Rained Out

Rained out. Bummer. It was a disappointing weekend, but there is nothing that can be done when Mother Nature is in control. I suppose it could be looked at rather humorously if I’d let it be. Sunday went something like this:

There would be a slight break in the clouds, and I’d say, “It looks like it’s getting lighter.” I’d throw on my coat. Slam, slam out the door I’d go. I’d start weeding a tub. Here would come Rich to help get the tubs moved. Then, drip…drip…drip, drip, pour. Bother. In we’d go. It went on like that all day. “Light!” Slam, slam. Weed, weed. Drip, drip. Pour. By about 3:30, I finally gave up. I will complete the project next weekend, or maybe during the week after work if I get home in time. We have a BIG project in store for Memorial Day Weekend (Hmm. Any ideas what we're planning?), so I don’t want this one to be tagged onto that weekend too much.  At least my sunroom got cleaned, the laundry got done, and the bills got paid this weekend. That’s positive. Plus, I wrote out my plant list for what I would like in yard. I will post that on one of the pages of my blog soon. I also went hrough my seeds and got them organized, so it was a productive day, even if I didn’t get my project finished. In between showers, I did take a picture to show how far I got, but it doesn’t look great yet. It’s still pretty messy. I also need to think about what to do with all the ugly cables that are running along that side of the house. Perhaps some strategically placed shrubs are in order.

Here are the tubs so far:

Something wonderful happened this past week. The yellow rose bush is blooming. Here are some pictures. I have a couple in the house and it smells so good.

I thought I'd include a picture of one of the frogs in our pond.

That's it for now.  With a three day weekend coming up I'm planning on taking full advantage of the time.  And you know what they say...it's safe to plant your vegies by Memorial Day Weekend!  Does that give a clue about my next project? 

Tubs O'Green

We’re supposed to have rain this weekend. We had quite the storms pass through this week. High winds, heavy rain and even hail. There might be a break on Sunday, so I’m hoping that will be my project day. Before I describe my project, I wanted to share a photo that Rich took of some beautiful Evening Grosbeaks that flocked to our yard this week before the rain set in.  This is in our front yard where I will be completing a couple of projects later in the summer.

The ground is pretty saturated from all the rain, so this week’s project will focus on moving some garden tubs, getting them ready for planting and depending upon the outlook for the weather, planting some seeds. Rich started some broccoli in the house this year, so I may plant those.

I use old washtubs to plant my greens (different types of lettuce, spinach, arugula, etc.). I find this works great for me because the sprouting seeds don’t get lost amongst weeds as they have when I planted directly into the ground even when they were planted in nice neat rows. I currently move the washtubs to the back of the house in the fall and winter where they get the sun that is to the south at that time. Then, I move them back to the side of the house in the late spring and summer where they get some morning sun and afternoon shade. It seems to be perfect for our greens, as we grow some pretty much all summer. I do add some fresh amendments each year. Generally, I add a little more soil, rabbit droppings and maybe some dry, chopped straw or leaves. The side of the house is fairly sheltered, so the tubs don’t get swamped with rain water, but they seem to get just enough because I only water them in the driest part of the summer. When the tubs are at the back of the house, I have to keep them covered when we’re in for several days of rain. Otherwise, they get way too saturated.  The cover also serves to keep the plants warmer on frosty nights.

Moving the tubs is kind of a hassle, but Rich helps me lift them into the wheelbarrow and from there it’s pretty easy. They just slide out of the wheelbarrow when I get them moved around to the side of the house. This year, I plan to put raised beds in along the back of the house (another project!). They will also serve as cold frames for greens and starting plants in the spring, so the washtubs will stay on the side of the house this time. That will make it much easier.

Materials needed for this project: Soil, rabbit manure, leaves, seeds for planting, some sort of material (cardboard, newspaper, brown bags) for putting under the tubs to keep weeds down and the ground around them looking neat.

Cost: $10.00 for seeds (I have some leftover from last year, so I’m going to see if they will germinate, but I also have some new ones that I will plant as well.), $3.00 soil
Total $13.00

Location of the tubs now and what they look like:

Covered tubs for chilly days and nights.  Plus, it protected them from too much rain.

