What’s on my…

What’s on my ironing board, waiting to be made into something?

What’s on my left wrist, putting a damper on making?

What’s on my windowsill, doing quite well, much to my surprise?

What’s on my kitchen counters, shocking friends & family who stop by?

What’s on my mind, wanting to show up more in my day?

Garden Re-do, Part 2: Side Yard Transformation

Now you see it, now you don’t. I’m talking about the lawn on the north side of our house. And, hopefully, the mulch and the newspaper underneath do their job and you don’t see it a month from now either!

Below is a view from the deck. I thought the whole area was shaded, being the north side of the house, but in the weeks leading up to the project, I took photos at various times of day and noticed that the shade never covered more than half the area. So I can plant some sun-lovers eventually too!

The stepping stones seen above right are more free ones from Freecycle. Our stack is almost gone now. But now the neighbors have rearranged their rocks (you can see more of their landscaping in the photo below, my view when I’m washing dishes) and they have a huge stack of extras that they’d love to share with us. I’d like to put some of them in as an edging on our side, to continue the line started on their side.

I’ve been thinking about doing this project for a couple years already – we never “use” this area of lawn so why keep it. I’d rather have plants. So when another neighbor mentioned he had to divide his hostas and offered me some, I figured it was time to start. Below is what he meant by “some.” Wow.

I gave a portion of them to another friend. And after staying out past dark planting the last of the two dozen clumps I’d divided out of that mound, I wished I’d given away more! And these were no small, measly clumps. Some of them you can’t even tell that they were divided.

You know, I vowed that this year I would finally make an effort to get to know my neighbors better. I didn’t think that decision would result in this kind of goodness. (Another neighbor and I have been borrowing ingredients back and forth. Love the interdependence that’s forming.)

Oh, and in looking for photos for this post, I found the last photo taken with my old camera. It’s quite ironic. Or perhaps foreshadowing is a better word? But not tonight. This post is already too long. Tonight bed. Tomorrow pack and leave Ken alone to batch for a week while older two girls are at Grandma Camp and youngest and me are at Help My Mom Clean Out Her House Camp. So, not sure when I’ll post next…

Back Corner Garden Re-do

My inside project, which I’m so excited about, is under wraps ‘cause it’s a gift for someone. So instead, here’s an outside project, which I’m also quite excited about, that we worked on before leaving town last week.

I’d already divided my hostas at the start of the season, but they were so full, I was able to divide them again. Oh how I love hostas! So hard to kill.

It’s not totally done – I still want to rearrange the perennials under the window, and also put in some sort of edging – but it’s so much nicer than it was!

And now the girls don’t have to pick their way over the rocks to get to the grass (and trampoline, which is moved now too). Last month, I picked up a bunch of free limestone pieces from a generous member of my local Freecycle group; now we have a nice path from the patio to the grass, and also from the grass to the “secret passage area” between the house and the shed.

Someday, I’d love to put a huge tank in that gravel area above, with a spigot hanging over the little retaining wall. I’d funnel all the rainwater from the roof into it and have loads of water for tending the lawn and gardens. Now just need to find a big tank. That fits that space and my budget.

Oh, and check out what we found when we were grabbing some limestones from our huge pile. The girls weren’t home so I had to snap a photo for them.

Idn’t he cute?!?

The Start of Gardening Season

Mmm, we’ve had some gorgeous sunny days, followed by rain, a perfect setup for whipping the yard back into shape.

Got my front door garden filled and planted. Hopefully the flowers will fill out a little more. I had visions of it cascading over the front… I guess we shall see…

Behind the flowers, I planted a couple rows of various lettuce seeds, in the back corner six spots for sugar snap peas, in the corner behind the post some radishes, and then at two random spots at the back, some allysum—the first spot because Sophie spilled the seed packet there, and the second spot to balance out the first one and make it look intentional. Again, we shall see…

The Square Foot Garden (SFG) area in our side yard is entering it’s third year. (Notes about last year here.) Here’s the “before” at the start of last weekend.

We decided it was time to paint them white (for protection and, well, prettiness) and also to make the square one (installed two years ago, following the slope of the ground) level like the long one (installed last year after we realized level is better, the water doesn’t all pool at the lower side then. Plus, I think it’s, well, prettier.)

Here are some in-process shots. We moved some of the dirt from the square bed into the front door garden. Lucy helped with that part. Later, some neighbor friends joined Sophie in looking for worms. Wow, there were a lot of them! (Good news for our garden.)

In all this fun, we missed Heidi, of course, but she’s still off having a fab time with Oma and Opa… The skirt she’s wearing is one Oma finished for her right before their trip.

Back to the SFGs, here’s the “after.” Well, sort of. I should add a second coat of paint. Then we also need to refill the square bed. And of course plant stuff! I can’t wait! (To plant, not paint.)

