. I also stopped by Lowes, where cyprus mulch was $1.69 instead of the usual $2.00, so I got 8 bags.

I got home about 7:15 PM and needed to get the lirope planted around the edge of the newly extended foundation bed and also around the Bradford Pear and then spread the mulch. The lirope planted went really quickly because the dirt had all been worked before. I had enough to finish out the foundation bed and then some small pieces that I used to start planting under the Bradford Pear. Spreading the mulch around the newly planted lirope was a bit time consuming to try to get it to look good, but the rest went quickly and 8 bags were just enough to do the job.

I am quite exhausted after a very busy but productive weekend. I didn't get to the poison ivy though...

preparing the area for the camellia

2008-05-25T23:04:00.005-04:00

This morning was a watering morning and it took me about an hour to water the whole yard thoroughly. Once everything was watered, I got out and got some decent pictures taken, but of course first I had to come back in and delete some photos from my full memory card.

I worked a little bit on doing away with some of the pansy pots. I transplanted one bush bean seedling into its own small pot, moved the leatherleaf sedge into its own terra cotta pot and set it by the 'Limelight' hydrangea and finally potted up the one 'Ponderosa' tomato seedling in the big green plastic pot. I hope the seedling will make it out there in full sun. That variety has not been my strongest grower from seed. I also put my two now rooted hydrangea cuttings outside in pots for the first time today. As of this afternoon, they seemed to be doing well.

During the heat of the day, we went out and did errands, then ate dinner. After dinner, I went out to start to tackle the project of getting the camellia planted in the foundation bed. I used a garden hose to lay out how I wanted to extend the bed, then used the mattock that Bobbie gave me to try to cut the path of the bed into the grass. That was actually a bit harder that it seemed it would be. After that, it was one long project to dig out all the grass in the area. I finally finished just as the sun was setting. Now, I have a nice area of bare dirt to get started tomorrow morning digging the hole for the camellia and getting it planted. Then, I will really need more mulch!

planted limelight

2008-05-24T21:06:00.003-04:00

I got off work early yesterday and my three day holiday weekend started today. I had not been feeling well earlier this week and I ended up sleeping in until 10 AM. This was not entirely in the plan. Before we could go anywhere, I had watering 911 as my front hanging basket was badly wilted and I wanted to get the veggies off to a good start for the day.

Yesterday we got a sasanqua camellia to put in the foundation bed and while looking at other things, I realized at Limelight hydrangea might be the perfect thing to go between the small beautyberry and the pieris. So, it was off to a few stores today, as well as Sams Club for 2 bags of potting soil.

When we got back home, I spent some more time on the neverending project of pulling plantain weeds. I was working near where I planned to plant Limelight, then weeded out the area between the two plants. I was pretty hot while I was digging and it really took a lot out of me today, but I got the hole dug and Limelight put in. I think it looks great! I may put something small on either side of it to sort of finish out the bed a bit more.

My dog did a number on my Double Pink hydrangea, knocking a whole branch off. I cut the end and am going to try to root it in watering. In rooted cutting news, I potted up the Blushing Bride and Merritt's Supreme cuttings and will start transitioning them to the outside world. My one biggish Ponderosa tomato seedling finally seems to be growing and it may make it after all. I am going to start moving it out to full sun with no roof overhead. The other tomato seedlings seem to be coming along very slowly.

I still need to do something about the poison ivy. When we were running errands today, I forgot that I wanted to get a big box to use as a screen in some of the areas I am going to have to spray.

rain this evening

2008-05-18T19:26:00.004-04:00

The weather report was again calling for rain all day, so I made no garden plans. Bobbie and I went up to NC this morning to work with the dogs, then hit Cracker Barrel for brunch and went to Bloomfields to see if they had anything we wanted. No luck there, and we also made a fruitless chase out to the Ingles in Travelers Rest to see if they had the Forever and Ever hydrangeas (looking for a 'Together' for Mrs Phillips) like the site claimed, but no luck there.

After I got home, my mom and I went out and I got a new terra cotta pot for the rosemary on the front porch that has outgrown its pot and also got a ceramic pot for 'Blue Mouse Ears'. On the way home it finally started raining, but then stopped fairly quickly. I used the break in the rain to pot up 'Blue Mouse Ears' and finally water the potted hydrangeas with aluminum sulfate (2 tbsp per 2 gallons) and then water them well with plain water. I also pulled up some more plantain weeds.

hostas dug up- 2, hostas planted- 1

2008-05-16T22:33:00.004-04:00

The forecast changed and we did not get any rain today. That was good as it allowed me to work in the yard, but due to the forecast for rain, I didn't really have any plans for the day.

My first task of the day was to finally dig up the one 'Julie Morss' hosta by the 'Generale' hydrangea that is looking pretty terrible. When I got it dug up, it was surrounded by other roots and some of its own roots were dead. This plant had been planted bare root straight into the ground, so I don't know if those roots were ever alive or if all the root competition killed them. I potted it up and will eventually give it to someone.

Despite thinking that I did not want to waste my day pulling plantain weeds, I got started on that again. This time I was working back closer to the camellias, trying to pull them in areas where there actually WAS grass, so that those would stay grassy areas, not get taken over. I probably spent over an hour doing that.

I called Bobbie just before noon to see if she wanted to get together. We went to lunch at Stax, then over to look at Mrs. Phillips' yard and have dessert. Bobbie was thrilled with the 'Ponderosa' tomato I gave her. I do hope it grows well for her. Mrs. Phillips' yard looks really nice. She also lost a lot of the old wood on her hydrangeas this year, she thinks the late freeze and the super cold night early in the year might have done it. So, its not just my plant, it was just a bad year for hydrangeas. She does have a HUGE hydrangea that is quite exposed and covered in buds, I might see if I can take a few cuttings off it later this year. She also gave me some tall irises, some are two shades of blue and others are two shades of brown. I have to figure out where to plant them now. I might plant a few along the house where I have the two daylilies now.

After I got home, I dug around in the area where I had dug up the hosta and got rid of as many roots as I could. I then planted the 'Abiqua Drinking Gourd' hosta there. I'm not sure if this will be a good place for that hosta, but for the time being, I'm giving it a try. I dug up the 'Elegens' that was crowding the carex. I'm going to give Bobbie and Mrs. Phillips each an 'Elegens'. I don't think either of them has a blue hosta. My final task of the day was to get the water sprouts cut off the bottom of the Bradford Pear. It no longer looks like it is wearing a skirt and now looks like a tree again.

planting under the pecan tree

2008-05-15T20:28:00.006-04:00

Yesterday was my day to go in late to work, so I was out in the yard early trying to get some things done. I got the whole place watered first, then set to work on a little planting. I planted hosta 'Orange Marmalade' back under the pecan tree between the Teller Red hydrangea and the astilbe. Then I planted the golden spiderwort kind of between the hosta and the hydrangea, but set back a little. The hope is that the spiderwort will spread out and fill in that area, kind of making a (20" tall) ground cover in this area. It has little blue/purple blooms and is supposed to bloom all summer.

I cut back some of the junk privet near where the 'Orange Dream' Japanese Maple is so that it shows up a lot better. It is still a tad close to the hydrangea, but until I can get the shack repaired/torn down/whatever I want to leave the junk privet in place to block the view of the falling down shack. Speaking of privet, several of the largest privets are in bloom right now. While it is pretty, blooms mean seeds and seeds mean more of that garbage in my yard. It is never ending...

Once the planting tasks were complete, I felt compelled to tackle the grass a bit more. My yard is being taken over by plantain weeds. I picked an area in the shady part near the fence and pulled as many plantain weeds as I could for about 2 hours. My fingers are still red and sore from this. Then, I spread Black Cow (my bag is sort of waterlogged, so I need a new bag) over the newly seeded area, spread shade grass seed and watered well. I really wanted to get this done yesterday as the forcast was for several days of rain and I figured that would help get the grass seed off to a good start. My *latest* plan for the grass is to pick fairly small area each month and weed it and seed it in the same fashion. I'm hoping by sticking to a pretty small area, I can maybe get it watered well enough with the hose while I'm doing my other watering and will be able to get grass to grow. I'm going to get some of the sod and seed soil to spread over the bare areas before seeding, as that seemed to work well in the two area where I used it last year.

Today (Thursday) it was supposed to rain all day, but was just cloudy until late afternoon, when it finally did rain for a few hours.

Hydrangea 'Together'

hung up the rest of the porch baskets

2008-05-13T20:42:00.002-04:00

I got up early this morning so that I could water and avoid the wilting tomatoes I came home to yesterday. I got the potted back yard plants watered and then swung around to the front. My big basket on the shepherd's crook was looking horrid, but seems to have perked up this evening.

After all the watering was done, I still had plenty of time, so I was able to pot up the other three hanging porch baskets and get them hung up. I also repotted, yet again, the one 'Ponderosa' tomato seedling that I'm trying to nurse along for myself. It had finally been doing well, then all the wind of the last two days really bent its stem. I'm hoping that this latest REALLY deep repotting into a trade gallon pot will do the trick.

I also had time to pot up the spider plant cutting that I had been rooting, so I was able to take that to work with me for one of my co-workers. Now that warmer weather is here, I need to ramp up my coleus production, so taking some cuttings will be on the to do list for tomorrow.

trip to Atlanta

2008-05-12T22:30:00.005-04:00

I went down to Atlanta this weekend to see my friend act in a play, but of course I hit a few nurseries while I was there.

First up, my mom had wanted 'Blue Mouse Ears' hosta and found it on ebay, but I told her not to bid on it because we would just buy it locally. Sure... so, no luck finding it locally and of course it wasn't on ebay anymore. So, I decided that as Mother's Day present I'd get it for her. A quick web search turned up Bloomin Designs, a hosta and other plant nursery north of Atlanta, pretty much on my way down to my friend's house. I got in touch with them and though they would not be open on Saturday, we made arrangements for me to pay for the hostas, then pick them up while the nursery was closed. I was able to walk around for a little bit and all I can say is WOW, I really need to go back and bring my mom, because I pretty much wanted one of almost everything. I also was a bit scared when I saw how big 'Elegens' and 'Guacamole' can get. I think I may have a few too many 'Elegens' in my yard currently... They will make lovely gifts. While at Bloomin Desings, I also got 'Orange Marmalade' which we had both fallen in love with from its photos.

Since I was in the Atlanta area, I also stopped by the Pike Nursery out on Pleasant Hill Rd. Pike is unfortunately in bankrupcy currently, but they have been bought out or something. I did notice that there was a whole section that had been full of plants when I was there last fall that is now empty. Still, I did find some good things at reasonable prices. I initially got a mini hosta 'Sitting Pretty' and some black mondo grass (decent price and I needed at least one more for the area I've got planned). Then while I was walking around looking at things, I saw two Japanese Maples in the neatest octagonal boxes. I thought that I would like a box like that when my 'Tamukeyama' gets bigger, so I took a closer look. I was looking at 'Orange Dream', which just so happens to be the one other Japanese Maple I really want (after realizing I had a red dissectum, a regular red and a variegated one, the only thing really left was orange). Then I looked at the price. Wow... I will not repeat it here, but considering the tree was as tall as I was... However, due to the size of the tree, I was sure there would be no way I could get it home, so I left without it.

Once I got to my friend's house, I told her about my shopping trips and the tree and she said if it wouldn't fit in my car, we could get it in her van and figure out how to get it to my house later. We didn't go back on Saturday, because we had to meet friends for dinner, then the show, both of which were lots of fun. Sunday AM we headed out to Pike again to look at the tree. While there, I picked up a second mini hosta 'Golden Prayers' and also an Ostrich Fern that was marked $2.00 instead of $12.99 because it looked like someone was trying to kill it. I selected one that looked like it had some healthy but not yet unfurled fronds and will hope for the best. Of course, I got the tree, but not before triple-checking the price. I was even MORE amazed when we were actually able to fit it in my car. WOW!!

I got back home around 2 PM but was totally exhausted, so pretty much all I did was pot up the two mini hostas. I'm going to look for a really special pot for 'Blue Mouse Ears'.

Today I was still worn out and didn't do anything this morning. I regretted that decision when I came home to wilted tomato plants and had to hurry up and do a bunch of watering before my yoga class. Tomorrow I'm going to try to get up early and water the front porch plants.

several busy annual planting days

2008-05-09T20:56:00.003-04:00

My work schedule has been different this week, so I had Thursday morning off. I decided it was time to get rid of some of the pansies in pots that really were not doing well and start seeding in some other things. But, before I could do anything, disaster had struck my cilantro. Apparently my dog managed to not only knock over the pot the cilantro was in, but also break the terra cotta pot. Impressive...

I did my best to salvage the little cilantro seedlings and repot them in a new pot. I then planted out some patty pan squash seeds in the windowbox where I have been growing lettuce. I dumped two pots of pansies and one pot was planted with Bush Blue Lake 274 beans. I'm hoping they will not require trellising. I didn't soak the bean seeds, so I hope they germinate alright. The package didn't say to germinate and this is my first attempt at growing beans.

I saved seed last year off my 'Peppermint Stick' zinnias and the seed seems to be okay, not moldy or anything. I spread this seed behind the two salvias along the front fence. If they do come up, the zinnias should be tall enough to peek out over the salvias, which should look pretty.

My final seeding for Thursday was to seed the basil in the herb barrel. This year I'm not growing as many different herbs in the herb barrel. I still have curly leaf parsley in there, as well as a few chives and apparently one dill. I divided the remaining area in two and planted one half with 'Purple Ruffles' basil and the other half with 'Lime' basil. I did leave room around the outside edge to plant nasturtuims, which I can never remember to soak overnight, so I tend to get them in quite late. I need to plant out more basil as I'm afraid 'Early Girl' tomato is pretty much shading out the basil I planted around her. I may start a few pots just of basil. In other herb news, I finally decided that it was time to dump the stevia and bronze fennel. Neither has shown any signs of coming back this year. When I dumped the fennel, I could see that the roots were totally rotting. Guess it got too cold for it in the pot last winter.

Seeded on Thursday:
- zinnias with seed saved from last year
- lime basil
- purple ruffles basil
- bush blue lake beans
- patty pan squash

Friday I had to work, but had a few hours of light after work, so with a quick stop for a few plants on the way home, I was ready to tackle more annuals.