Their summer home, but this year it's becoming their year-round residence.  Notice the spinach growing in the tub behind the skeleton chairs.

Check back!  We'll hope for a few hours of dry weather!

Weekend Gardening Project #1

Weekend gardening project number one is done. And I’m pretty done, too. Tired that is. It’s late Sunday afternoon. I’ve got my legs up on the couch. Sporty, our Chihuahua, is lying on the back of the couch above me in a hole the couch pillow makes when it scooches down a little. (Apparently, scooches is not a word, according to spellcheck. It has one of those red lines under it, but I like the word, so it’s staying. It’s not often I get to be so casual with my writing, and I’m taking full advantage of it. English teachers beware.)

So…here are the results of the first project:

Time to complete: About nine hours – off and on, which I think is the way to go when you’re in the shape I’m in. Since starting my new job a few months ago, it is the first time in over 20 years that I do not walk everyday with my dogs. I think it also has to do with the fact that Rich is here to take the dogs out. That has to change. (Not Rich, my lack of walking.) I miss my walks, and I sure can tell this 46 year-old body misses them after bending, lifting, digging and kneeling this past weekend. Perhaps I needed to start a marathon training program to do these weekend projects. A gardening training program, that’s what I needed. Helping me get in shape will be a bonus of the weekend gardening project.

Actual money spent:
$15.00 for mulch
I need more mulch. It didn’t quite cover the area, and it is not as thick as it should be. Rich, knowing that I was starting this project this weekend and we can't yet buy a couple of scoops of mulch from the nursery because money is tight, went to the store and bought a few bags that were on sale. Not exactly the type I like, but bless his heart for getting them for me. He knew I was gung-ho to get this done. I will be getting more mulch soon.
$40.00 for plants
This is a mostly shady bed with some late afternoon sun. I bought two native evergreen huckleberry plants ($17.50 each), a few impatiens ($3.50), and four very small coleus ($1.50). I was hoping to find some unusual plants at the Master Gardener plant sale yesterday, but I didn’t find much, although I did get one plant that is absolutely fascinating...to me. It's a staghorn fern.  It seems you see more of them in the southeast.  It will need to come in over the winter and on cold nights, but I love how it looks on the house. 

People at the Master Gardener sale kept coming up, peering into my cart, asking what it was.  Obviously, these ferns are not very common around here.  There was ooing and ahing, and little whispers could be heard all through the building- well, no, that's a bit of an exaggeration, but I was afraid to leave my cart because someone might run off with my new plant.  Then, I looked online.  It's seems they are rather common and some people really don't care for them.  Imagine.  I guess plants are kind of like art, we all have personal tastes. It’s sort of like at Christmas when you drive by someone’s house and you wonder what in the world were they thinking when they put, not one, but six huge blow-up snow globe and other character looking things in their yard, along with fast blinking lights reaching across the yard, zig-zagging from one tree to another in a clothesline fashion. Personal taste most definitely. To them, perhaps it’s art. Judge not. At any rate, back to the plants for this project. The huckleberries were by far the most expensive items for this first project.  I know the plants I want to add to the yard will be one of the largest expenses (other than the wood to finish the fence and build the raised beds), especially since we want some unusual plants that are either edible or produce edible fruit.
Total: $55.00

Enjoyment rating:
The best. I have had a wonderful weekend, even if I’m going to be sore tomorrow.

It's now Tuesday morning.  I wanted to get this posted yesterday, but work life intervened.  It was a long day and by the time I was able to work on this, it was 9:00 pm and 4:30 comes early. I could have worked on it late, but it comes back to not wanting to make this another "job."  So far, I'm really enjoying this, and I don't want to lose that.  By the way, I wasn't nearly as sore as I thought I would be.  That was a pleasant surprise.

Well, here are the pictures of my first project. Did you wait to look?   It felt like it took so much more time and effort than the pictures show.  I saw a lot of flaws when I looked at the them, but I’m learning that not everything will be perfect.  Rich said I need to give myself more credit. Plus, it was a great weekend!

