You are currently browsing the category archive for the ‘garden’ category.
Testing out all this new-fangled technology by posting a Diptic photo arrangement via the WordPress app on my iPhone.
Why yes! I am easily amused!
Very well, thank you!
I feel like I can finally stop to enjoy it now. I am aware that gardens take time & maintenance, but at least I’m not killing myself digging holes, removing grass, aerating soil, mixing in good soil, etc, etc.
I can’t even tell you how much I love having my own house. The inside still doesn’t quite feel like home, only because I keep changing my mind on paint colors, haven’t hung any family photos, & still need to get most of my belongings truly organized. But right now, this time of year, when it stays light well beyond the time I’ve fallen asleep (happy Solstice, by the way!), and the days are suddenly warm enough to leave the house in the morning sans jacket, I crave being outside. I need it. I let my house get dirty (and pray we don’t have unexpected visitors) and put off doing things I know I need to do, just so I can be outdoors.
Before, Honey & I would go to the beach as often as possible & now I am so content to just stay home. I was always a homebody, a nester, but now it’s downright ridiculous. I love my yard & its emerging gardens. The front lawn may still need grass seed, but I am so happy to sit at my bistro table & listen to the rustling leaves of my honeysuckle tree. My honeysuckle tree. Do you have any idea how it tickles my insides to own a tree with pink blossoms?
The super cute birdcage on the bistro table I got from Joann’s for about $7. Honey couldn’t understand why I would buy a birdcage just for decoration. He is usually understanding about my purchases, but this one he just couldn’t get on board with. Boys.
God love three-day weekends. And I’m not even religious.
Clearly, Riley-Cat loves 3-day weekends, too
Yesterday I thought a lot about it being Memorial Day. Up until probably last year, I viewed Memorial Day as just another holiday,
but I now see it for the important day of recognition that it is.
I thought of my dad who served in Vietnam & my grandpa who served in WWII. I thought of how lucky I am to be alive because they did serve. Growing up, my dad used to tell my brother & I that his job in the army was to deliver the mail. Which was true. Except that in order to deliver the soldiers’ beloved letters, he had to travel through highly dangerous areas, not once but twice daily.
Two years ago at my grandpa’s funeral, I learned that when he was overseas, his ship’s departure time was changed to an earlier time & he never caught word. The ship was bombed & everyone on board died. Except for grandpa, who was probably sitting on a barstool at the time. Thank God for grandpa & his alcoholism. (again, I say ~ I’m not religious, but the G-word just keeps popping out & it seems appropriate in this context!) And please don’t take my speaking of my grandpa’s alcoholism as me being flippant. My grandparent’s alcoholism was as much a part of them as anything else, and I don’t fault them for that, nor do I love them any less.
At any rate, between my grandpa missing his ship & my dad making it through dangerous territory twice a day for who knows how long, I AM LUCKY TO HAVE BEEN BORN. And I think I need to remind myself of that from time to time.
Thank you to grandpa, who I know can hear me even though I’m not saying it out loud, and thank you to dad, who I promise I will tell in person. Or maybe I’ll send a card because I’m not good at expressing the sentimental stuff.
Honey & I went to a wedding Saturday, which is always fun. I swear, Alaska is the only place it 
is acceptable to wear jeans to a wedding reception. I could never, of course, but it is nevertheless acceptable with certain couples & venues. I don’t think I got any photos of Honey & I, but I did take this photo of our gift to the bride & groom. I just love the paper & I thought the little crocheted flower was quite clever of me. I had bought a baggie full of them at a community garage sale a few years ago, but they’re so damn cute, I haven’t thought of the right project for them yet.
Sunday I worked on several craft & sewing projects, none of which got finished. Really, the story of my life. If I thought I had any followthrough at all, I would make a declarative statement ~ I WILL finish one project tonight ~ but that’s just too much pressure. Better to see where the evening takes me.
Monday I worked in the garden, and did get one flower bed finished. I mapped out my plan, dug out the grass, mixed in the peet & good soil, and finally got my lilac in the ground. The bushes are called Japanese Barberry, which was my cheap alternative to a Japanese Maple. Geesh, trees are spend-y!! I stole some hostas & strawberry plants from the backyard to fill in some of the holes, and voila! It’s sort of a random little flower bed, and I will likely rearrange it later on, as when I put something in the ground, it rarely stays put. I always plant too close together, or too far apart, or it’s not getting enough light, or it’s all in a row (how very un-cottage like!) instead of scattered, etc.