First up was the hanging basket (still need to get over to storage to get the other frames) now that I have new liners. I got pretty orangey million bells and black sweet potato vine to make my far full sun corner basket. I got this one planted and hung today. I also found two pots of New Guinea impatiens that I really liked. One is small 4" pot that I'm planning on putting in a hanging basket and the other is a big quart plant that I planted in one of the bronze plastic pots.

Next up was one of the hardest things, pulling out the pansies. In the fall it is easy to get rid of the summer annuals because the frost kills them, but in the spring you have to pull out your living cool season annuals. The pansies in the annual bed were looking pretty rough, so it was definitely time. I pulled out all except the back row, which are in the most shade and therefore look the best. I added some Black Cow to the areas where I pulled out the pansies. The main area was replanted with 'Blue Puffs' Ageratum around the outside edge, then seeded in with 'Peppermint Twist' zinnias behind that. For now the pansies are in place along the back, but they will probably be replaced with coleus in a few weeks. I planted a 4-pack of pink vinca in front of 'Masja' hydrangea. I still have some more areas where pansies need to be replaced. I am thinking I'll use the Ageratum in front of the camellias, as it is a pretty color and will grow in part shade.

hydrangea 'Together'

2008-05-08T12:20:00.002-04:00

hydrangea 'Together'
Originally uploaded by iechris

Hydrangea 'Together' is looking great. I am still wondering if it will rebloom as claimed and I am also wondering about how winter hardy it will really be. For the time being, it looks great!

Japanese Maple 'Butterfly'

2008-05-04T07:50:00.002-04:00

Japanese Maple 'Butterfly'
Originally uploaded by iechris

Newly purchased 'Butterfly' Japanese Maple. This was also purchased from Mystic Farms at the Farmer's Market Spring Festival. I don't know much about Japanese Maples, but had never seen a variegated one before and just fell in love with this little baby. This is a small recently grafted plant and it is looking good. Since purchasing the maples, I've been doing some reading and it looks like I made some good choices. I've now seen more pictures of variegated Japanese Maples and I think 'Butterfly' is the prettiest.

Tamukeyama Japanese Maple

2008-05-03T20:02:00.002-04:00

Tamukeyama Japanese Maple
Originally uploaded by iechris

My newly purchased 'Tamukeyama' Japanese Maple currently living in front of the water heater hut. It is sitting in its nursery pot, inside a fiberglass pot.

Spring Fest at the Farmer's Market

2008-05-02T20:25:00.003-04:00

Went today on day 2 of the Spring flower and plant sale at the Farmer's Market. There was a lot of so-so, seen it everywhere stuff, but I did find some treasures!

I was looking for a new rosemary to put in the pot with the sage and thyme and after talking to the lady who was selling lots of neat herbs, she recommended I get an oregano for the pot, so I ended up getting a variegated oregano. While there, I thought about Golden Rain rosemary and a pineapple sage, but didn't get either at the time. I also got a phlox 'David' for the perennial bed, where I had planned to plant an 'Autumn Joy' sedum. I already have a sedum on that side of the bed and all the 'Autumn Joys' I've been finding have been in HUGE pots, so I went with the phlox instead. Later in the day, we went back to the Farmer's Market and I got the Golden Rain rosemary, but they were out of the pineapple sage. I can't believe she sold that many that quickly, but the place was a ZOO!!

On the return trip, I also picked up a 'Dolce Creme Brulee' huechera to complete one of the porch pots. Right now its color is on the green side, but I'm hoping once it is in the sun and starting growing out some its color will improve. After the first trip to the Farmer's Market, we went up to Country Boys, were I got a few other annuals to round out the porch plants. We also went to K-Mart where I got a really big hanging basket of purple double impatiens. We stoppped at Lowes to see if they had any cheap hanging baskets that I could repot for the front of the house and I found some annual dianthus. It looks nice and I hope it will keep blooming all summer.

While at Lowes, I found that they had finally gotten in the Forever and Ever 'Together' hydrangeas. All the plants they had were already blooming, but I was able to find one that looked like a decent plant and didn't have all its buds open already. This one is supposed to stay 2 X 2, so I'm planning on keeping it in a pot. I'll need to hit it with aluminum sulfate to keep the blue color though. I also took another look at their 'Peppermint' hydrangeas and I'm really starting to wonder if the tag was switched in the plant I bought and it was just a regular plant with the 'Peppermint' tag in it, as so far the blooms do not look right. ARGHHHH....

My big expense at the Farmer's Market was on Japanese Maples. I've been thinking about getting one for a while and a farm called Mystic Farm was there and had really nice maples at a good price. They had these giant Tamukeyamas that were just incredible and were $300. If they had taken credit cards and I knew where I wanted to put it... They also had it in a really nice $60 plant that I REALLY thought about, but I ended up getting a smaller $30 'Tamukeyama' that we all thought had a nice growth habit. While I was trying to decide, someone I know came by and he turns out to have a bunch of Japanese Maples and said that cultivator I was picking was a good one and that the plant I had picked out was nice too. I also saw this little tiny $15 plant called 'Butterfly'. 'Butterfly' has more maple shaped leaves and they are variegated.

While I was paying I happened to mention that I didn't have much room for maples as all my room is taken up with hydrangeas. Susan (one of the owners) said they had hydrangeas too but didn't bring them because they weren't blooming. I asked if they had '...Paul Doumer' and she said no but that they did have 'Nightengale'. I said I had cuttings, but they had died and that I was looking to replace mine and said I'd email them in a few weeks. Well, on our return trip to the Farmer's Market, I decided I just HAD to get one of the $10 'Bloodgood' seedlings they had. These are seed grown, not grafted, so they might not be exactly true, but he said they are super hardy and I could just toss this small plant in a hole tonight. I also made arrangements for them to bring a 'Nightengale' hydrangea to the show tomorrow and I can pick it up on the way to work.

Once I was home I had a ton of work to do! I planted the phlox 'David' and lambs ears in the perennial bed, added the oregano and a parsley to their respective containers, potted up the rosemary and potted up the Endless Summer hydrangea I had grown from a cutting last year. I also ended up repotting the 'Butterfly' Japanese Maple into a small ceramic pot, using pretty much solid composted pine bark with just a sprinkling of soil on the top like Chip said. It was semi-traumatic for me, as it was hard to get it out of the pot and then the potting soil part started to fall apart, but I'm hoping it was NOT traumatic for 'Butterfly'. The other two were placed inside pots on top of some mulch, still in their nursery pots. 'Bloodgood' is living behind the daylilies and 'Tamukeyama' is living over on the corner of the house where the water heater hut is.

grass finally mowed and carpets cleaned

2008-04-30T18:03:00.002-04:00

Today was a busy day, as I'd scheduled steam cleaning for the carpets at 8:30 AM and a man to come cut the yard at 9:30 AM. Both were on the late side, but the carpet got done quickly and looks good, though it was still very wet when I left. The grass cutting started a lot later than planned and took quite a while, though it does look good. I've got to do something about trying to get REAL grass to grow in my yard, now that it has been cut, I can really see that large areas look to just be plantain weeds. I keep pulling and pulling...

I got my plant markers in the mail yesterday, but with all the stuff going on today didn't have any time to start writing on them. They look really nice and I can't wait to see how it will look when I label everything. I'm excited. They came from Eon Industries in Ohio, which I found through the Hosta Library.

This evening on my dinner break, I ran out to the bank and got some cash so I could go get a hanging basket at Fisher Orchard (at Dillard Farms). They had some HUGE beautiful baskets of pink million bells and verbena last week and that was what I wanted. Of course, those were all gone this week, but they did have some of the same combination, just not as grown out, so I got one of those and figure it will be fine. They also had really huge, really nice baskets of a peachy million bells combined with black sweet potato vine. I almost got one of those as well but finally decided against it for today, though I may go back later this week.

rain has arrived

2008-04-28T07:48:00.002-04:00

I got woken up in the middle of the night by the sounds of a very violent rainstorm. The rain seems to have continued all night and into the morning. When I got home from work, we had over 1" of rain. Great news!

Irises I divided last year are blooming

2008-04-27T21:52:00.001-04:00

iris bloom
Originally uploaded by iechris

Some of the irises I divided last fall and spread all around the yard are now blooming. Oddly, it is the ones that were stuck in some of the worst dirt, leftover clay that was full of lumps. These plants are in part shade but are currently blooming. I'm wondering if these may have been bigger pieces than the ones I planted other places, as this group seems to have always been ahead of the others.

where's my rain?

2008-04-27T21:38:00.002-04:00

The forcast had been for rain Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Monday, so I didn't really make plans for the yard this weekend as I figured it would be raining. Saturday came and no rain, so after running some errands in the morning, including a trip the Farmer's Market where I came away with two very cute little folk art tortoises made out of small clay pots and saucers, I had to hit the yard. I had also gotten 2 pots of purple fountain grass, some lilies and a pincushion flower.

I planted a 4 pack of vinca in front of the newly planted 'Double Pink' hydrangea. They are white with a red/pink eye and I hope they will do better in this area than the impatiens did last year. The pincushion flower went into the front corner of the left hand side of the perennial bed. A red lily went in front of the Joe Pye Weed, where I hope their far apart flowers schedules will allow each to hide the other in turn. An already podded up 'Stargazer' lily went in to the left hand side of the bed where the mallow had grown last year. One pot of fountain grass went in between the Tea Olive and Japanese Beautyberry. It looks good for now but may prove to be a little crowded and there might not be room there next year. I also repotted the Carolina Jessamine to a 3 gallon pot. I still haven't decided where I'm going to plant it, but it seems fine in a pot for now.

As there was no rain yet, but lots of thunder, and I had a bunch of freshly planted plants, I watered the back yard. Just as I was finishing, it started to rain. In all, we got about 1/2" yesterday (Saturday) then an additional 1/4" inch today (Sunday). Saturday night we went out to eat and I got very sick while at the restaurant and got extremely sick at the mall. I was still not feeling well today, so I didn't get much done or feel like doing much.

I pulled some more plantain weeds today, they are taking over huge sections of my yard. I really need to try to seed in some grass, but I just can't seem to stick with a watering schedule. Speaking of grass, it badly needs to be cut. The guy who cut it for me this year has a new job and hasn't been doing as much yard work. Today he called and gave me another name, the boyfriend of one of my mom's former co-workers and that guy will be out Wednesday AM. That is great, as it was almost to cutting it with the string trimmer time.

The tomatoes I am hardening off are doing well. I also finally have some sprouts of the 'Ananas Noir' tomoatoes. However, I am really running out of room under the lights. I have a few small potted tomatoes from the first round of seed starting and they may have to start hardening off soon. I currently have flowers on Tumbling Tom, Husky Cherry Red, Early Girl and Cherokee Purple. I may have seen the beginnings of flowers on German Pink as well.

so dry already, plus planted hydrangea and viburnum

2008-04-25T20:33:00.005-04:00

For the last two days, when I've been outside in the evening, it has been SO dry. The tomatoes have all needed to be watered and today I saw 'Teller Red' hydrangea being wilty. I have watered portions of my yard both nights. The weather report had called for rain today, but it never showed up. Currently the forcast is for rain all weekend and right now that would be very welcome. I feel like I am back in last July already, with the heat and the drought and everything needing to be watered all the time.

The baby tomato plants continue their outside time and that seems to be going well. Right now they aren't putting out much in the way of new growth, but they also aren't getting a lot of sun. This weekend I'm going to try to leave them out in the sun longer, if we have any sun. Last night, I started another cup of the 'Ananas Noir' tomato seeds as I have yet to get a sprout. I'm not sure if they were quite ready to be started outside, so I brought those trays in a few days ago. I'm either going to have very few or a bumper crop as I've started almost 20 seeds.

Last night after yoga I came home and finally planted the viburnum. Last fall we set in in the spot where the yew had died and it has lived there ever since. I could never figure out where I was going with it and my mom said that it belonged on that corner and it does look good, so I've sacrificed matching for flowers on one side. I hope it will do well. The rootball was a little on the dry side when I planted it, so I tried to really soak the rootball while watering yesterday and today. The actual digging in was really easy as the yew had been there, so I didn't dig a very big hole, in part due to the lilies and heucheras planted around it. The soil seems to be great, so I'm hoping the roots will grow well. It was very root bound as well, so I was pretty aggressive about loosening up the roots. I'll keep my fingers crossed...

This evening, with no rain, I decided to finally plant the Forever and Ever Double Pink hydrangea I had bought at Lowes. The original ideas was to plant it in the front side yard where I ended up planting another Endless Summer. I decided against that plan, as I don't know how this plant will perform and I figured ES was a sure thing. After that decision was made, I waffled for a while on where to put the plant, then finally decided I would plant it between the 'Flying Dragon' and the Rose of Sharon, next to the annual bed. 'Masja' is in pretty much the same position on the other side of the annual bed and Rose of Sharon, so I figured this would balance well and my neighbor's chestnut tree should provide enough shade. The space I planted it in isn't big, but this plant is not supposed to get that big either, so I'm hoping it will work.

Another great ranunculus shot:

'Delta Fire' pansies still blooming:

more planting- ES and clematis

2008-04-23T21:42:00.005-04:00

I worked tonight so I had some time to do some work in the yard this AM. I dug in an area under the tree on the front part of the side yard to plant the new 'Endless Summer'. After a few hours of work, I got ES planted and also got the Clematis I had bought planted. I hope that there will be enough room for the clematis' roots to grow and that I will be able to get it to grow up the tree.

'Christmas Tree' planted

2008-04-22T23:59:00.004-04:00

I got up a bit earlier than usual this AM with the plan that I would get the new hostas planted before work. Since they were bare root, I let them soak overnight in a bowl of water, but I wasn't sure about leaving them that way for 2 nights, so that meant that I had to do something with them today.

I went out and dug up the area where I wanted to plant 'Christmas Tree', LOTS of roots, but I did my best to dig them out. My neighbor's trees are obviously the type that send out a lot of surface roots, as I always run into a ton when I am digging back there. I got 'Christmas Tree' planted out and watered in. I also put 'Holy Mole' in a 2 gallon pot and potted it up for the time being. I will have to figure out where to put it and its friends.