BEFORE

AFTER

(Above) I moved the two lilies forward in the bed (they are the two larger mounds in the middle) and put the new huckleberries in the back.  Because they will get a little afternoon sun, they should stay around 3' - 4', which will be perfect because our library window faces this bed, and I didn't want a tall shrub that would cover the window.  I also wanted to leave a pathway in the back because the small fence piece that crosses to house acts as a gate where we bring firewood to the porch in the winter.  The coleus and inpatiens are in the front.  You can't hardly see the little guys, but they'll grow.

BEFORE

AFTER

BEFORE

The buttercup is my new nemisis, everywhere I look buttercups are growing and growing!

AFTER

BEFORE

AFTER

There it is.  One small section of the yard complete...almost.  Actually, now that I've worked on this corner, I'm thinking I would like to expand the bed into the lawn a bit along the front fence to make it a circular bed.  One is never done.  I seem to read that a lot when people write about their gardening. 

Now for the next project, what will it be?  Is there anything that needs to be done before others?  Stay tuned.

Making the World a More Beautiful Place

Here we are starting to work on the plan. Planning is fun. Planning is dreaming. But then comes the doing part. The “doing” will, of course, create the beautiful and bountiful yard I want, but the doing requires time and money. Keeping that in mind, I will be considering both of those resources when I am planning. I admit in my case both of those can be quite scarce at times, but I’ll figure out a way. I will be creating a Master Plan page for this blog that will give descriptions of all the weekend projects. I will also list which ones will require more time and money than others. We will need to space out projects that will cost more to complete, as our budget only allows for a certain about each month. For this posting, we will jump right in to the first project after a little background information.

We live on a small town lot that is about 75’ x 100’. After living in the country for 14 years with acres and acres around me, I had to make some adjustments when I first moved here about 2-1/2 years ago. For example, I no longer walk out in my pajamas at 4:00 in the morning to let the dogs out because my neighbor is often sitting out on his back porch having a cigarette (well I could, but I don’t). I also love to sit quietly by our stagnant 1920’s pond (which, believe it or not, has three goldfish, oodles of frogs, bathing birds and a snake or two that goes slithering by), but it’s not very relaxing when neighbors are bouncing on their trampoline yelling, mowing their lawn, or worse yet, using their leaf blower. They certainly have the right to do all of those things, but somehow, sitting on the bench with my eyes closed, taking in the sounds around me, or watching the calmness of the pond, just isn’t quite as peaceful, so I have learned to accept certain aspects of town life and some of our projects will be to create more privacy without causing us to feel claustrophobic on our wee little lot.

In thinking about what I want to do with the yard, I think about the fact that I probably won’t always live here. You see, I’ve lived in the suburbs (most of my childhood), the city, the country and now a small town. The next place I hope to live is rugged north central Washington. Another adventure waiting to happen– off-the-grid living, three to four feet of snow in the winter, being as self-sufficient as possible, perhaps it will lend itself to another blog, or just a continuation of this one. I will say, at this point in my life, I do long for a place to “settle,” and after having lived in all these places, I know the country suits me best. Knowing that I will most likely be leaving someday (albeit a ways down the road), I’ve given a lot of thought to how much to do with the yard. How much money do I put into projects? How much time and effort? But it always comes back to the huge amount of enjoyment it brings me - now - while I’m here. It’s that “living in the moment” thing and the balance it brings back into my life. I’m also reminded of book that I read to my students when I was teaching called Miss Rumphius. Year after year, I was never able to finish the story without getting teary-eyed. In the story, Miss Rumphius believed that one thing we should do during our lives is to somehow leave the world a more beautiful place, so perhaps this is a little Miss Rumphius coming out in me. Some people paint, some create beautiful music, some write stirring poetry, I garden.
So, here I am at my small town home with its quaint little yard just waiting to emerge. Onward…

Measurements (it’s always good to know what you’re working with):
Lot size: 75’ X 100’ (approximately) = 7500 square feet
Space taken by structures: 3400 square feet
Ground with no structures: 4100 square feet

Dense shade: 1000 square feet
Dappled shade (off and on throughout the day): 2300 square feet
SUN (8 hours or so): 800 square feet

Please excuse the roughness of my drawing for this posting. On the “Master Plan” page, I might even experiment with one of those landscape design software programs. We have one that we picked up at a book sale somewhere. That might be kind of fun. At any rate, here is what our property currently looks like with the plants we now have. It is pretty much to scale.