Our 3-day weekend with a bbq with Bucky, Michelle, & our friends Brian & Jenn. We had a house full of dogs, and yes, my new garden survived. Just barely. And here is me & Porter about 2 minutes after everyone left. Note: I am sleeping on one of my sewing projects ~ one of two pillowcases. Cute, no? I also got the same poppy-fabric in a turquoise blue. Honey is not thrilled that I’m flowering up “his” couch. I let him know that if I wanted to put flowers on the couch, there wasn’t a whole lot he could do about it. Sorry honey, but that’s the way it’s gotta be.
nighty night ~
The smell. I love the smell of spring. One day the air is normal, and the next it has exploded in sweetness. I love the day that I realize the smell has arrived. It happened last Thursday, when Honey & I were walking Doodles at Construction. Construction is our favorite, if only for its convenience, place to walk Doodles. About a quarter mile from our house is a construction site which will be filled with houses by the end of summer. We let Doodles off-leash & he does what Doodles love to do ~ RUN! Lately we’ve been loading up his backpack with rocks (one on each sideof the pack) to outline our garden beds. Like I said, rocks are the best free landscaping medium around. Although, at 2 rocks per walk, it’s going to take a while.
Honey made it home from his bachelor party in Gustavus, a really really small town a quick plane ride over the mountains, pronounced gus-davis. Not his bachelor party, our friend Colin’s. Honey said they tried to talk him out of marrying Topaz, but he wasn’t having it. That’s a relief, because I already have my dress picked out.
It doesn’t sound like the boys got into too much trouble, and they were not told to never return to Gustavus. Besides drinking lots of whiskey, they played golf, whiffle ball & croquet. What wild men! Oh, and Colin had to wear a red velvet dress, previously worn by our friend Bud at his bachelor party/camping weekend. Honey is so lucky we were already married before the dress made an appearance. Not that he doesn’t have the figure for a floor length dress.
My garden has entered into stage 2, thanks largely to mom. She took me plant shopping on Sunday, and when she told me that my garden “needed” them, how could I possibly argue? I had originally tried to spread out the plants I had purchased from Fred Meyer, mostly annuals, but decided I ought to focus on making each flower bed beautiful instead of making each bed look frightfully skimpy. Mom helped me pick out some perennials, which I finally remember are the ones that come back each year. P is for Permanent! I also got some ground-cover to fill in the bare spots, and if I could remember what they were called, I’d tell you now.
I knew I wanted a hydrangea before I had even seen what the flowers looked like, and I can’t say as I’ve ever even smelled one. I just love the word Hydrangea. Rolls off the tongue, doesn’t it? So, now I have a lovely hydrangea, and it will be planted at the corner of the deck, at mom’s suggestion. Porter, as always, is right there helping.
My lilac tree, another something I’ve wanted for ages, will be planted at the other edge of the deck. I thought about planting it on the other side of the yard, to give added privacy from the crazy neighbors to our left, but it will be way too long before it’s tall enough & by that time, we may very well have new neighbors that we like. So, in front of the kitchen window it goes. It will get good light, won’t cause shade where I don’t want it, and if I’m patient enough, will give me a lovely view from the kitchen. When I’m yelling at Porter to stop digging.
Can you see my vision?
After taking Doodles for a walk this morning, I spent the entire day outside working in the yard. I started by raking up the dead moss from the lawn, then moved on to weeding & aerating the soil in one flower bed. I hadn’t anticipated creating a new flower bed today, but nevertheless, I have a new flower bed off the deck. The deck, which I hate, will hopefully have posts & a railing in the not so distant future, creating more of a country-porch feel.
This was what I started with, and actually, it was just the tree & we just planted the boxwood last week & extended the rock border over to the deck. And speaking of rocks as landscaping material ~ HUGE in Juneau. While we’re walking Doodles, Honey & I always look in people’s yards for ideas. Virtually every yard will have some form of rock landscaping, I imagine because of their wide abundance. Whether they’re black & white speckled rocks smoothed from years of glacial activity, or flat, slate-colored rocks from the beach, we have rocks everywhere.
and this was my vision for the little space:
Porter seems to like it, too. Is he not the most gorgeous dog ever?
This is my end product. It still looks horribly bare, but I have to keep reminding myself that the cottage garden I envision in my head takes years to create. Unless you have a lot of money, which I don’t. I do love gardening, though. So therapeutic. Man, I can’t wait for my plants to start blooming!
Our lawn still needs some serious TLC. Honey sprayed the lawn with moss killer a few days ago, and I don’t know what my next step is. More moss killer? Fertilizer? Just grass seed? Mom’s coming over tomorrow to assess the situation & to make sure I haven’t placed my plants improperly. When it comes to gardening, I learn as I go. And I get lots of tips from my mom, who has been gardening for as long as I can remember. I do have gardening books, but I tend to get so excited about a project that I jump right in without doing my homework first.
Besides a new garden, I also gave myself a nice little sunburn today. (Self portrait taken because Honey is in Gustavus for a bachelor party this weekend) It didn’t occur to me to put on sunscreen, nor do I even own any presently. Hopefully tomorrow will be sunny again so I can even things out 
I don’t know if there will be any gardening in my future tomorrow, however. With each passing minute, my poor body gets more & more sore from the hours of digging. If only I could channel Porter’s digging for good instead of destruction. I am sure he’s still trying to figure out why he is not allowed to dig in the yard and I can. Me, the lowly person responsible for feeding him & cleaning up his poo, can dig but Doodles the Wonder Dog cannot. Yeah, life’s just funny that way.