Today was the tomatoes first day outside. I put them on the porch right up against the house where they would get a few hours of morning sun but hopefully be protected from any strong winds. They seem to have done pretty well. I'll put them back out there tomorrow.

The reticulated irises that I got earlier this year from a woman who comes into work have just started to bloom.

eBay hostas arrive

2008-04-21T22:06:00.003-04:00

The two hostas I bought on ebay, 'Holy Mole' and 'Christmas Tree' arrived today. 'Christmas Tree' has big leaves and nice roots. 'Holy Mole' is just beginning to wake up but has a HUGE root system. So big, I'm trying to figure out what to do with it, as I'm not ready to plant it yet. My tentative plan is to try to plant 'Christmas Tree' tomorrow AM before work, but that depends on how early I can get up and get ready for the day.

I also potted all the 'Pink Accodion' tomato seedlings in their own pots and plan to start moving them outside tomorrow.

finally got to the Lily Lady

2008-04-20T22:03:00.004-04:00

We finally made it out to the Lily Lady this afternoon, but when we got there I found out that mom had left the list of the ones we liked at home. She had thought that we could just pick out the ones we liked best in person, forgetting that they are not blooming yet!

We started out with the hostas and I got a 'June' to put by the Generale in place of one of the 'Elegens' and also got 'Great Expectations' which kept catching my eye. From there, it was off to the daylily photo albums to choose some daylilies. We ended up getting 2 'Jagged Edge', a lavender one to go on either end of the 'Mattie Max Maxwells'; 2 'Chicago Knobby' to go along the side of the house and 1 'Pushamataha', which was supposed to be for the side of the house, but I forgot what color it was, then decided to plant it in the perennial bed.

When we got home, I got the 'Jagged Edges' and 'Chicago Knobbys' planted in the front yard and dug up the 'Purple Emperor' sedum that I can't believe is still alive. I tried to get all the peat off the sedum that I could, then had mom run it under some water, then planted it out in the perennial bed, where I hope it will do better. I also planted 'Pushamataha' out in the perennial bed.

From there, it was hosta time. First up, I moved the far right 'Elegens' by the Generale over between 'Coral Bells' and 'Pink Ruffles' azaleas. Then I planted 'June' where it had been. After that, I took 'Great Expectations' and planted it beside 'Fuji Waterfall' hydrangea.

Once all the planting was done I did a few other odd jobs. I removed the chicken wire cage I had built around 'Gentian Dome' hydrangea and ran chicken wire along the rest of the inside of the fence. I put a tomato cage around 'Gentian Dome' so hopefully that will protect it. I also planted the two little yellow begonias that I got, they are on either side of 'Ami Pasquer' hydrangea. I was very surprised to see that my millions bells hanging basket that had overwintered from last year is now blooming. I really need to fertilize it. It is not all that leafed out, so the blooms were a real surprise. It also looks like the hanging basket of verbena from last year has overwintered as well. It is just starting to put out new growth. Not sure where I will end up putting either basket.

I think I may have gotten the tiara hosta mess straightened up and that I now have them correctly identified. My current master plan is to slightly enlarge the bed that 'Ayesha' hydrangea is in and then put all the tiara hostas around 'Ayesha'. I will need to move another 'Elegens' to do this, but I will leave the 'Fire and Ice' hosta where it is, as it seems happy there.

Autumn Belle azalea bloom:

only 1/2" of rain today

2008-04-19T20:48:00.003-04:00

The weather report intially called for rain all day today and tomorrow, but we got the rain today in the AM, only about 1/2". I think I will hold off on watering on Sunday, but with no rain forcast for the next week, I'll need to water on Wednesday probably.

I had to work today, so all I did this evening was pull a few weeds. Mom harvested some lettuce and the 'Galactica' lettuce that had been in the windowbox got uprooted somehow, so I'll move one of the ones in the nursery bed to the windowbox. I also put out another box with some more 'Ananas Noir' tomato seeds this morning. In other tomato news... more flowers on 'Husky Cherry Red' and the first open flower on 'Early Girl'.

planting and transplanting for 4/18

2008-04-18T22:06:00.004-04:00

Planted out today in the perennial border:
Euphorbia
Wallflower
Blue Hill salvia
alyssum Easter Bonnet
lantana Bandana Cherry
Stargazer lily bulbs
Bearded Iris rhizomes
dahlia Lavender Perfection
hollyhock

Planted out:
Teller Red hydrangea
Night Before Christmas hosta
perilla
marigolds

Transplanted to the perennial border:
ginger lilies
Joe Pye weed moved from one side to the other
coneflowers moved from one side to the other

licorice plant icicles moved from the pot to the border

perennial bed and so much more

2008-04-18T21:24:00.004-04:00

Today was one of those super productive days that you can only think of when it is cold or rainy. We are expecting rain over the weekend, so I'm glad I had today off to get a lot done.

I started at 8:30 AM by raking the mulch and pine needles from the left half of the perennial bed. I also moved all the plants that had been plopped down in and on the bed except the variegated iris, that has come up so well. Once I had all the mulch off, I realized I wanted to put the mulch somewhere, so that led to a brief time out while I weeded and pulled all the grass from around the daylilies and spread the mulch/pine needles there. Then it was back to digging in the bed. It actually went better than expected and I only ran into the rocks really in one area near where the viburnum is. I added almost a whole bag of Clay Buster and raked it into the loose dirt.

Then it was time to start planting the bed. First order of business was to dig up the ginger lilies, which I think planted on the outside back corner of the left and right side of the bed. In order to plant on the right hand side, I first had to dig up the 1 Joe Pye Weed, which I then moved the the left side. While I was digging in the bed, I discovered that the two dahlias that had bloomed last year appeared to have overwintered, plus I had a glad coming up, so I decided to leave them as the back row planting and get another bag of dahlias. Once I had the ginger lilies and joe pye weed in, I put the blue sage back in and dug two clumps of coneflower from the right side. I think dug the wallflower out of the herb barrel and planted it on the left side. The wood spurge (euphorbia) went on the right side where a coneflower had been and the licorice plant finally got out of a pot and into the right side of the perennial bed.

With all that done, it was time to tackle the next project... planting the 'Teller Red' hydrangea. Since there was already a hole in place it wasn't that bad. I also decided that I will plant a hosta near it between it and the astilbe. After that it was on the the next task, fertilizing the camellias. I raked back all the old mulch, then fertilized them and watered them in. I also fertilized my azaleas, which apparently was a mistake, as it will stimulate growth and cause the flowers to fall off. So, maybe the azalea show will be brief this year. I also fertilized the yew and the loropetulam.

It was about 2 PM at that point and I went off to Country Boys to pick up a few things. I got a flat of alyssum, a perilla, a hollyhock and a pack of coleus. I stopped off at Home Depot and got 2 packs of marigolds and a new water wand that I hope will be more gentle. I planted the alyssum along the entire front of the perennial bed, the hollyhock in the inner back corner of the right side of the perennial bed and the perilla in the center of the camellia bed. Hosta 'Night Before Christmas' finally got a home between the far left 'Miss Biloxi' and 'Debutante'. I'm going to put the new 'Christmas Tree' hosta on the other side of 'Debutante' when it comes. I planted up three small pots of marigolds and planted one marigold in each corner of the big pot the roma tomato is in.

At that point, after the watering, it was time to call it a day. I am still debating where I'm going to plant the double pink hydrangea.

Euphorbia in bloom:

drying out already

2008-04-17T21:51:00.001-04:00

We have only had a few warm days and already I am running into problems with plants drying out. Yesterday I planted the purple ranunculus that had been drying out. Today, even after I soaked its rootball, the rootball was dry again even though it was planted. I watered it really well and will moniter it tomorrow. The white double impatiens in one of the porch pots were also suffering from a dry rootball. I'm hoping I have them back on the mend. Additionally, the 'Teller Red' hydrangea was drooping and dry and so was the little pot of lantana. I took the potted plants in for a good soak and will watch them over the next couple of days.

I stopped at Lowes on my lunch hour and got another bag of potting soil. They had soem of the early spring plants marked down so I got a hellebore, a heuchera and a columbine all for 50% off.

I planted up the second roma tomato, moved the one English thyme and the one sage from the herb barrel into their own pots and dug up the little piece of creeping phlox that had propogated itself last fall. I'm going to move the phlox over to the other side of the house where I have the other phlox I think.

survived the frost, we hope

2008-04-16T23:02:00.003-04:00

I went out last night and covered all the hydrangeas (except 'Mini Penny' as I discovered this AM) for the night. We did have some frost last night, not much but enough that I'm glad I covered the hydrangeas. At 8:30 AM this morning, I was back outside uncovering them before it started to warm up. I also covered the ginger lilies and the lilies of the valley but didn't cover the hostas. So far it looks like everything did well.

I gave the yard a good watering, as once again it had gotten pretty dry. I repotted 'Husky Cherry Red' into a larger container, then planted the red bell pepper and one of the roma tomatoes and finally got the purple ranunculus planted in the left hand side of the perennial bed.

There is TONS of work to do and I was really wishing I could have stayed out in the yard all day instead of going to work! I am hoping that I will be able to get Tom to come help me on Friday, as I need to get the giant azalea Bobbie gave me planted and I'd love to move the big pieris. We also decided that a walk gate on the other side fence was really a necessity, as it is a real pain to be constantly trooping through the house.

I did get some good pictures today:

pink ranunculus:

red ranunculus:

new azalea from Bobbie:

'Peppermint' hydrangea flower opening:

veggies in for a few days

2008-04-13T22:37:00.000-04:00

The expected cold weather played havoc with my weekend plans, so pretty much all I did was weed, weed, weed and shop for a few new pots. This afternoon I went over to Bobbie's and she gave me a HUGE azalea in full bloom to plant in the hole in my foundation bed. I think I'm going to hire her yard man Tom to come help me plant it. I also want to move the one pieris I do have planted right now because I think it is in too much sun. I saw snowball viburniums at Home Depot for pretty cheap, so I may get one and put it where the pieris is, then move the pieris to the other side of the large beautyberry.

This evening I got all the veggies, coleus and other tender plants in for a few days. I did not cover the hydrangeas and things as they are not calling for frost tonight. Hope there haven't been any last minute changes. The last time I checked the weather, they had revised the projected lows up, so I'm hoping we will have dodged the bullet on this one.

rain this evening

2008-04-11T23:32:00.002-04:00

The weather report had promised rain today, but it didn't arrive until almost 10 PM today. I had toyed with the idea of watering yesterday, but the yard still seemed okay and I figured I'd have a day of rain. Well, no rain during the day, but it was pretty hot, so things were dry when I got home. Still, as it felt like rain, I decided not to water. Did pull some more chickweed.

The REALLY BAD NEWS is that we are looking at low temps in the 30s on Sunday and Monday and maybe Tuesday. My plan is to bring in everything I can that is in a pot, then spread pine needles on my hostas and any other low growing plants I can and to cover the hydrangeas with some of the pots I have lying around and hope they don't get blown off. I am hoping that they continue to revise the low temp UP and that is is nothing like last year. I can't believe I am facing this again.

I also bought a wireless indoor/outdoor thermometer so I can tell what the temp REALLY is in my yard. I think I've got it working correctly and hopefully where I've placed the sensor (under the side yard nandina) is dry enough.

I also got a bag of Black Cow while I was out to use when digging in the perennial bed. My mom got me some Clay Buster the other day. I'm worried that the ground might be too muddy to dig in the bed tomorrow as I had planned (figuring the rain would be during the day) but maybe I can work on it in the afternoon.

The mystery tulip has returned! Appeared last year, it must be a survivor of a long ago planting:

grass seeded

2008-04-09T12:34:00.002-04:00

I finished pulling enough weeds this morning to finally decide to seed in the grass along the side of the house. I watered it with the sprinkler for about 30 minutes while I weeded other parts of the yard. The plan is to water it 15 minutes a day every day (except when raining) for a few months until it really gets growing, then switch to watering every 2-3 days.

Parts of the yard are pretty dry, so I also ran the sprinkler on the veggies by the gate and the plants in the border there, and then back along the back with the camellias and azaleas.

My hostas are coming up, which is good. I saw some encouraging signs on the 'Masja' hydrangea today, so maybe all is not lost. I'm now worried about the small potted 'Penny Mac' I got from Park Seed last year. It was leafing out, but the frost near the end of March got those leaves. It has a few other starts of leaves but I can't tell if they are coming or going and the edges look damaged.

The tomato seedlings are too leggy, but they are also trying to put out their first true leaves. Once they have a few true leaves, I'm planning to start transitioning them to growing outside. Still only have 1 'Ponderosa' sprout per cup, but I'm going to try to start some more seeds.

me vs chickweed

2008-04-07T20:27:00.002-04:00

Went another round with the chickweed and the other weeds briefly this evening. I am now on the other side of the fence, working around the forsythia. I noticed I have a lot of weeding to do at the very back of the hydrangea border, along the fence line.

Got some good garden photos today, though the flowers are looking a tad shopworn:

sport bloom on Margaret Davis:

regular bloom on Margaret Davis:

Tom Knudsen:

cute bird:

more planting and weeding

2008-04-06T22:48:00.002-04:00

I went up to Charlotte this AM, then had lunch with Bobbie, her husband and my mom, so with everything I didn't get out into the yard until around 3 PM. I spent 3 hours weeding on the side yard and I think most of it is about as good as I'm going to get it, so I plan to put down the grass seed later this week.

We finally got over to storage and got most of my pots, so in the evening I potted up with the light that was left.

Today I potted up:

Veggies:
Thai hot pepper
Jalapeno pepper
Purple Beauty bell pepper

Sowed herb seeds:
cilantro in its own pot
Genovese basil around 'Early Girl'

Porch plants:
1 pot with a 'Lady Francis' begonia
1 pot with 'Witch Doctor' coleus, 'Fishnet Stocking' coleus and creeping jenny
1 pot with 2 double impatiens (white and a bright pink) and wire vine

Got everything watered in as it was getting dark.

