Thanks, guys!
Friday, July 13, 2012
Getting Fired Up
E's friends Miguel and James were visiting a few weekends ago. Miguel and James are E's friends from grad school and they all try to get together at least once a year to watch movies, eat copious amounts, etc. These guys also know how to get things done. E casually mentioned we were thinking about getting a grill (fairly inexpensive, quality but low-key, since we are not the biggest grillers in the world; well, at least, not yet.) Once they arrive, laptops were pulled out, Consumer Reports was consulted, negotiation calls were made, and in less than 24 hours, they had borrowed Mom's PT Cruiser to pick up our new beauty:
Hot Fun in the Summertime
Has it really been more than a month since I posted? Good heavens. Summer does that. Just yesterday, June was beginning, and now we're halfway through July.
Here are some garden pix, but they are, again, rather dated. I'll try to get some new ones this weekend:
Here are just three of the many black raspberries we were able to enjoy from our out-of-control bush this year. The berries are finished now, but the plant is still growing like a weed. We need to take the bird netting off so it's free to be. Said bush can be viewed here:
The Yukon Gold potatoes are dying back a bit now, but at their peak they were a healthy and bushy two-feet tall:
Our shmanciest local garden center had it's annual summer sale in late June. It started at 6 a.m. on a day I happened to have taken off, so I thought I'd go for a few minutes and see if there was anything. I expected to be home shortly. Two hours later...
This sale was a madhouse, by the way. I rolled in at 6:30 and the parking lot was packed, with people with fully stocked carts already headed for their cars.
So the damage came in at: two boxwoods, two Scotch brooms (one for Mom), a foxglove, a Sweet William, a St. John's Wort bush, an evening primrose, and my prize find, a dwarf lilac. I've wanted a lilac since we moved in, but never got around to it, and turns out, when I did, it was on sale! Love a sale.
I've been slowly putting these in the garden and containers. Pictures to follow.
And finally, there is house news. We're going with gray for the dining room and blue for the living room. The dining room is underway, with the living room to follow. Here's a color preview:
The darker gray on the right will be the dining room, and the blue the living room. We'll have white from the chair rail down in both rooms. And with that, we have a trifecta of National Trust for Historic Preservation colors on the first floor – La Fonda Jalapeno for the family room, Woodlawn Silver Brook for the dining room, and St. Francis Spirit Blue in the living room. I love that it worked out this way.
Here are some garden pix, but they are, again, rather dated. I'll try to get some new ones this weekend:
Here are just three of the many black raspberries we were able to enjoy from our out-of-control bush this year. The berries are finished now, but the plant is still growing like a weed. We need to take the bird netting off so it's free to be. Said bush can be viewed here:
The Yukon Gold potatoes are dying back a bit now, but at their peak they were a healthy and bushy two-feet tall:
The tomatillo plant is now overflowing out of the approximately four-foot tall tomato cage we placed around it. But you can get an idea of its enthusiasm for growth here:
Peppers, all of which now have offspring:
The tomatoes are now near the top of their cages, too:
And because I don't have enough outdoor crazy, I thought this was a good idea:
Our shmanciest local garden center had it's annual summer sale in late June. It started at 6 a.m. on a day I happened to have taken off, so I thought I'd go for a few minutes and see if there was anything. I expected to be home shortly. Two hours later...
This sale was a madhouse, by the way. I rolled in at 6:30 and the parking lot was packed, with people with fully stocked carts already headed for their cars.
So the damage came in at: two boxwoods, two Scotch brooms (one for Mom), a foxglove, a Sweet William, a St. John's Wort bush, an evening primrose, and my prize find, a dwarf lilac. I've wanted a lilac since we moved in, but never got around to it, and turns out, when I did, it was on sale! Love a sale.
I've been slowly putting these in the garden and containers. Pictures to follow.