 
In the back yard, we have two little flower beds right near the patio. The one under the stairs was filled with hostas. Until two (or 3?) years ago that is, when Ken oversprayed with some weed killers. Since then it’s been only half-filled with hostas. He killed one whole row!!! (Hmm, I guess I didn’t take a “before” picture, but empty row is visible in photo of Lucy on slide, last photo.)

So anyway, I divided the remaining ones (which were getting way too big) and also stole a few plants from the other bed. Hopefully any residual poison is gone and the newly planted stuff will thrive. We shall see…

(Note: spray weed killers have been banned from our yard. We now pull out dandelions up with one of those dandelion weeder tools. While more time-consuming, also very therapeutic.)

The second bed in back was filled with perennials when we moved in. But since I largely ignored it and didn’t know what I was doing when I did give it some attention, it’s a bit of a mess these days. I tried to clean out what I thought were weeds. And also grouped what I think are good plants near each other again, instead of spaced out all over the bed. What do you think?

Hush up, people, that is the “after.” Maybe I should clean up a little more of the straw. Oh, and see the tulip, bottom left. It’s my one and only tulip. Not sure where it came from. Just appeared there 4 years ago. Do tulips migrate? (I really know very little about gardening.)

Lucy didn’t help much with the work in back; instead, spent her time on the slide. I got it from someone on Freecycle with the intentions of building a frame for it last summer. But it works just as well set up on our deck stairs—maybe even better since the stairs offer a much safer way for my 2-year-old to get to the top than the usual ladders you find on slides. Wheeeeee!

So, how green is your thumb?

Happy Houseplants, Grumpy Gardener

Pruned the hibiscus and planted the cuttings with a friend yesterday. Maybe in 4-6 weeks, we'll have some newly rooted, healthy, baby hibiscus plants. But then again, maybe not. It's a fun little experiment.

Also gave my houseplants some much needed attention. Seems like they go through a regular cycle of being fine--even flourishing--but then developing a bone-dry, brittle top crust while the bottom part stays soppingly rot-the-roots wet. Which makes them all start to die. So I repot them all and my plants seem happy again.

But the cycle eventually repeats itself. What's my problem? Am I watering them too much? Not enough? Too much salt in the water? Or other minerals? I just don't know. And that makes me grumpy.

Plus all that playing in the dirt inside made me even more eager to play in the dirt outside. But any grass that was visible yesterday is once again covered in snow. Grrr.

This year's "SFG"

How is it already June and I still haven't posted anything about our Second Annual Attempt To Grow Something, a.k.a. gardening. We had so much fun with our little 4'x4' Square Foot Garden (SFG) last year:
On the left is when we'd just built our first square, not sure we'd even planted anything yet. And on the left is how it looked halfway through the summer. At that point, we still had beans, green onions, carrots, tomatoes, peppers, and cukes. And we'd already enjoyed lots of lettuce and spinach as well as radishes. (For more images--132 of 'em!--and captions, click here.)

This year, we decided to expand, doubling our area with a new 8'x2' bed. Instead of using groundcloth between the grass and our growing soil like last year (grass still grew through), we're trying something new and using cardboard. Then we filled it up with "Mel's Mix" (1/3 compost, 1/3 peat moss, 1/3 coarse vermicullite). We'll need to add some sort of trellis too, since we plan to put all the tall stuff in this bed this year.

To get last year's square ready, all we had to do was add some new compost to the "Mel's Mix" already in there and smooth it out. Well, that was my plan. But then I started finding the "seeds" (a.k.a. stones) that Heidi had planted this spring. So I ended up going in with both hands and mixing it all up, plucking out stones when I found them. Ah, I do love the feel of light, crumbly soil slipping between my fingers!

While I worked, the older girls were out with me, asking questions, digging around, being silly. I asked Heidi to go find the "carrot tower" in the shed, describing to her four pieces of wood nailed to form a square. She lugged it out and was messing around with it. Next thing I know, I hear, "Mommy, I'm stuck!" Am I a bad mom for just laughing when she continued with "No, don't take a picture! Come here and help me please!"? (She wasn't very stuck; I told her to lift herself out and she had little trouble doing that. It even became a game for the next while: get stuck, lift out, get stuck, lift out, etc.)
On the right, you can see the carrot tower in place in the square bed (as well as the now-soil-filled long bed and, in the foreground, some of the seedlings that are going in the long bed). Since the beds are only 6 inches (15 cm) deep, we give the carrots extra room to grow by putting this "tower" on their square and planting the seeds at the top surface of the tower. Even with that extra space, some of my carrots last year still made it all the way down to the groundcloth, then starting to grow a little bubble at the end of their taper since they couldn't grow deeper. A funny little surprise when I pulled them up...