I am afraid that 'Masja' hydrangea is not going to make it. The area of new growth that had its top damaged by the frost had previously had green leaves below the damaged area. Those leaves are now looking like they are dying. I checked the soil and it seems moist, so lack of water is not the issue. I think it just got hit at exactly the wrong time. I'm going to hope that the existing wood will leaf out, so maybe it is not lost.

shopping day & planting tomatoes

2008-04-05T23:21:00.003-04:00

We had rain again today, so I couldn't do much in the way of work in the yard, though I did do a little weeding. Instead, I managed to do some shopping and got some good things for the yard.

First stop was Country Boys, where I got some more tomatoes, bell peppers, hot peppers and some double impatiens and coleus to go on the porch. From there, it was off to Garden Treasury, where I found some great things. I got some Golden Hakone grass for the planned side bed, a big pot of black mondo grass at a great price (!!!!), a beautiful dark purple hellebore that I'm not sure where will go and a beautiful purple ranunculus that I will add to the perennial border. I also got some pot feet for the large hydrangea pot. Then it was on to Lowes where I got more grass seed for yet another attempt to grow grass.

When we got home, it has stopped drizzling for a few minutes, so I spread the grass seed along the ditch and in some other areas in the front yard that were looking bare. I also pulled some weeds around the forsythia. The forsythia is fully leafed out now and the area around it is solid weeds. I'm amazed at the diversity of weeds all growing on top of each other. It is a real mess...

Then it was off to the back yard to do some planting. I planted up:

Tomatoes:
Tumbling Tom
German Pink
Cherokee Purple

Hydrangea:
Peppermint (in a large plastic pot)

Eggplant:
Ichiban

At this point, I ran out of potting soil. I need to get back to Sams Club. We made a late night trip to Lowes, which netted me a plastic bag holder for inside a cabinet door (got to do something to control all the plastic shopping bags) and a Japanese painted fern for one of my shade garden projects.

I really need a few good dry days when I'm off work. I have a bunch of work to do in the yard but my two most pressing things currently seem to be weeding out the side yard so I can sow grass seed and digging in the other 1/2 of the perennial bed, which will allow me to move/plant a number of other plants. The perennial bed will require soil that has not been rained on for at least a few days. On the other hand, we are still in a drought, so all the rain is more than welcome.

As of 6:30 PM we had over 1 1/4" rain since I last emptied the gauge. It is currently raining.

Small daffodils:

Purple ranunculus:

Margaret Davis camellia after the rain:

drizzly, dreary day

2008-04-03T18:19:00.002-04:00

It has rained off and on for pretty much the whole afternoon, which is great as we are still in a drought. When I was driving to work at 8 AM today, it was 58. By late morning the temp had dropped to 50 and it is 43 now at 6 PM. Burr...

I checked the 10 day forcast and our lowest low is supposed to be 48 (not counting tonight I'm guessing). I want to try to get out to Country Boys and see if they have their tomatoes in yet, as I want to plant out the rest of what I plan to grow. When I got home this evening, I looked over at 'Early Girl' and I swear she is a lot bigger than she was yesterday. Wow, maybe I will have tomatoes next month! In other tomato news, the 2nd pot of 'Ponderosa' finally has one sprouted seed.

weeding and rain

2008-04-02T22:51:00.002-04:00

Spent 3 hours this AM weeding along the side of the house. I plan to try to grow grass here again this year, if I have another failure then I will figure out something different to do, but the chickweed is not going to win! Weeding would be easier if I just hoed the whole area, but as I don't want to get rid of the violets and there seems to be some surviving grass from last year's grass growing efforts, I have to weed carefully.

We had a bit of rain tonight and the weather is calling for rain for the next two days. All my porch pots are still down where they can get some rain.

I swear that my tomato seedlings have grown while I was gone for work. So far, 'Pink Accordian' has more seedlings up that 'Ponderosa'. I'm still waiting for the second 'Ponderosa' cup to sprout and I still need to buy more seed starting soil and start the 'Black Pineapple' seeds as well. Right now the tomatoes are sitting up where the under the counter flourscent lights are on them, but I don't think that will be enough once they really start to grow. I'm afraid they are going to have to try to tough it out outside from an early age.

rain and tomato sprouts

2008-04-01T21:16:00.001-04:00

Between this weekend and today, we have gotten 1" of rain. Plants are continuing to leaf out in the yard. The Flying Dragon is currently blooming, don't remember if it bloomed or not last year, might not have as this is right around the time I put it in the ground last year. All three beautyberries are leafing out, with the Japanese beautyberry the furthest along.

'Early Girl' and 'Husky Cherry Red' are growing along and Husky even has a few flowers. Maybe I will get tomatoes by June. I will need to repot Husky, as I had intially thought it was a small determinate plant, but as it can go all summer, it will need a bigger pot.

Yesterday I saw tomato sprouts for the first time from the seeds I sowed last week. Currently I have 1 cup with two sprouts and 2 cups with one sprout, still waiting on one of the 'Ponderossas' to sprout. I have moved the others as close to the flourescent lights in the kitchen as I can. Not great, but once they are a bit bigger I plant to move them outside. I still need to start some of the 'Black Pineapple'.

Tomorrow I work nights, so I am hoping I can get some yard work done. I need to get over to storage and get the big fiberglass pots I bought last year, as I want to plant one of the new hydrangeas in it.

cut back lirope and more weeding

2008-03-28T22:12:00.002-04:00

Today I just did a bit more weeding and looked over the yard again. Most of the hydrangeas seem to be doing okay after the freeze, but I am still worried about 'Gentian Dome' and 'Masja' as they had the smallest amount of green showing and suffered the most damage. I also looked at 'Glowing Embers' today and thought it's pot looked really wet. Sure enough, when I tipped it, I was able to pour out water. I elevated it on two brinks and TONS of water ran out. Somehow the drainage hole in the bottom of the pot had gotten clogged. I am hoping that it has only been sitting in water since last night and that I will have gotten it drained out quickly enough that it will not have done any damage to the roots.

Yesterday I cut back the lirope in the front yard. The old foliage was starting to look pretty yellow and the new foliage is really starting to grown. This AM when I was leaving for work, I glanced at the foundation bed and couldn't figure out what was going on. It looked like bulbs were coming up or something and momentarily it was a total mystery. Then I remembered cutting back the lirope.

I will be out of town for the weekend and the forcast calls for rain and cooler weather for the weekend. I hope we get a decent amount of rain as the yard is SO dry. I watered yesterday and parts look dry again. I am figuring the combination of wind and sudden high temps are what is causing all the dryness as it never seemed this dry over the winter.

This weekend the Lily Lady opens up for the year. I will try to get out there next weekend. I'm also hoping that by next weekend the Farmer's Market and Country Boys will have their veggies in. I am looking forward to seeing what tomatoes they have this year. I'm definitely getting a 'Roma' and a 'Tumbling Tom' and if I see any white or black/purples I will have to try one of those. No sprouts yet on the tomato seeds I planted. I am currently thinking I will grow a red bell pepper, jalapenos and the Thai hot peppers again this year. I also want to see what varities of eggplants they have. I remember seeing 'Ichiban' last year and I'll try that this year. After the very small yield last year, I'm looking at something other than 'Black Beauty'.

starting tomatoes and after effects of freeze

2008-03-26T21:59:00.002-04:00

The weather was worse than originally thought on Monday night, getting down in the 20s. The only plants I'm really worried about are my hydrangeas, which all have probably lost some leaves and probably flowers on some of them and my weiglea, which may also lose some leaves (don't know about flowers on it). My biggest concern is Masja hydrangea that was just starting to leaf out with some new growth. The top of that new growth is definitely dead now. I don't know if some further down survived or if there is any other new growth that was protected, but I am afraid if the only new growth was killed by the frost that I might lose the whole plant. None of the old wood had shown any signs of leafing out yet, of course that doesn't mean it is dead but still... I am almost SURE I have lost any blooms on Ayesha, I may build a hoop house over it next year. I am also a bit worried about the Generale as he was starting to leaf out but looks like he got hit pretty hard. Hopefully there is enough new growth that was coming up that will pull through. I plan to take a closer look at everything on Friday when they have had a couple days to recover or not.

I did start some tomato seeds today, two pots with 5 seeds each of 'Henderson's Ponderossa' and 'Pink Accordion'. I will try to start the 'Ananas Noir' later this week. I am thinking about trying melons this year, I saw so many great varieties in the Baker Creek catalog... I am particularly obsessed with the 'Tigger' melons and must find some way to grow them, even if the seeds are pretty expensive.

working in the yard

2008-03-22T21:39:00.002-04:00

Today the high was in the mid-70s, so I was looking forward to doing a lot of work in the yard. However, it is still a bit early in the season and I don't have any shrubs I'm planting so...

Last night at Lowes I saw they had a bunch of hydrangeas out. Turns out they are new versions of Forever and Ever, which is a rebloomer. I got two, 'Double Pink' and 'Peppermint'. Looking on the Forever and Ever site, I think these hydrangeas at least some of them, were part of the You Me series, that includes 'Romance'. In fact, I believe that my 'Double Pink' is in fact a version of 'Romance'. These are claiming that they rebloom and bloom on new wood and are good for northern climates. Time will tell about that. I seem to remember that one of the criticisms of the You Me series was that they were beautiful but tempermental and I don't remember reading about reblooming. My current plan for them is to plant the 'Double Pink' in the front yard at what I think of as the mouth of the tunnel. 'Peppermint' might go in a pot for a while. I think it is probably another version of 'Harlequin'/'Buttons and Bows'. My current 'Buttons and Bows' is alive, but I am not sure if any of the old wood made it through the winter, so I might not get any blooms.

I started the day by repotting some herbs. The rosemary in the pot with the thyme and sage has really grown and was crowding out the other plants, so I replanted it in its own pot. I think repotted the thyme and sage into a new 14" terra cotta pot that matched the rosemary's new pot. I'm going to get a baby rosemary at the FFA plant sale up in Greer next month and will add it to the pot with the sage and thyme. I've put these pots on either side of the baby lorepetalum to protect it. I moved the pot with the licorice plant over to the perennial bed area. I'm planning on planting out the licorice plant once I get the other half of the perennial bed dug in.

After that, I wasn't sure what else to do. I spent most of the rest of the time in the yard either pulling chickweed or picking up sticks. My yard is covered in chickweed and sticks! I want to get Mark out to mow, but I have a lot of stick picking up left to do before it is safe to run a mower. During my weeding, I unearthed some of the irises I planted out last year when I moved them from the side of the house. I accidentally uprooted a few small ones while pulling the chick weed but tried to get them replanted. The whole area around the daylilies is looking a lot better now that all the chickweed is gone. I also weeded out the whole area where the ginger lilies grew last year and even found one ginger lily that is sending up a shoot.

One thing I did not find today was any sign of the lilies of the valley I planted last year. I got these from Mrs Phillips and they hung on nice and green until frost so I figured they would be fine. But, so far I have not seen a single sign of them. I am going to spend a bit more time in the side yard tomorrow trying to see if I see any signs of my bleeding hearts. They have been absent from the scene as well so far. I have seen signs of life on almost all my hostas, which is great. I am missing one marker back in the nursery bed, so I have two of the Diamond hostas that I will have to wait until they are up and hope I can figure out which is which then.

I made brief trips to Lowes and Home Depot closer to home today but didn't see anything I can't live without. I think the nursery selection is much better at the Lowes out on Woodruff, and I expect they do quite a lot more business.

We are expecting lows under or around 40 for the next three nights, so I will have to bring the tomatoes in each day. I forgot to set the fern out today with such nice weather. I may wait until it warms up a bit more then try to get it used to life outside. I need to start bringing the spider plant outside as well.

Tomorrow the high is only supposed to be 60, but the forcast rain has now been called off and certain places in my yard felt dry enough that I think I will need to water. I plan to do that tomorrow afternoon when it is at the warmest.

first day of Spring

2008-03-20T21:37:00.002-04:00

Today is the first day of spring. I didn't get much chance to do anything more than take pictures in the yard and they are calling for frost overnight, so the tomatoes are in for the evening. We got a bit over 1/2" of rain earlier this week. The weather report is calling for rain again on Sunday, so that will only leave me with Saturday to work in the yard.

At this point, I'm not even exactly sure what all I need/want to do. I still want to fertilize the hollies and maybe work on digging in the other 1/2 of the perennial bed or digging in the area I want to plant hellebores in the front yard.

I had a TERRIBLE time trying to get a picture of my 'Margaret Davis' camellia today, the camera seemed to want to focus on the ground BEHIND the flower rather than on the actual flower. I did get a few good shots:

Camellia japonica 'Margaret Davis'

Wallflower 'Fragrant Sunshine'

Pansy 'Delta Fire'

Pieris japonica 'Mountain Fire'

vegetable garden up and running!

2008-03-16T19:07:00.003-04:00

We got a bit over 1" of rain yesterday. I went to yoga this morning and in the afternoon we set out to do some errands. I was still pretty windy some of the time which made it a bit chilly. I got a large bag of potting soil at Sams (should have gotten 2), a plastic window box at Big Lots, 3 4-packs of lettuce at Country Boys, 2 tomatoes at K-Mart and 2 silver scrolls coral bells and a new pair of pruners at Lowes.

My new pruners are very nice and I hope I don't end up tearing them up as quickly as I have the other pairs of owned (though one pair had a spring that popped out and that is not entirely my fault). Lowes really has their spring plants out. Lots of spring blooming perennials and even a bunch of flats of annuals. My pansies are so pretty right now, I know it will be a while before they come out. I was very happy to find the two big pots of 'Silver Scrolls' coral bells as I have them making the edge of the bed that runs to the side door. I had not bought enough plants to reach to the steps when I originally got them and finishing that area was on the "do it sometime" list. When I've looked recently at the farmer's market (where I got the others) and else where I have not been able to find that variety. So, finding some big pots at a good price was a coup. I got those planted in this evening and it looks nice. I need to try to figure out what I'm actually going to do in that area of the yard, after I cleared all the irises that never bloomed out of it last year.

Speaking of the irises... they are starting to come up back in the nursery bed, in the area where I dumped them along side the azaleas and also in the area around the yew that died. So, we will see if we get any blooms this year. With all the other irises coming up, I was starting to worry just a tad about my Japanese variegated iris, as I had seen no signs of life from it, but today I saw some green on it as well.