And finally, there is house news. We're going with gray for the dining room and blue for the living room. The dining room is underway, with the living room to follow. Here's a color preview:
The darker gray on the right will be the dining room, and the blue the living room. We'll have white from the chair rail down in both rooms. And with that, we have a trifecta of National Trust for Historic Preservation colors on the first floor – La Fonda Jalapeno for the family room, Woodlawn Silver Brook for the dining room, and St. Francis Spirit Blue in the living room. I love that it worked out this way.
Wednesday, June 6, 2012
The Vegetable Garden Is Away
So we have five tomato plants, three varieties; five hot peppers, three varieties; five sweet peppers, three varieties; and a tomatillo plant. Those two lines of plants in the foreground of the next picture are potatoes and onions.
Perennial Favorites
New flowers! Most are perennials in an effort to populate the ever wild front patch with something other than weeds. But I threw in a few annuals for pretty.
In addition, I scored more hostas! A nearby store was selling some out front that someone had clearly dug out of their own garden. They weren't even priced – they just asked you put what you wanted to pay in a box. Score.
The new ones are the two-toned green plants between the others. Pretty, no?
Room Two!
As I believe I've mentioned before on this blog, we once thought we'd have the first floor of the house redecorated by Christmas. Last year.
Ahem.
By Christmas last year we had one room three quarters of the way finished. But as a result (and as always), lessons were learned.
So now after a sizable break, we're at it again. Actually E has been at it again, with only some help from me.
Dining room befores, with a little priming on the third picture:
A before from the day we moved in:
The dining room is just off the living room. (The now-green room is referred to here as the family room – or now, the green room, but just to clarify.) So the colors for these two rooms have to either be the same or work well together. And, ideally, bear some harmonious relationship to the green room.
The original thought was blue for the dining room and violet/gray for the living room. And it could work ... but not for us, I don't think. We found a lot of colors we like, but not so many that we like together. So after four shades of blue, three shades of violet/gray, and three shades of yellow (wildcard!), everything has changed, and could change again. We think one of the blues will work for the living room. And now we're thinking a medium gray for the dining room. The chair rail and the space below it will be the same white we used in the other room, "Subway Tile."
E at work priming:
Ahem.
By Christmas last year we had one room three quarters of the way finished. But as a result (and as always), lessons were learned.
So now after a sizable break, we're at it again. Actually E has been at it again, with only some help from me.
Dining room befores, with a little priming on the third picture:
A before from the day we moved in:
The dining room is just off the living room. (The now-green room is referred to here as the family room – or now, the green room, but just to clarify.) So the colors for these two rooms have to either be the same or work well together. And, ideally, bear some harmonious relationship to the green room.
The original thought was blue for the dining room and violet/gray for the living room. And it could work ... but not for us, I don't think. We found a lot of colors we like, but not so many that we like together. So after four shades of blue, three shades of violet/gray, and three shades of yellow (wildcard!), everything has changed, and could change again. We think one of the blues will work for the living room. And now we're thinking a medium gray for the dining room. The chair rail and the space below it will be the same white we used in the other room, "Subway Tile."
E at work priming:
Some blues:
So stay tuned – heaven knows what it will actually look like when we're done.
So stay tuned – heaven knows what it will actually look like when we're done.
Saturday, May 12, 2012
Sunny Saturday
Just a few happy snaps for a stroll through the grounds here at H of C and E.
Scotch Broom:
Oak Leaf Hydrangea, preparing to bloom:
My False Indigo, which pretty much stayed looking exactly as it did when I bought it for all of last summer...
...apparently needed a year to get going:
The Edelweiss, which survived the move from our old apartment, is thriving, with 13 buds. The most it ever had before was one.
Our tree. all be-leafed:
And a vegetable garden update. The trench holds our potato plants. Apparently, one is supposed to plant potato eyes and then, when the sprouts start coming up, mound dirt over the plant for a bit until you have a mound around each plant that's been put in place. I found a blog where the writer recorded using her mother's method, which reversed the process – dig a trench, plant the potatoes at the bottom, then as they sprout, throw more dirt on them – built in mounds!