Yesterday morning while driving into work, I remembered that I had angsty dreams about driving. I mentioned this to honey, saying I remember trying to honk the horn at a bad driver but the horn didn’t work. He said ~ yeah, you did have really angsty dreams; you kept trying to push me away when I went to cuddle you. I wondered if I was trying to honk him….
Tuesday I got one dozen red roses from Honey. Rotary Roses ~ do your Rotary Clubs sell roses there, too or is it just a Juneau thing? I also wonder if high school kids go to Costco to eat Costco-dogs for lunch, or if that is also just a Juneau thing. At $1.50 for a hot dog & soda, you can’t beat it for cheapest lunch in town. I’m not too proud to say I ate many a Costco dog for dinner when I was broke in college. At any rate, my roses are lovely ~ see! They were delivered to my office by the Rotarian Adam purchased them from, his boss Chuck. A very nice fellow whom Adam loves working for. And Chuck doesn’t read this, so I’m not just sucking up on Honey’s behalf!
It has been absolutely gorgeous out here, with honest to goodness WARM days. I can’t even tell you how much I begin to crave the sunshine after a long winter, and this winter has been especially long. It snowed just last week, for crying out loud! The snow is almost melted from our front & back yard, and the poo is almost all cleaned up as well. I’m not a bad dog owner, but we had so much damn snow this year that unless I stood next to Porter with a poo-recepticle under his ass while he did his business, it just wasn’t getting picked up until spring. And trust me when I tell you, I am so not the only one on poo-patrol this week.
Yesterday evening while I was filling up about the 15th grocery-bag of poo (I am sooo sorry Arrow Refuse!!), we had half the neighborhood kids in our yard playing with Porter. It sounded something like this: PORTER! PORTER! PORTER! PORTER! PORTER! Come here Porter! PORTER! Come here Porter! Porter come here! PORTER! PORTER! PORTER! You think I’m joking, but I’m not. One of our favorite neighbor kids, age 9 but we don’t know his name yet, also stopped by for a vist. At our first meeting this winter while out walking Porter, he asked us if we had any kids. We said ~ nope, just 2 cats & a dog. He said ~ so your pets are like your kids, huh? Adam & I thought this kid was much brighter than most kids in our ‘hood. Yesterday, he asked me if I “was a gardening freak like his mom”. I started laughing and said, Well, yes, I guess I am! And very well put! That kid cracks me up.
I was outside until about 8:30 working in the yard; raking up the dead grass, clearing the debris from the flower beds, pulling up the beginnings of weeds, & dreaming of what I want to do with the yard. When we purchased our house last August, it was too late to do any gardening. I had grand plans of pouring over landscaping books & magazines this past winter to design my perfect cottage garden. Because in my mind, everything must be perfect the first time around. Nevermind the fact that we don’t have the funds to make my perfect cottage garden. But did I plan my garden over the winter? Noooo! Following through with goals is something I’ve always struggled with. I get totally ADD and move onto another project before finishing what I’ve started. Or, more often, get completely overwhelmed with all the things I want & need to do, and shut-down instead.
I haven’t even finished painting everything I wanted to paint, and now it’s time for outside activities & the last place I want to be is inside painting. So that’s my goal for the next couple of weeks ~ paint, paint, paint & get those projects finished so I can start gardening without the anxiety of the things that are unfinished indoors. And yes, I’m totally aware that home projects will be neverending, but I at least want to finish what I’ve started ~ and finally post some before & after photos!!
I’ve been writing this post off & on since yesterday morning. Now that the weather is nice, I hope I still find time to post all the little ramblings that I simply must share with you all. Adam & I spend as much time as possible outdoors, especially during the summer months. We love love love the beach & being near the water (someday I will have a house near the ocean….). love camping ~ anything to take advantage of our short summers. This year, I have a feeling we’ll be spending more time at home, since we have a home! After apartment living for most of my 20′s and my (very) early 30′s, it’s amazing to have my own home to play with. The first time it hit me that this was OUR house was when I walked through the back yard and realized this was my oil tank, my yard, my spindly little trees.
I read a blog recently of a woman who had taken a sabattical from blogging because she felt as though she was living to post to her blog rather than actually living her life. How true. It’s so easy to get sucked into reading about other peoples’ lives ~ total strangers, even ~ and trying to keep up with your own posts. This woman said she started turning every meal, every project into a photo shoot. I mentioned this revelation to my mom who also recently started her own blog, and these were her thoughts on the subject: “we can’t do that otherwise our day is nothing but artificial and for looks. So we need to just keep it real and unpretentious I suppose.” While I don’t want to get sucked into blog-land and leave reality altogether, one of the reasons I started blogging in the first place was to write about all the little mundane things that happen in my life and post pictures of things I love or that make me laugh so I don’t forget them. And of course to share my life with my friends & family who I am so terrible at keeping in touch with.