In veggie news, I planted up the lettuce with 4 lettuce in the window box, which is near the gate and will get full sun and the rest back in the nursery bed where they will get part sun. I hope I can keep at least some if it going until early summer. I planted up two early tomatoes with the hopes of ripe tomatoes in early June. Both are in containers and will be brought in when the outside temp dips below 40. Tonight will be one of those nights!

I used my new pruners to do some much needed yard clean up. I cut off all the dead looking parts on my creeping rosemary, I am thinking the cold may have damaged it. I then cut back dead parts of my oregano and mints (which I had to think about as they are near the hydrangeas and I didn't want to get carried away and start cutting the hydrangeas).

I finally threw away one pot of paperwhites. I had overplanted them with cilantro last summer an of course that is gone now. They never bloomed this year, so they are done for. I now have the 'Husky Cherry Red' tomato growing in that pot.

My creeping phlox by the side of the house looks wonderful, it is just covered in blooms. At least one of the sedums I have planted along there seems to be coming up for the spring. But, I think I am going to dig it up and plant daylilies there instead. I think they might be a better plant for that location.

Still did not get to Underwoods to get some fertilizer. That will have to wait for next weekend. I also need to get the irises I got from Bobbie the patron planted as well. Maybe tomorrow afternoon?? Of course, the weather forcast is rain on Wednesday.

raining again today

2008-03-15T20:35:00.002-04:00

The weather this winter and into the spring has been a blessing and curse. It seems like every time I have the day off and can work in the yard, it is either VERY cold or raining or I've been sick. The good thing is that I have not had to water. The bad thing is I have done basically done almost nothing in my yard since the fall. I had hoped to do some work today, but we got a lot of rain today instead. Tomorrow if it doens't rain, it will be too wet to work in the morning, but maybe I can get some work done in the afternoon. Now that it is daylight savings, it is light until after 7:30 PM.

Tom blooms, plus frosted

2008-03-09T21:29:00.001-04:00

Spent most of today going to Charlotte and back, but did get a quick turn around the yard this afternoon. Overnight the temps had dropped into the high 20s and we had frost this AM. It was cold! Looking out the kitchen window, I thought I saw a bloom on the furtherst right Tom camellia and when I got home, sure enough there was.

The euphorbia that I have temporarily planted in the whiskey barrel is just starting to bloom, it has a bunch of flower buds. My Mountain Fire pieris is also just barely beginning to bloom, though I think some of its buds were damaged either this summer or over the winter. I'm still not sure if the fatsia is okay or not. I don't think I'll know until the weather really starts to warm up. I hope this last frost didn't do any damaged to my hydrangeas that are starting to leaf out.

I took some pictures today but they were ALL out of focus.

raining- so no yard work today

2008-03-07T08:28:00.003-05:00

The promised rain has arrived today, which is good as we are still in semi-drought conditions, though it seems we have had enough rain this winter for me to get by with not much watering. I have today off, but with the rain obviously it will not be a day for yard work. I need to move all my porch plants down so they can get watered as well. Currently the forcast is calling for rain tomorrow as well and also for a cold night tomorrow night. Ferny will need to come inside for the weekend.

Sunday the rain should be gone and I'm hoping to plant the irises a patron (another Bobbie) brought me on Tuesday.

I might make some more coleus cuttings as the end of the cold weather is fast approaching.

We got 1" of rain this morning and early afternoon. Hopefully it will continue to rain this summer. I was already discussing watering plans with my mom.

someone picked my daffodils

2008-03-06T17:54:00.002-05:00

When I left for work this AM, I saw that I had what looked like 5-6 fully open daffodils. When I came home from work today I only had 2 and one that was partially open. Someone picked my daffodils!

I realize that the are right along the street and if I had a ton of blooms it woudln't upset me, but geez folks... I went out again and actually counted FOUR snapped stems, three of them all in one little patch.

Well, I have some more patches with bloom stalks and some other foliage that hasn't even sent up bloom stalks yet so hopefully I will get some more blooms.

On another plant, the native creeping phlox is really starting to put on a show and it is creeping up the foundation of the house. Too cool!

over 1" of rain yesterday

2008-03-05T22:34:00.003-05:00

We had a big storm yesterday and got over 1" of rain and also some hail. It never really cold though and it doesn't look like any of the plants were damaged by the hail. The heavy rains bent over the two blooming daffodils I had, but I have a bunch more whose blooms are starting to open. Now I just have to worry about the cold temps forcast for overnight on Friday night.

Just found out this evening that I am working on Saturday this week, so I'll have Friday to work in the yard, maybe fertilize the hollies and the Miss Biloxi camellias.

Debutante is still blooming:

Hyacinths- back for another year in the pot:

gazebo is gone

2008-03-03T19:48:00.001-05:00

When I walked out the door to go to work this morning, there were two men with a truck that were loading up the remains of the gazebo. Not bad at all... it was gone by 9:00 AM today and I had just hauled it up to the front yard late yesterday afternoon. Oh well... it seemed like a good idea at the time but we almost never used it. 20/20 hindsight says it was a waste of money, though if we hadn't bought one last year we might have bought one this year. I think the yard looks bigger without the gazebo as well.

I also noticed that my first daffodil has bloomed.

productive day

2008-03-02T20:49:00.003-05:00

I had a really productive day today, probably the first one of 2008! I started off this day by weeding the foundation bed. I dug up the clover that is coming up through the mulch but left it where it is hidden by the hollies for its nitrogen fixing abilities. I also tried to clear away the leaves from the lirope and the edge of the bed, giving it a cleaner and more defined look. I pulled out any dead pieces of lirope as well. I can see new lirope coming up, but as the old foliage doesn't look bad, I think I will not cut it back for right now.

After my morning in the yard, it was off to run some errands and spread a fairly surprising about of money. Does it ever add up fast! I got 5 frames at Target today to frame up the rest of the prints for the living room. I will finally hang my Grunheid prints that I have had for almost 8 years. I also picked up 2 big planters to grow tomatos in, some mats for the picture frames, then swung by Underwoods and got another hellebore for the front yard. Once I got and got everything unloaded, I decided it was time to tackle a job I've been wanting to do for quite some time... getting rid of the gazebo.

Due to rust and everything else, there was no way the gazebo was going to come apart like it went together, but since it was just made out of pot metal, I was able to twist it apart at already damaged areas. The four side parts are essentially intact, it is just the cross supports that were destroyed. I bundled all the netting up into the garbage can and hauled the metal part up where the trash goes. As it is several days before trash day, I figure someone who could use it or recycle it might pick it and if not, hopefully the trash will haul it off on Thursday AM. The back yard looks much better without the wrecked gazebo. If only I could get rid of the shack as easily...

After that I did a bit more weeding. Earlier in the day I had noticed that my large pieris seemed dry, so I watered it and the azaleas and camellias. It actually got up to 70 today and I figured they might like a little extra moisture with the sudden warm weather. I pulled the chick weed away from where the hostas are planted under the big catalpa tree in the side yard. The area around two of the hostas seemed pretty dry, so I hope they are okay. I watered all the hostas under the tree and the two along the side of the house. So far, only Wide Brim, under the tree is sticking its head out.

In the evening, I got three prints framed up and hung on the wall. So far I only have two of the Grunheid prints framed and hung, I will work on the other two tomorrow when I get home from work.

I am happy with all I got done this weekend. Maybe if I am feeling good later this week I can get some touch up painting in the house done. If the weather is good next weekend, I will either work on redoing the bed under the front yard catalpa tree or get back (finally) to painting the windows and trying to get the old duct tape residue off the aluminum window trim (what a mess...).

finally got to work in the yard

2008-03-01T17:40:00.002-05:00

I am still getting over the lastest version of my cold, so I did not have a lot of energy. I went out a did a few errands this AM and that left me wiped out, but when I came home it was really nice out. So, I tossed on my yard clothes and set to work doing some weeding. Weeding while sitting was something I could do and I got the whole front side yard shade bed weeded out. I also got some weeding done a bunch of places in the back yard.

While I was weeding, I got to check up on all my plants. All my day lilies seem to be starting to come up, but I don't see any signs of hostas yet. Almost all of my hydrangeas are trying to break leaf bud with the exception of Buttons and Bows, Masja and Romance. These were all small plants (Masja and Romance were 4" pots) planted last fall. Masja is in the ground, the others in pots. They seemed fine as they went dormant, but they were so young I was worried. We shall see what spring brings. I can replace Masja and Romance through ebay and would probably give Buttons and Bows one more shot if I could find another at Pike for the same price. So far, no signs of life on any of my small hyrangea cuttings from last year, including the two from ebay. It is still early in the season, if they aren't leafed out by May, then I'll worry.

No buds yet on my azaleas, but I guess they look okay. I do have some buds on Margaret and Tom camellias, Miss Biloxis are still looking ill. My hollies are also looking a little yellowish. I need to treat with with epsom salts but will need to wait until I can haul a hose.

I did a little cleaning up of stuff around the yard, took a few things down to the tool shed. I really wish I had a larger garden shed so I could store all my pots and potting soil and not have a mess by the side of the house. Maybe next year... I did finally get the two six packs of pink pansies that I bought back in oh... October or something planted finally. I planted them up in the two pots that had held the cabbages and had enough pansies left over to make a hanging basket. I also dumped out some dead hanging baskets had held petunias that seemed to hang on forever.

I figured out the problem with my 2nd water wand so that is working now. My 3rd water wand is trash, as it got stepped on and broken. My fault for leaving it lying in the middle of the yard. I did get the hose rolled up, but that was about all I could do, I was very tired after that.

I went to Home Depot this afternoon and got an English daisy to replant one of the front porch planters. I had seen some lettuce packs at Country Boys out on Woodruff earlier today, so if I have a lot of energy, I might got buy a window box at Big Lots and some lettuce at Country Boys tomorrow. I did see a few tomatos at Home Depot today. I'm all for pushing the season, especially since I use containers, but this is just too early. Maybe in a few weeks.

bulbs and other things

2008-02-24T19:45:00.002-05:00

It was cold but not raining today so I did a little survey of the yard. I have a lot of chickweed and pulled some. The forsythia and the pizzaz loropetulam are both budded up with flower buds. My big pieris does not seem to have a lot of flower buds and some of the flower stalks it does have look dead. Don't know if this is because of the couple super-cold days or what.

The fatsia is looking okay, no further damage. Oddly, the dead parts I cut off last week or so still look perfectly healthy in the garbage, so I don't know if the plant is alive or dead, only time will tell. Some of the hydrangeas are trying to break leaf already and Ayesha has some damaged looking leaf buds as a result. Hopefully Ayesha's early attempt at breaking bud won't do away with all the flowers.

My daylilies are starting to come up in several places. I'm not sure if all the Mattie Mae Maxwell's will come back, as I only see three coming up so far. If not, I'll have to buy more and replant them again.

The daffodils are up and a few now have what looks like flowering stalks. A few of he small irises I planted last year have come back and are currently blooming. I have some sort of bulb coming up in one container and a few muscari blooming pretty weakly in another container. All my containers that have bulbs will need to be dumped once they have bloomed as this is the 2nd year for the bulbs and I didn't get any blooms from the paperwhites this year.

I a VERY happy with my hellebore. It has a bunch of blooms and even more buds! Debutante camellia is still blooming but also still losing blooms to the frosts. I'm waiting for the buds to open on my other camellias. There are no buds on either Miss Biloxi and the plants look pretty bad. The leaves on the Tom Knudsens have some black spots on them, not sure if it is disease or the cold or what. I need to pull leaves and take them to Underwoods for a diagnosis. Maybe this coming weekend.

more hellebore blooms and more rain

2008-02-21T23:22:00.004-05:00

I have been sick again this week, so no work on anything, not even any photos. The hellebore really has a lot of blooms on it now and looks very nice. I am hoping I'll be able to get a few good pictures before the blooms begin to fade.

We got over 1" of rain earlier this week and some more rain tonight. We are supposed to get even more rain over the weekend, which is good for the plants but bad for any yard work.

My daffodils continue to come up more and I have a few other mystery bulbs that are coming up. The crocuses seem to be done, it was a very short time for them. I will have to plant more this fall since so few seem to have come back from last year. The paperwhites under the tree never bloomed this year, don't know if a frost got them or what. I think I will plant some daffodils in that area next fall as well.

I guess I am not going to start any seeds this year. It is already just about a month until when I put out transplants in pots last year, so I guess I will be buying all my veggies as transplants this year. I want to get a few more big pots to use for growing tomatos and try a few more varieties this year.

spring bulbs coming up

2008-02-17T21:45:00.002-05:00

I have been out of town or busy every weekend for the last 4 weekends, so I haven't done ANYTHING around the house or the yard. I did notice that my crocuses are up, but it seems that only the yellow ones came back this year. My Brandywine hellebore is also blooming as is the little unnamed hellebore still in its little pot.

My narcissus foliage came up, but either they weren't going to bloom or the timing was off and I have gotten no blooms. The daffodils I planted this fall have started to come up and I've seen daffodils blooming already in other people's yards.

I am finally home this coming weekend, so if the weather is good I hope to move the ruined gazebo up to the road to be hauled away and then try to do some work in my yard. Luckily we have been getting a fair amount of rain, as I have not really watered this winter.

still cold, plus yesterday outrage at our storage place

2008-01-22T22:51:00.000-05:00

It was again very cold today, didn't get out of the 30s. The weather report had been calling for freezing rain and ice on the roads but luckily that did not materialize here. We did get rain off and on all day, so I still don't have to worry about watering my yard! Good news as it is way too cold to be out there dragging around my leaking no matter what I do hoses.

Yesterday we had the day off and did some running around. We tried AGAIN to take the lawn chairs over the storage and AGAIN the creepy old guy was sitting in his car by our space. I talked to the guy in the office who said the man was "harmless", "84 years old", "pretty amazing" and a "WW 2 veteran". So, it is okay for an 84 year old WW 2 veteran to loiter in his car all day beside closed up and locked storage spaces?? They jerk in the office also said that they guy had been renting almost as long as we have (12 years), though office jerk has only been there for 1 1/2 years. Funny that I've NEVER NEVER NEVER seen this guy at the storage place before this past month or so and now he seems to be there all day, every day... week days, weekends. And, funny that the only problems they've had at the storage place are a few break-ins... My guess is that the old guy is living out of his car and his storage space. I feel bad but there are places to go for help. And, I truly believe if it was a young latino or black male doing the same thing, they would be hauled off in the back of a patrol car.