To the right of the trench is a line of onions that, to my relief, sprouted. I thought they might have lost their "goody" as my grandmother would have said, because some of them felt a little hollow. But so far, hardly any duds. We won't have lots of them, but it will be fun anyway.
Potato plant close-up:
Onion line-up:
This raspberry bush...
...is now this raspberry bush:
And let me tell you, it is going like GANGBUSTERS.
What does that mean, anyway?
I don't know, but what I mean is that it refuses to stop growing. We may wake to find it snaking in a window someday. It has so many buds. The silver streamers are intended to keep birds away but I'm skeptical of their effectiveness. Plus, they are not terribly sturdy and they keep shredding themselves on the bush's thorns, so we picked up a net to put over the bush when the berries start coming in to keep the birds from plucking our precious, precious berries.
To my cilantro-hating cousin, check out what came up on its own from last year:
And finally, they are difficult to see but here are our spindly scallions, overshadowed by their chive cousins. I'm hoping they are inspired to grow, but having received unfortunate placement before the raspberry bush began to go crazy and the chives exploded, I'm not sure they'll get quite enough sun. We shall see.
Scotch Broom:
Oak Leaf Hydrangea, preparing to bloom:
My False Indigo, which pretty much stayed looking exactly as it did when I bought it for all of last summer...
...apparently needed a year to get going:
The Edelweiss, which survived the move from our old apartment, is thriving, with 13 buds. The most it ever had before was one.
Our tree. all be-leafed:
And a vegetable garden update. The trench holds our potato plants. Apparently, one is supposed to plant potato eyes and then, when the sprouts start coming up, mound dirt over the plant for a bit until you have a mound around each plant that's been put in place. I found a blog where the writer recorded using her mother's method, which reversed the process – dig a trench, plant the potatoes at the bottom, then as they sprout, throw more dirt on them – built in mounds!
To the right of the trench is a line of onions that, to my relief, sprouted. I thought they might have lost their "goody" as my grandmother would have said, because some of them felt a little hollow. But so far, hardly any duds. We won't have lots of them, but it will be fun anyway.
Potato plant close-up:
Onion line-up:
This raspberry bush...
...is now this raspberry bush:
And let me tell you, it is going like GANGBUSTERS.
What does that mean, anyway?
I don't know, but what I mean is that it refuses to stop growing. We may wake to find it snaking in a window someday. It has so many buds. The silver streamers are intended to keep birds away but I'm skeptical of their effectiveness. Plus, they are not terribly sturdy and they keep shredding themselves on the bush's thorns, so we picked up a net to put over the bush when the berries start coming in to keep the birds from plucking our precious, precious berries.
To my cilantro-hating cousin, check out what came up on its own from last year:
And finally, they are difficult to see but here are our spindly scallions, overshadowed by their chive cousins. I'm hoping they are inspired to grow, but having received unfortunate placement before the raspberry bush began to go crazy and the chives exploded, I'm not sure they'll get quite enough sun. We shall see.
The Last of Sharon
Rose of Sharon, that is.
We had one that had grown to ornamental tree size growing perilously close to one of our fireplaces. Being, essentially, a glorified bush, we're not sure that it could have truly damaged the foundation, but we didn't want to find out. Plus, it looked a bit out of place anyway. So E set to work during our freak warm spell in March, hacking down all the branches and as much of the stump as he could with a tree saw. I cut the branches up for disposal. But we were still left with three-plus feet of trunk that needed removal.
Having no chainsaw of our own, E requested the help of friend and coworker D yesterday and she went to town.
D-treed:
Thank you, D!
We had one that had grown to ornamental tree size growing perilously close to one of our fireplaces. Being, essentially, a glorified bush, we're not sure that it could have truly damaged the foundation, but we didn't want to find out. Plus, it looked a bit out of place anyway. So E set to work during our freak warm spell in March, hacking down all the branches and as much of the stump as he could with a tree saw. I cut the branches up for disposal. But we were still left with three-plus feet of trunk that needed removal.
Having no chainsaw of our own, E requested the help of friend and coworker D yesterday and she went to town.
D-treed:
Thank you, D!
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