T = tree S = shrub (mainly rhododendron, azalea, camellia, or lilac) R = rose

We’re starting out kind of small for our first weekend project. It will focus on the northwest side of the house.

Materials needed: Compost (to work into the soil a little) and a top layer of mulch.

Cost: $20.00 (We are planning to buy a load of soil and mulch at my next pay period, a much more cost efficient way to go, but for this first weekend, we are going to buy a couple bags of mulch that are on sale right now. There is a Master Gardener plant sale this weekend, so I want to save money for that. I love plant sales, as I imagine most gardeners do.)

Work needed: Mostly just weeding and cleaning up, moving a peony that was planted in dense shade before I got here, spreading mulch and perhaps planting something I find at the plant sale.

This is what the area looks like now:

Check in early next week for what it looks like after we’ve completed our

FIRST WEEKEND PROJECT!

Weekend Gardening Project

Why have I decided to start this weekend gardening project?

There are two main reasons:

First: I want a beautiful, semi-private yard that will produce some food for our household.

Second: I love being outdoors, working in the yard and seeing the changes we create.  I especially need that outlet from the pressured-filled days at my job. Even spending my lunch hour with plant catalogs or writing this to all of you, allows my mind a bit of time with something that brings me great joy.

So, what’s this all about?

We want to take our small yard (just big enough to grow some vegetables, fruits and flowers for Rich and me) that is overgrown with weeds and quite honestly is just a plain mess and transform it into what I know it could be by doing weekend projects that  working people can accomplish. Projects that are realistic in the real world of an 8:00 – 5:00 job, commuting, sleeping, household chores, grocery shopping and all the rest, so that project-by-project a charming and cozy yard is created.

Thus…we will turn our yard into a beautiful, small-scale, sanctuary of a garden that, at the moment, is filled with:

Over-grown areas

 
 
 
 
 
 








A stagnant 1920’s concrete pond

A few foundational shrubs and trees in need of a little TLC- some more than others (rhododendrons, camellias, plum trees, a beautiful pink flowering dogwood, red maple, rampant bamboo)

A beautiful rose garden - one of the saving graces of the yard (I can’t believe I don’t have pictures of them in bloom. I will add those as they bloom. They are stunning.)

A garage that is returning unto the earth (falling down)

A stone wall along the driveway that is collapsing (notice the bamboo beast)

An incomplete fence

The beginnings of a vegetable garden

This is so exciting to think about. It’s the “could be” that makes me take shovel in hand, that makes my eyes scan the plant catalogs for what will work in our mostly shady yard (therein lies another obstacle). It’s the “could be” that brings me to writing this, to the joy of it all, to the possibilities.

I admit that I love to watch the gurus of gardening on television if I get the time (Cisco, is my favorite “Gardening with Cisco).  I find that I imagine a life where you get to work in the garden…as a job. Imagine. Hmm. Would it become just another job? Right, I don’t think so. But for now, while working 40+ hours a week in a job that, although I believe in its importance, creates such tension and pressure inside me, gardening takes on a different light. Gardening becomes a respite. Gardening is a time to breathe, to exhale, to feel the coolness of the earth, to appreciate the amazing form and beauty of each plant (although some, like our blackberries and morning glory, are harder to appreciate), to the wonderful earthy smell, a time when my soul is at peace for a while. My mother once stated that: She’s never seen me happier than when working in my garden.

One thing that I want to make sure of is that the projects are designed to allow me time on the weekends to do other things, too. I want to be able to read a little, play the piano, or cook. I don’t want this journey to become as pressure-filled as my work, creating the expectation that I MUST do, instead of wanting to do. So...there will be some projects that are longer for weekends that I can devote most of my time to them, and shorter projects for those weekends when time is limited.  But I know I am so excited about this that to even wait for the weekends to roll around will be difficult. So here we go…

My next post will be my “plan.” It looks something like this:

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Just kidding, well not really, but I promise to make it understandable for you and for me.