That whole incident left me livid and my blood pressure surely through the roof. We drove over to another storage place who would give us the same rates and seem a lot better. I would have taken a day off to move this week, except that it would be a lot of work to move the storage space and would require renting a U-Haul and hiring someone to help me. That would cost a decent amount of money. I'm going to give it a week or so, then see if old dude is still at the storage place. If he still is, I might have to bite the bullet and move, as my storage space is currently unusable. Maybe I'll get my co-worker with the concealed carry permit to come with me next time I go there...

I stopped in a few furniture stores, still looking for an end table for the dining room. I didn't see anything I wanted but I did find a Haeger vase for $10 at a going out of business sale. It looks fantastic sitting on my mantle and is still made in the USA.

gardening indoors

2008-01-20T12:30:00.000-05:00

I write a lot about my outside yard/garden but don't write much about my indoor garden. I'm not a houseplant person, so all my plants indoors are trying to survive the winter so they can go back outside in the spring. I made cuttings of my two favorite coleus that I had only found one plant of each.

The first is my pink trailing coleus that made such a wonderful hanging basket on the front of the house last summer. I am growing out several cuttings I made in the fall, as well as a larger cutting I made at some point last summer. I'm going to need to work on making a few new cuttings and really pinching them back for fullness before I am ready to plant up a hanging basket, but I won't put those out until around the end of April, so I have time.

The second was a purple almost ruffled coleus we found late in the year at Underwoods. It didn't look like much in its 4" pot, but they had planted it in a mixed container and it looked great. I brought it home, potted it up and it grew nicely. I brought the whole original pot indoors, along with two cuttings. This plant has really surprised me, as it was a dark purple outdoors, but indoors it has turned very green! I think all the new growth is coming in green, at least indoors. It will be interested to see what it does when I move it back outside in the spring.

I also have the spider plant Bobbie gave me, that is haning above the window, the Boston Fern from the front porch that doens't look so good and two kalinchoes which live on the dryer and are just starting to bloom. My mom brought a sick croton home from work for me to nurse back to health, it is putting out some new leaves, so hopefully it will make a comeback.

I have two days off from work, but they are not predicting temps over the high 30s either day, so any outside work is out of the question. I'm trying to think of more indoor projects to keep me busy and hoping for temps in the 50s soon.

gazebo crashed

2008-01-17T19:09:00.000-05:00

This AM before work I thought I'd better go try to get the snow off the top of the gazebo before it crushed the gazebo. Well, as I was trying to get the snow off, the gazebo collapsed on me. The gazebo is now totally shot. We called the company that "made" them, but their manfacturer did not send them any replacement parts, just the whole gazebos. So, that is a total waste now. I am pretty upset for a number of reasons: 1) we never really used the gazebo that much so it was a waste of money in the first place, 2) we should have taken it down earlier this winter when the weather was nice, 3) I could have taken the top off the gazebo yesterday morning before work but didn't think of it, 4) I could have taken the top off last night even though it was cold and finally 5) trying to brush the snow off of it may have been what caused it to collapse (but based on the amount of snow it it, it was only a matter of time). I guess I would be MORE upset if we had used it a lot. Tomorrow we will take the yard furniture over to storage and I guess I'll try to haul the wreckage of the gazebo up to the curb.

In other news, I FINALLY got a paper shredder and can do something about the year+ of junk mail, statements, bills, etc that I have been saving to shred. I started working on the stack of opened items and still have plenty more still in their envelopes. Guess I have a hobby for the next few days or weeks!

The weather report is now calling for snow again on Saturday. As long as it is not an ice storm, does not taken out my power and does not kill my plants, I don't care. I'll get over losing the gazebo, but for the time being I'm pretty upset.

still have power

2008-01-17T08:57:00.000-05:00

Despite the ice overnight, we still have power this AM. It is still raining or something outside and my yard is covered in snow, but the road is slushy. I wish they would close work today, especially after all the trouble I had getting home last night, but I don't think so. I just hope the roads are clear.

I got almost no sleep last night as I was so worried about losing power.

turning to ice??

2008-01-17T00:20:00.000-05:00

I am starting to hear sounds outside, that no longer sound like snow. I opened the side door and there is more wind and it no longer looks like snowflakes, though something is blowing in the wind. I think as predicted, the ice is hitting just after midnight. Still have power so far... as of 12:20 AM. I've set my cell phone as an alarm just in case. I'm VERY worried that if we do lose power we could be out for days as we are quite a ways off a main road. The heat is currently set at 72, but without power... I will leave it up high all night because I fear it may be all the heat we will have for days.

I just turned off my external hard drive and unplugged it so it won't be damaged. I can't sleep right now, but before I go to bed I will turn off and unplug my computer as well.

snowing

2008-01-16T23:46:00.001-05:00

It has been snowing here since before 8 PM and is still coming down. The yard outside it totally white. The drive home from work tonight at 9 PM was kind of rough, especially as I got closer to home and in less travelled areas, snow totally covered the roads and I couldn't see any lane markings. We have the heat turned up and are leaving it up all night just in case something happens with the power. I just hope we don't get the freezing rain and ice they are predicting for later tonight.

Photos of the yard, taken from inside!

anything but ice...

2008-01-15T22:21:00.000-05:00

The orginal forcast for Wednesday PM/Thursday AM was possible snow. Now they are calling for up to 1/2" of ice. If we get an ice storm, that almost always means everyone loses power. Before we lived on a main road, now we live off on a little 4 block long road back in a little neighborhood. We also have overhead power lines and tons of trees in the neighborhood. My neighbors chestnut tree hangs over the power lines to my yard light. I'm very worried that if we do get ice and lose power we will be without power for a LONG time. Without any insulation, our house will get VERY cold VERY fast. I am VERY worried...

stickers off the marble

2008-01-15T08:00:00.000-05:00

Last night I was able to get the remaining stickers and residue off the marble topped table using eucalyptus oil. Not only did it work, it smelled nice as well! I'd still like to clean the entire top of the table. We placed it alongside the couch closest to the TV. We still have one of the old black floor lamps in the living room and I'd love to get another of the mica style lights from Target. Of course, that just adds to the list of things I want but cost money: another one of those lights for the dining room, a new ceiling light for both bedrooms, new hardware for the kitchen cabinets, etc etc, not to mention that I want to do more work in the yard.

Speaking of the yard... It is still cold, 27 as I write this, so I haven't gotten anything much done in the yard for a while. I'm off on Friday and I hope it will be warm enough finally get the leaves raked up in the front yard. I have some bulbs that I meant to plant, but between rain, cold and being sick, they still aren't in the ground. I may pot them up.

I also think I can make a seed starting set-up and put it in my room. I need to get serious about what I want to try to start from seed and order some seeds before it is too late. If I want to try to get plants out around the end of March like I did last year (as I grow in pots, I can bring them in if it gets too cold) I will need to start seeds around the end of this month.

new couch, new lights

2008-01-13T21:20:00.000-05:00

I went out to breakfast yesterday AM with Bobbie while my mom stayed home and waited for Jeff Lynch and Salvation Army. Salvation Army showed up shortly after I left and took the couch without really looking at it. Then Jeff Lynch called, from outside our house, so say they were earlier than expected, so when I got home from breakfast and a few errands, the new couch was in its place.

It warmed up into the mid-50s yesterday and I was able to get a little weeding done in the foundation beds. I have a bunch of weird mushrooms growing in them. Don't know what that means, I'll have to look it up at work. I pulled up the mushrooms I did find. I need to get out there when it is warmer and spend some more time working. There is clover that needs to be dug up again and the whole area really needs some more mulch. I also have to figure out what I am going to do where the ajuga is/was. It is really doing poorly. My current thinking is to dump some planting soil in that area, so it is no longer lower than the surrounding area and then either replant ajuga or plant some more hellabores. Of course, ajuga would be A LOT cheaper, but I just don't know. It is too cold right now for me to want to be outside for a long time.

Today we wanted to take some stuff back over to storage. We both spent the morning hanging up some more artwork. In the afternoon, we went over to storage and took over some boxes, plus the Christmas wreaths. I also found the blue wood chest of drawers I wanted to bring over and emptied it. We also realized that there is finally room in the house for the marble-topped table, so we brought that over as well. I still need to clean off the stickers I stuck on the marble as a child (ARGGGGGHHHH!!!).

On the way home we stopped at Home Depot to look at a few things. While looking at something else, we remembered that we wanted to see about under-cabinet lighting. The cheapest lights would not link together and were also 18", which we thought might be too long. We ended up getting some slim-line lights that came in 7 1/2" and 13" (we got one of each). I had a little bit of trouble installing them initially because I always manage to forget to use a starter nail or drill when I'm trying to screw stuff into wood. Once I had holes made by the starter nail, the installation whent pretty smoothly. I used some of the old cable tacks I had to tack the cords up on the underside of the cabinets. It REALLY adds a lot more light to the area where we do most of our cooking. The kitchen is really coming along!

fluffing the old couch

2008-01-11T23:11:00.000-05:00

I heard my cell phone go off at work today and when I checked it this afternoon, it was a message from Jeff Lynch, they are going to deliver my new couch tomorrow. Wow, I figured it would be in some time this month, but it wasn't exactly expected yet. I'll be home tomorrow so that is not the problem, but they old couch is. I called Miracle Hill but they can't pick up couches until next week. Salvation Army could send a truck out tomorrow, but the truck driver would have to decide if it is good enough for them to take. The one corner of the couch is broken down but other than that I think it is okay, so I had to try to make sure my couch would not be rejected by Salvation Army. I cleaned off the arms, then sprayed the whole thing down with fabric freshener (I need to buy some more now). Tomorrow AM I will vacumn it out again, which I just did about a month ago. Hopefully they will accept it or I guess I'll just have to drag it out into my front yard for someone to take. Don't have any idea when the couch will be delivered or when Salvation Army will come. Need to call Jeff Lynch tomorrow to find out the scheduled delivery time. Last time they were super early.

old couch- take me please!

I am finally feeling pretty healthy again, so the plan for the weekend is to pack up the rest of the Christmas stuff, take some boxes over to storage and work on re-organizing my mom's room. Earlier this week I went to Hobby Lobby and bought a new 22 X 28 frame, which I used to reframe the print in over the mantle in the living room. Its old frame went into my room to frame up "Azali's Domain" which I've wanted to frame since I bought it, oh say 7 years ago. I still need to get a mat cut for it, so I will have to head back over to Hobby Lobby in the next week or so. I do want to buy some more frames there for the other two big posters for the dining room and for some more prints in the living room, but I think that will have to wait a few more paychecks.

As for the kitchen and the bathroom... it is looking like those two projects are going to have to wait until next month more than likely. Oh well, things are workable, if not exactly wonderful looking now, and we can certainly live with them as they are for the time being.

I'm also hoping it will be nice this weekend so I can work in the yard some. The chickweed really wants to take over, especially as I have not done much in the yard in almost a month. I did fertilize all my pansies when I watered the yard last weekend. Now that the dogs have eaten both my ornamental cabbages, I finally have somewhere to plant my pink pansies. I need to do that this weekend and water all the plants on the porch well. My coleus indoors continue to look decent and my fern continues to look sad. If the weather is above 30 at night I may but the fern back outside. I would also really like to finally get the Bradford Pear leaves raked up in my front yard.

Happy New Year

2008-01-01T20:49:00.000-05:00

Amazingly enough, today marks the third different calander year we have spent in our house, since we moved in in October 2006.

There is a small chance of snow flurries tomorrow morning and the low for tonight will be in the mid-20s. I brought my fern inside the other day. Of course, I didn't manage to get any pictures of the one nice bloom on my Debutante camellia today. Both of the blooms that have opened on Diakagura have been browned out by the frost. There are still a bunch of unopened buds, so I'm hoping I can catch a couple later in the year.

I finally got one project done around the house: I hung the mirror on the inside of my one closet door. I also replaced the shelf in that closet, but I am waiting to put shoes up until I can get some shoe boxes at Big Lots. I tried to go after work yesterday but they closed early due to the holiday. Maybe if I a really motivated, I will go get some tomorrow morning before work.

raining again

2007-12-29T00:04:00.000-05:00

I am still sick, so nothing is getting done, even though I had the day off. I still didn't get my co-worker's brother called about working on the kitchen countertop, must do that tomorrow. I wanted to get some shoe boxes at Big Lots to work on putting my one closet back together, but we went out to the mall and ended up spending more time there than I planned, and I was totally exhausted. I have to drive right by Big Lots on my way home from work, so hopefully I will remember and stop tomorrow. That will give me something to work on for Sunday.

Last night I couldn't sleep so I ended up putting away clothes and rearranging things in my closet at midnight. Then after that, I spent some quality time trying to figure out what all needed to be done to finish off around the dishwasher. Somehow we need to put in two little (or depending on where we move the dishwasher maybe 1) piece(s) of wood as blanks in the row of cabinets. I think this needs to be done BEFORE the countertop is installed, so actually it will be a two part process. First put in the blanks, then cut and install the counter. I tried to figure out how to put in the blanks and have a few ideas, but I think I need to leave that to someone with more woodworking experience. I would love to get this project FINISHED. I am still living in the land of partially completed projects, which I do not like. All the rain has made working on the railing impossible, so I'm not as worried about that (plus I've basically been too sick to even go out the side door so I haven't really seen it), but I would like to do something about the bathroom floor. I did talk to Neil about that when he was hanging the lights and he said we would need to pull the toilet. So, basically that is on hold until I can get him back out here for a full day. I think right now my plan for that would be to have him work on the outdoor outlet and maybe my dream of a laundry room light while we work tiling the floor. Right now that is all in the future, at this point probably not until February. I will just have to live with plywood in the bathroom until then.

The good news for the yard is we once again had rain today. This is fantastic as I haven't watered for several weeks now. Hope the rain keeps up until I get healthy! I do have a whole bag of bulbs that I have not gotten planted, irises and some left over tulips from my presentation at work. I guess I will dump them in the ground and they will either come up or not. Mom did notice a few weeks ago that my paperwhites under the pear tree have started to send up foliage. I hope they bloom this year.

more decorating

2007-12-26T22:27:00.000-05:00

Here are some pictures of the decorations we have up in the kitchen. We also added a few prints to the walls last week.

My collection of baskets. The far right one is a handmade kudzu basket from Georgia:

The quail, the chicken and a teapot. The quail and chicken are Taylor & Ng pieces my mom bought in San Francisco in the 1960s at Takahashi Main Street. We finally located them in storage just recently. The teapot is possibly from Japantown in SF.

In other kitchen news, my co-worker talked to her brother and he thinks he can install the patch piece of kitchen countertop. I need to call him as he wants to look at it to make sure he can do it. The other problem I have is that I can only find the countertop piece in a 6 foot section, which is way more than I need. I'd love to find a 4 foot section as it is a lot cheaper, but no one seems to carry the 4 foot sections in white.

lights finally hung!

2007-12-26T16:36:00.000-05:00

Neil came out this morning and we finally got the living room light hung and got the dining room light hung as well. As it turns out, we probably could have hung the dining room light ourselves, but due to the mess in the living room and not knowing what was up there, it was far easier to have Neil do it. He got the dining room light hung first, then tackled the living room light.

The living room light was a bit more of a situation, as there was no box in the ceiling, guess the previous fixtures had been screwed directly into the ceiling? So first, a box was put in. Then he ran some new wire over the the fixture up in the attic, which is always fun as it has such a small entrance. After that, it wasn't too much, just getting the lamp wire cut to the right length and getting the chains set at the right length. The fixture was obviously designed to hang in rooms with VERY high ceilings, as each chain was over 5 feet long. Yikes! We used only 1/2 of one chain to hang the whole fixture.

All the recent home repairs and improvments have been a tad more costly than I was expecting, so other than total do it yourself projects, I think I will be taking time off from home improvement for a while. Once I have some money saved up again, I need to get Neil back to pull up the toilet so we can finish tiling the bathroom, see about installing a light in the laundry room and do something about finishing out the around the dishwasher. Then of course there is always the shack. Somewhere in here, I'd like to get the attic insulated, something I sometimes think will never get done...

As far as anything soon goes, I'm still pretty sick with my cold/whatever. I went to the Dr today, but the prescriptions she wrote for me were non-generics that were $40 a piece, so I called to see if she could give me something else, but she had left for the day. I took some old meds I found. I'm pretty exhausted from being sick and don't think I'll be tackling anything around the house in the next week or so at least. Thank goodness we got another 1/2" of rain last night, as I'm not up to watering either right now.

sick for Christmas

2007-12-25T19:17:00.000-05:00

I had 4 days off at Christmas and I had all sorts of plans. I was going to finish the railing, work out in the yard, maybe even look at trying to wire up the outdoor outlet myself.

Then I got sick and stayed sick. Four whole days off and I've been out in the yard for about 3 minutes. Luckily we got some rain earlier this week so I didn't have to water. None of my projects even got thought about, I didn't even retouch the paint in the bathroom where I caulked last weekend.

The work in the kitchen also cost a bit more than I had initially expected and it is not finished, nor is the bathroom retiled. Those will have to wait at least until after the new year. I had also wanted to get some more frames to finish putting up art in the living and dining rooms. Also tabled... We haven't even gone through the framed artwork we have here at the house to decide what we want to hang.

Pretty much a total waste of 4 straight days off from work. I'm planning to go to the doctor tomorrow AM, as I'm still sick, though it seems to have moved more into my chest now. I really don't feel good.

more work around the house, hiding the formica

2007-12-16T21:23:00.000-05:00

Today was still very cold, so no work outside. We did get almost 1 1/2" of rain yesterday, so that was very good and I did not have to worry about watering at all today.

The area of the wall I patched is looking good, but when I held the outlet cover up, I realized that I also needed to patch above the outlet, so I did that and then left it to dry. With the wall patching still drying, that left me looking for something else to do instead of painting, as that would have to wait.

We have several large boxes that have been in the living room since we moved and several other boxes we had brought over to go through "later". I decided that "later" had definitely come and we worked most of the morning going through the boxes of kitchen, desk and just misc stuff, deciding what to keep, what to give to Goodwill, what to take back to storage and what to toss. In the end, I had a small box for Goodwill, one of the big boxes 1/2 full for storage and a full garbage bag, plus some new things in the kitchen and the desk. The living room looks SO much nicer without the boxes sitting there. I hid the piece of formica my mom uses as a table under the loveseat. I just hope we can remember where it is if we need it!

I also want to do something about all the artwork we have needing to be framed. I had some 11 x 14 black frames I had purchased for some of my mom's old photos, but they turned out to be 8 X 10. So, I found two saluki prints, one which is a cheap knock off version of the real print and I've never been happy with, and one that I need to mat as it is an odd size. The print whose quality I wasn't happy with was 11 X 14 and fit perfectly in the frame. I hung it in the kitchen up fairly high on the far wall. The colors look great and from that distance you can't tell that the clarity is not all it could be. The print that needs to be matted is almost large enough for the frame. I need to get a piece of acid free white paper to put behind it, but for now there is just a tiny edge of cardboard. I hung that on the wall you pass closest to when you walk into the kitchen. I think it looks great there. We also found an old southwestern themed trivet that we hung on the wall above the telephone.

I also rehung the framed tile that we have always thought looked like Bally. It now hangs in the dining room facing the keyholder tile of a red saluki.

I have another piece of saluki artwork that will look good in the laundry room, but it is in a very thick mat. I've had a bit of trouble finding a frame that it will fit in, at a good price. I'll check Garden Ridge after Christmas and see what I can find. We also got our order of 3 large posters this week, two of which will go in the dining room. But, they will run about $25 each for the frames, so they will have to wait a bit. I did find two nice smaller frames for a few pieces of art in my mom's room. I purchased 3 11 X 14 black frames I had hoped would work for the Ruritania ads that I want to frame up in my room, but I will need a 16 X 20 frame for them, so I have to return those. I'm still not sure exactly what I am doing in my room, as I am waiting to get a new frame so I can FINALLY frame up 'Azali's Domain'. Again, that will have to wait a little bit.

After dinner, the patching was dry so I was able to paint that area of the wall and touch up where I had caulking yesterday. I also touched up the bathroom, but the wall there was stripped back to the wallboard and I think it might require a second coat of paint.

Mom did a lot of work in her room today and there is a lot more space. There is still tons of stuff that needs to be put somewhere. That is our major problem... no storage space. I am hoping we can figure out how to use the space in the dining room closet better once the lamp and its box are out of there. Speaking of the living room lamp, I am hoping we will get it hung this week if we can get Neil back out here. I also bought a lamp on ebay, but I don't think that will be here in time for him to hang, but I should be able to hang it myself, just have to figure out what to do with the ground wire.

burying wire, re-caulking

2007-12-15T19:21:00.000-05:00

I went to a Christmas party this morning, so my work on the house did not start until the afternoon. First up was a trip to Lowes to get some supplies (always need MORE things...). I got a 2 x 2 piece of particleboard that will serve as a temporary counter over the dishwasher until I get a piece of countertop and have it patched in there.

The wires for the new outlet above the dishwasher have been exposed and driving me crazy. Plus, I realized that having the wires on top of the wall would prevent any countertop from fitting up against the wall. So, a major plan for the day was to figure out how to bury the wires. I found out I could cut into the drywall, stick the wires down below the level of the drywall, then patch over it. I had to buy some new heavy duty blades for my utility knives, but I was able to get the drywall cut. There is a little twist to this, as typically when you cut back through the drywall, you would run into the empty space between the studs. In our case, the drywall in the kitchen was put up over existing beadboard, so the wires did not have a very big area. I ran into some problems when I was trying to put on the patch and finally figured out how to bend the wires so they fit in their little trough and was able to patch over the area pretty well. It did necessitate a second trip out to Lowes in the late afternoon, as I had not purchased patching material earlier, not knowing how big a hole I'd end up with. Once I got the wires bent, I was able to get the patches up with a bunch of spackle and left them to dry overnight.

My final project for the day was to do something about some poorly caulked areas. I bought a caulk removing tool and a caulk smoothing tool. I was able to get rid of almost all the old caulk on the left hand side of the sink. While I was at it, I got rid of some old wallpaper still hanging in there as well. I did manage to peel off a little paint but since I am painting the area where I patched the wall, that is not a big deal. I also removed the caulk from around the bathroom sink, which again took off a little of the paint.

dishwasher installed

2007-12-13T19:49:00.000-05:00

We now have a working dishwasher installed in our kitchen. We also have THREE working electrical outlets, instead of the one we have been making due with. One additional outlet was installed above the dishwasher and the outlet next to the stove that has never previously worked was reactivated. The dishwasher and two outlets are all hooked into the mystery panel under the house, which Neil says is safe.

My mom has done one full load of dishes so far. The leak in the sink drain is also supposedly fixed, so we are going to moniter that situation. If it is fixed, then we can remove the bucket and actually have some more storage space under the sink. There is still work to be done in the kitchen, as I need to figure out what I'm going to do about filling the space between the dishwasher and the wall and we still need to install an additional piece of countertop. Neil is going to come back out next week to work on the living room light and the outdoor outlet and I'm going to see if he can do the countertop at the same time, assuming I can find what I need a Lowes or Home Depot. I am pretty much running out of money for this project (not like I really had the money for it in the first place) but now that it is most of the way through I really need to finish it out.

In garden news, my Debutante camellia is blooming. I figure it is only blooming so early because I bought it from the nursery already heavily budded.

one post in

2007-12-11T22:53:00.000-05:00

I left work early today and Neil was finishing up for the day when I got home. The leaking sewer pipe is now wrapped, with one little place that needs some additional tape. The newly leaking toilet was caused by a bent flange. That is now fixed and the toilet is back in place with a new wax seal. He also looked at the odd fuse box under the house, which he thinks is safe. The only things connected to it are some other weird box with a switch and the non-working outlet in the kitchen. We did discover that the wire on the back of the house that used to lead to the shack is hot, so that can be turned into an outdoor outlet.

The plan for Thursday is to do the drain plumbing and electrical work for the dishwasher. It is being delivered on Thursday. Then he will work on getting the outdoor outlet in and take a look at the light fixture wire in the living room. He did find the wires that were stuck up in the ceiling, but he wants to run some new wire, as that is really old wire.

After Neil left, we set to work on the handrail. I was worried whether or not I'd be able to drill into the concrete. That turned out not to be as much of a problem as the fact that the steps are made of concrete blocks, NOT poured concrete, so I ran into holes when I tried to drill. I had to slightly reposition the top post but after a bit of fiddling around, I was able to get the post attached to the top step. Because my step is not totally level, the post looks like it might be just slightly leaning.

I ran into some problems when I went to drill for the bottom post. First I dug out the dirt so the post would fit, but once I started drilling, I ran into nothing but holes. There simply is not enough solid concrete down a the end to drill into the secure the post, so I am going to have to set it in concrete. I will probably end up working on that this weekend. I am having second thoughts on whether or not I can cut the railings correctly. My mom thinks I can, but I will need to buy a miter box and I want a new hand saw, something that will be very sharp.

operation handrail begins

2007-12-10T20:41:00.000-05:00

Mom wants a handrail on the side steps, so I decided that (along with re-glazing windows) was going to be my next project. It is such super nice weather right now, like late spring or early summer that I said I wish I would take Wednesday off until 5 PM, but another co-worker is off. However, my boss did say that I could leave today (which I declined as I wasn't ready to work on any project) or tomorrow. I said tomorrow would be great.

I spent some time today looking at our home improvement books for examples of stair railings. Most of what I saw wasn't any help. So, off to Lowes after work. A nice (and cute!) guy in the lumber department said that yes, I did actually know what I was supposed to do to install the railings. I bought the two main pillars today to start out with. I also got some good help (always nice to find) from another employee who helped me pick out the right fasteners and find the right drill bit. I am all set for tomorrow now!

While I was shopping, Neil called and he will be over tomorrow, which is perfect because my mom has the day off. He said he is also free on Thursday and I said I might want him back then. He is going to deal with the sewer pipe first, then check out the toilet. Next task after that is going to be to see about getting the needed connections for the dishwasher. My dream would be that he would be able to get all the connections for the dishwasher done tomorrow so that we could then have the dishwasher delivered and have it hooked up on Thursday. The reality is probably more like maybe we can get all the dishwasher connections hooked up by Thursday, then have the dishwasher delivered and look into installing it ourselves...

hut shingled

2007-12-09T17:42:00.000-05:00

After getting a start on shingling on Wednesday, we were able to get all but the top row of shingles on the hut roof on Friday. This AM I ran out to get a tube of roofing cement and used it to glue down the top layer of shingles.

I finally watered the yard today. Due to the cool temps a few days of rain, it has been a while since I've actually watered. I remembered once I got started that I had had issues last time I tried, no water came out of the water wand. I thought it might be the bad hose I had on the inner part of the reel, but taking that off did not good. I tried using the wand without the quick connects and that didn't help either. So, my only a few month old water wand no longer works and I have no idea why. Something in the very top seems to be stopping the flow of water, but I can't find any way to take it apart. So, I'll have to return it. I used an old hose nozzle to water the yard and that took quite a while.

I finally got around to running some chicken wire along the inside of my side fence where it is the 4" squares. While that fencing will keep MY dogs in my yard, it will not keep my neighbors chihuahuas OUT of my yard. The little LITERAL ankle biters keep coming into my yard and getting right up to my fence. Of course my dogs want to fence fight with them and I have been worried that one of the little idiots might try to actually come into my yard or that one of my dogs might get their head through the fence and get one of the little pests. The new male Chi is particularly brave, though he has not bitten me yet. I'll have to see what happens the next time I'm working in my foundation beds... At least with the chicken wire up we should have no actual dog on dog violence at my side fence and everyone should be safe and sound.

I went out to Underwoods to price daphnes but after seeing the price, I figured out why I didn't get one last year. At that point, I was at a loss for what to do next. I want to get started on painting the windows again, but several of the windows need to be reglazed.

Once I got home I started trying to chip the old glazing out of the laundry room window and hoped that I wouldn't break the glass or cause it to fall. A lot of the glazing came away easily and some didn't want to come at all. I finally got all that I thought I'd be able to get off today off and then I got the tube of glazing I had purchased last year. I now understand why the glazing on the front windows looks like it does! In theory this glazing in a caulking gun is easy to use, but in practice it was a mess. Still, I guess there is less prep work than with traditional glazing and you can paint it with latex paint. I did get the parts of the window where I had removed glazing re-glazed, but I still need to remove more glazing from the top part of the window, which will require the ladder. This has been a project that I've wanted and needed to do for some time, as I have been afraid that the glass would fall right out of that window. Now I'm not as worried about that. I think I'm going to have to do similar work on the one kitchen window. Unfortunately, it will all be ladder work, as that is the highest window in the house.

When I was cleaning everything up, I managed to knock over one of my pots of coleus. So, it went outside to be repotted and I also repotted the croton that was sent home from my mom's work to see if I could help it. I took several other plants outside to water and they are out there now draining. I just need to remember to bring them inside before I got to bed. I did get some liquid plant food so I can feed my houseplants this winter. I will mix up a batch of it on Wednesday.

The really BAD news is that I noticed the toilet is leaking again. So far, the leak is confined to the little piece of wood we are going to remove when we tile, so that is good. I'm very glad we have not tiled yet but I am a bit concerned about what the problem could be. The sewer pipe leak continues as well. I called Neil today and he said he will know tomorrow if he can get out here this week. I sure hope he can.

finally started shingling

2007-12-05T11:23:00.000-05:00

We finally started shingling the water heater hut today and got 3 rows done. I figure I have another 4-5 rows of nailed down shingles left to go. One thing we are buying is a pair of tin snips that we can use to cut the shingles and for other projects. Trying to cut the shingles with a box cutter (and a blade that turned out to be labelled "paper") is not the way to go. We are still running into problems of nails not wanting to go in and I seem to be good at getting nails to go in at an angle, which does not work. The chalk line is easy to use and does seem to be working well. I guess I will resume this project when I am off work on Sunday as I'm going to be out of town on Friday and have to work Saturday. Bad thing about winter is that it is dark when I get home from work and too cold to get a really early start in the morning on any projects (and even if it was warmer, I don't think people would like me hammering at 8 AM).

I am still waiting to hear back from Neil about the leaking sewer pipe. I hope I do hear from him this week, if only to make plans for next week. We also have Dipple Plumbing coming out tomorrow to take a look and make sure all the plumbing from the bathroom was done correctly, since the tub and sink take forever to drain and the plumbing there is only a little over a year old. I also want to find out if they did the plumbing under the sink and get them to look at it, as it has always leaked. And, we need to make sure that the old water heater connections are indeed plumbed in, as they should have been since that is where the water heater was when we closed on the house. I wish I could be off tomorrow AM to help deal with this.

water heater hut painted

2007-12-03T20:49:00.000-05:00

I have finally gotten the water heater hut painted. It now is painted with 2 coats of Zinser 123 primer/sealer. When I was painted, I realized it had a major design flaw, because the roof did not extend past the front wall, causing water to run directly down the front wall. Initially, I thought that I would have to remove the exisiting roof, but then I realized that there was no reason I could not simply put a larger piece of plywood over the existing roof. So, the hut now has a new, larger roof that does overhang the front of the hut. I got this new roof painted with two coats of primer as well. I have hoping that I will be able to start shingling it on Wednesday. I would also like to get some outdoor white paint and put a real coat of paint on the hut as well, just to try to preserve the wood more, as it is OSB. I will say that that roof overhang did a good job on the sides, the front and roof were the only areas that showed signs of having been wet.

Speaking of wet... my new and newly primed roof got rained on last night, as did my pack of shingles. Hopefully everything is okay.

yew is dead

2007-11-25T18:24:00.001-05:00

I took the yew I had dug up in to Underwoods today and it is dead. Since I've had it for more than 6 months, there is no money back. It looks like it is another victim of the late frost. They will have another big 30% off sale around the first of the year and I'll buy a replacement then unless I can find one cheaper at another nursery. So sad. The thinking is that it too was a victim of the Easter Freeze as there was no other obvious causes of death.

It was too cold again today to paint the water heater hut. I did get out and water a few containers in the AM, dumped a few more summer things and used the pressure washer nozzle to clean out my ceramic and terra cotta containers. This afternoon, we took all of them over to storage. My yard is a lot neater now, but I am wishing more than ever that the shack was functional. Maybe later...

I did plant the lantana from the hanging basket, basically throwing it into the ground and the front of the left hand side of the perennial bed. I then dug down a little hole and put the unplanted butterfly bush, pot and all, in that hole. Over in the shade border, I dug three holes for the three hydrangeas in 1 gallon containers that have been sitting there. Penny Mac, Marchal Foch and my propogated Endless Summer are now all sunk into the ground for the winter. I also moved the two potted hostas way back along the fence line. I am going to do some more raking in a few days, then pile some leaves in this area.

We went to Country Boys and got my Christmas presant, a wine and silver blue garden angel. I totally couldn't afford it, but I couldn't pass it up either. I also got a few other plants to add to some containers before my presentation at work on Wednesday. I also took some pictures this afternoon and I hope that some of them will work. I am hoping for a slow day at work to work on the powerpoint presentation I said I'd make. Wish I had the program on my home computer.

This evening, as it was getting dark, I moved the English Thyme I had divided into the whiskey barrel, stuck a new spruge I bought today in the center of the barrel and stuck the sage that had been growing in a small plastic pot on the back side of my whiskey barrel. I plan on sticking in a few pansies and then it should be ready for winter.

new wreaths, too cold to paint

2007-11-24T17:32:00.000-05:00

It never got above 46 today that I saw, so it was too cold to paint. I spent the morning working on web sites. We went out and did a bit of shopping this afternoon. I got two small artificial wreaths at Country Boys and two red ribbons at Big Lots. I have hung one wreath on each front window. I think they look as nice as the ones with the bows from Country Boys, but my bows were a lot less expensive. I also hung my Christmas wreath that I got at Country Boys a few weeks ago. The house is starting to look a little bit Christmasy.

We are debating putting up the Christmas tree because of the dogs, but I think we probably will, just might not hang any ornaments down low.

Tomorrow it is supposed to be above 50, so maybe I will get my chance to paint. If not, we are looking at rain again next week.

leaves mulched, daffodils planted

2007-11-23T22:07:00.000-05:00

This morning Mark, who works with us, came over with his mulching mowers to do something about the leaves. After the bag-a-rama last year, the much quicker and easier and more environmentally friendly mulching was worth every penny. All the leaves in the front yard mulched in really well. I just had to pick up some more catalpa leaves from the foundation beds.

The back yard went really well too. The entire area where I tried to grow grass along the side of the house is currently mulched catalpa leaves. Maybe it will help feed the dirt! I am thinking that in the spring I might put a layer of that seed starting soil down there and try again to grow grass.

Everywhere else looks great as well and as a bonus I got my grass cut as well. After Mark left, I worked getting some of the leaves off my beds where I have pansies and doing a little bit of weeding. I also decided to finally dig up the left yew and try potting it up to see if it could be saved. The roots around the outside edge seemed to not be in good shape, but the roots in the center and the bottom of the rootball look okay to me. I also cut back a few of the browned out branches to see if I could find any green wood. Not sure if I did or not. I am thinking about taking it in to Underwoods tomorrow to see if they have any suggestions or ideas.

I have been thinking a lot lately about the shack in the back yard, and my current thinking is that it might be able to be repaired. I wanted to know more about what I was really dealing with, so while I had Bobbie's crowbar, I went out to the shack and did a little demo on the inside. The wall that faces Curtis's yard and where there is a hole in the roof pretty much totally need to be replaced. A few of the framing boards might be okay, but the bottom boards are rotted. Along the front, most of the framing seems okay, but the bottom boards are rotted again. The back and side that face Norman, where the root is intact, seem to have good usable framing. I will have Neil give me a better opinion when he comes out, but now he can get a better look at what we are actually dealing with. My mom said it might be easier to just tear the whole thing down and rebuild it from scratch. I can see the advantage to that as well. If so, I might make it slightly smaller, maybe 10 X 12. And of course, Bobbie's greenhouse idea did get me thinking and I need to research that clear plastic stuff she likes. I was thinking that the small back section could be turned into a greenhouse, with the siding and roof being totally that plastic stuff, except probably the door. If wouldn't be heated, but it might work.

Since we had a little bit of rain, I figured it was time to try to plant the daffodils. I started out using the bulb hound, but at least in the area I was planting in, it was easier going with my trowel. I got all 80 (minus a few bad ones) bulbs planted, mostly along the road side of the ditch in front of the house. I would like to get some more daffodils to plant along the property line with Curtis's house.

I checked out the water heater hut and it seemed dry today, so my current plan is to paint it tomorrow morning and maybe try to get a second coat on in the afternoon. I think the OSB will probably take MANY coats to cover. We went to Big Lots today and finally got a box to put the peat moss in, so that is now under the house and out of my kitchen! I wasn't thinking about painting then, or I would have gotten a few cheap rollers to use on the water heater hut. I may need to run out to Lowes, depending on what I have in my painting box under the house.

I used my shark floor sweeper on the carpet again today and it does work well, but there are places/areas where I just really need suction, so I decided I really needed a dust buster type of thing. This evening we went to Kohls and got a Shark pet hand held power-vac. It has to charge for almost a day, but I hope it works well. As it was Black Friday and Kohls was having major sales, we also got some more things to help stay warm. Mom got a down alternative comforter for her bed and I got a microfiber throw for the papasan chair and a microfiber blanket for my bed. They also had some really neat 8 X 10 picture frames that I got for some more garden photos. Need to decide where I'm going to put them, then send the photos to Walgreens for printing.

It is currently 35 outside. BRRRR! It seemed much colder this afternoon that it was in the morning, too cold for me to do any work outside. We are supposed to get down to 29 tonight, so I hope it warms up enough that I will want to be outside to paint tomorrow. And I hope that the paint I got last year and left outside under the tarp all year is still good as well!

shopping for tile, raking leaves, cleaning

2007-11-16T21:35:00.000-05:00

I was off work today and went shopping for tile. I found exactly what I was looking for, but it was $9.81/square foot. I found something else that was close to what I want but it was $6.35/square foot. I have decided to just but an $11 box of the tile that is already in the bathroom and not pull up the good tile that is still down. I just need to add some sort of compound to level out the floor in the bathroom and I will be ready to tile.

The water heater hut is now dry on the front, but still damp on the top. I brushed off the leaves, and if we don't get any more rain, it should be ready to paint next week. I raked up 2 bags of leaves today and raked some more into the start of some piles. I did get all the catalpa leaves out from around the front tree. They had almost buried the hellabore. The hellabore is putting out some nice new foliage and I hope that I will get some blooms this year.

I was running out of bags and raking leaves is not one of my favorite things, so I switched to cleaning the kitchen floor. I really need to break out the vacumn, as there is a lot of wood dust from the bathroom, but didn't get that far today. I did sweep it well, used some cleaner on some of the worst areas and damp swiffered the whole floor. I think it looks pretty good now. I have been trying to find another runner like the one long one I have to put in front of the sink and counter, but Target seems to have stopped making that style. They now make a somewhat similar rug, but it has a red stripe in it and I don't want that for my kitchen. I found another rug that might work, but it is light tan, now exactly my top choice what with the kitchen being the room you go through from outside.

I finished off this evening doing a little cleaning in the bathroom. Again trying to get up some of the construction dust and just a little general cleaning. I think things are looking better now. I need to water my fern again and once I do that I will have a mess to sweep up in the living room.

bathroom floor fixed

2007-11-15T21:08:00.000-05:00

Neil came today and fixed the bathroom floor. The wood was totally rotted through, so it is good we didn't wait any longer. Only at a small section right under the toilet needed to be replaced and he checked everything from under the house to make sure that the beams and other wood was okay. Perhaps the most exciting thing was that he found duct work to the bathroom duct, that had just come undone and was able to refasten it, so we now have a heated bathroom, rather than just relying on the space heater! Progress!

The bathroom floor is still a work in progress. Since the thickness of wood has changed over the years, there is about a 1/8" difference in height between the existing floor and the new floor. The 3/4" treated plywood was not thick enough, so there is a sheet of thinner, non-treated plywood as the top layer. Hopefully that will be okay. The original floor wasn't treated wood, and it was fine until the toilet started leaking. I do need to ask at a tile store and find out what to do about the slight difference in height between the two parts of the floor. I am also going to go try to find the hex tiles I want tomorrow. Right now the toilet is sitting on a little piece of plywood that is higher than the surrounding floor. The current plan is that after Thanksgiving, Neil will come back and lift up the toilet so my mom and I can tile the floor and while we are tiling, he will do some electrical work, trying to hang the living room light, investigating the mystery box under the house and seeing about trying to add an ourdoor outlet.

I am thinking more and more about just trying to insulate the house myself. Maybe Bobbie would want to come and help feed the insulation into the hopper. I just don't feel like I'll even get all the money I'd need to have it done saved up, something else always seems to come up.

Meanwhile, on other fronts, I had taken the tarp of the water heater hut earlier this week to let it dry. I noticed yesterday that it was dry, but I didn't have time to paint it before work as I had other things I had to do yesterday morning. Overnight we got 1/2" of rain and, of course, the tarp was off the hut. We don't have any more rain forcast, so I am hoping it dries out in time for the Thanksgiving holiday and I can paint it then when I'm off work.

no work on the bathroom

2007-11-12T11:06:00.000-05:00

I had arranged to work nights tonight so that Neil could come and fix the bathroom. Well, he called at 7 AM and said he that thrown his back out and couldn't come. So, now I am working nights and the bathroom is STILL not fixed. I have no idea when we will ever get this fixed. Next week is Thanksgiving and we simply can not take any time off that week due to vacations.

I was going to paint the water heater hut, but the sheeting on the top and front are damp, so I took the tarp off to let them dry out. We have a small chance of rain on Wednesday, but I'm currently hoping that holds off and that the sheeting will be dry by then so I can paint it Wednesday. Then, there would be an outside chance I could shingle it on Friday and that project would be done. If not, on Friday I might try to get back to working on painting the window frames outside. I really need to paint the two kitchen windows and finish up the one I had started working on on the side. Then, at some point I need to do something about the putty situation on the laundry room window.