Putting Down Roots

When we left our beautiful old Victorian house, we arrived here at our new house with so much promise and anticipation. It has some serious improvements over our old house--like no drug dealers for neighbors, or hoarders for neighbors, the ward doesn't seem quite so needy, and we have those wonderful 20th century inventions called air conditioning, a garage, and storage rooms. Really, we have a lot to be thankful for.

BUT...this house isn't IT. This house and neighborhood brings with it its own issues. There are actually fewer kids in the neighborhood than our old neighborhood. So the drama that occurs every day after school when my kids want to find friends to play with and there are none continues (especially for poor Beck who has four boys his age nearby and they are ALL anti-social with anti-social mothers who have no desire to make play dates). Also, a good portion of the neighborhood is still very rural, so there are smells you never bargained for in a suburb, flies galore, and even the crowing of roosters and braying of goats every morning.

The problems we had at our old house with heating and cooling are just as bad here! Hard to believe it for a house built in the 1990's compared to one built in the 1890's, but it's true. Our old house pre-dated vents, so radiators were our only source of heat. And they did OK in the rooms that had them. But several rooms didn't, leaving them freezing cold and requiring space heaters all winter. Then in summer, we had a swamp cooler, but it was noisy, required the windows to be open (i.e. more noise) and didn't make it to the main floor very well. Eventually we put externally vented a/c in half the house, but the other half remained 20 degrees hotter then the rest. Well, here we have a super crappy vent system so that the 3-4 rooms closest to the furnace get all the heat and cold air. And the ones furthest away are 20 degrees colder in winter and hotter in summer. JUST LIKE OUR OLD HOUSE. It's ridiculous.

Other little things include doors that don't seal, walls and floors that have no insulation or sound proofing, and the fact that our yard isn't fenced off, so I still have to worry about my kids when they're outside. Anti-social neighbors abound. And a newly-wed/mostly dead ward mimics our old one almost exactly. So, ya. A lot of the things I thought I was leaving behind seem to have followed me here.

But this time of year, the time when everything starts shooting up out of the ground, bursting forth out of buds, turning green, and flourishing, I want to plant. I want to plant strawberries and vegetables and flowers. I want to dig in the dirt and see my handiwork blossom and produce. But (beyond the fact that I'm not physically able to do it at the moment), I feel the futility of it here. Our lease ends in a year and 3 months, we're not likely to renew it or to buy this house, and so it just seems dumb to put all that effort into a yard where I won't be here to see the results.

But tell that to my gardeners instinct. It doesn't want to listen.

It's sad knowing that we'll most likely be moving again in less than a year and a half. But it's also exciting to think of what lies ahead--maybe we'll build our dream house. Maybe we'll move out of state. Maybe we'll find a place that's just right for us where there are lots of kids, and nice neighbors, and big shade trees, and a perfect space for a garden.

I hope so. I can't wait to put down deep deep roots.

Ari, Ari, Quite Contrary, How Does Your Garden Grow?

With Romano beans and cucumbers and raspberries all in a row.

Also, lovely dill, red leaf and green leaf lettuce, chives, an adorable baby watermelon (growing fast), peas, cilantro, radishes, strawberries, and a massive Roma tomato plant.

This has been the most successful Square Foot Garden I've done so far. I'm actually eating the things I grow! My strawberries have sent out runners to every empty spot on the garden, so next year I should have twice the strawberries. My cucumbers are crisp and sweet. My tomato plant has taken over one whole quarter of the garden and is giving me great tomatos for salsa. It's awesome!

Trim Your Bush! (not a metaphor)

You may think this post is about this:




Or this:



But it's not. Get your mind out of the gutter! What kind of a blog do you think this is? This kind? No. This kind? Certainly not! This kind? Ok, maybe it is the kind of blog you think it is. But today my blog is truly pristine. It's about a genuinely unruly bush. This one:



In fact all of these:



But after several hours of back-breaking pruning, the final result is much more pleasing...

BEFORE


AFTER


See, nothing like trimming some unruly bushes into a nice straight landing strip. Er... racing stripe. Crap! Back in the gutter for me.

Can You Bear One More Flower Post?

I think the impressive-flowers-from-my-yard posts are just about done. But I have one more. And I can't believe I forgot about this one. Peonies. Say it with me: PEE-oh-nees. Try again. PEE-oh-nees. I know most of you out there are saying "pee-OH-nees, but you are seriously WRONG about that one. Don't believe me? Click here and play the sound icon. I do love to know the correct pronounciation of things. It's so interesting to realize when words I've been saying my whole life are pronounced totally differently. Like "mischievous." How many of you say miss-CHEE-vee-us? Well, look at the spelling again. It's "ous" not "ious". MISS-chiv-us, is the correct pronounciation. I always thought it was miss-CHEE-vee-us too. But when you look at the spelling you realize that you're throwing in an extra syallable that doesn't exist. Weird, huh?

Wait, what was I talking about? Oh yeah, flowers. Anyway, I planted some peonies in my yard a few years ago and they have become absolutely splendid. Why do I not remember how much I love peonies until they are in bloom? Maybe because they bloom such a short time and then they're gone for another 50 weeks.

I planted two bushes the first year. They opened up to be hot pink. So the next year I planted a white peony bush so I could make a multi-colored bouquet. The one problem? They don't bloom at the same time! The pinks are all petals-on-the-ground by the time the whites are starting to bloom. Foiled. But here are some pictures of the beautiful things anyway.





I have to say, I might have to work peonies into my list of favorite flowers. It currently looks like:

Favorite To Smell: Lilacs
Favorite To Look At: Lillies
Favorite in Yard: Crocus
Favorite in Bouquets: Gerbera Daisies

But I think I might have to scratch out Gerbera Daisies and put Peonies. If only they would last a bit longer! If only they bloomed all summer! I might just scratch everything off the list and just have peonies on there. (But Sweetie, feel free to go with the daisies and lillies any time!)

Itty Bitty Garden, Great Big Harvest

I think I may have mentioned before that I love to garden. And I think I may have shown pictures of some of the things my garden has produced. It's a very satisfying feeling to have fresh fruits, vegetables, and flowers that you pretty much made yourself. Ok, God was involved too. But only with that tiny part called growing. The rest is ALL ME.

Anywho, my favorite gardening method is called Square Foot Gardening. It was introduced to me by my sister (as most good things have been) about 4 or 5 years ago. It's the easiest, smartest way to garden that I've ever heard of. Ok, it's the only one I've ever heard of aside from traditional row gardening, but seriously, it's wonderful.

You start with a square, 4'x 4'. It's made of wood (usually 1x6 wood planks), and it sits above ground. You make your own soil mix using Mel's perfect recipe so it's the perfect amount of nutrition but there are no weed seeds. And because it eliminates rows (which are really only needed if you plan on pulling a horse and plow through your garden. I don't know about you, but I find keeping a horse and plow on hand for a back yard garden a little costly), you can grow 80% more food in 20% of the space of a traditional garden.

You divide your garden into sixteen 1 foot square spaces, and then you just read your seed package that tells how many plants can grow in a 1 foot space. Plant them, water them, they grow. Easy! And NO weeding. They can even be grown on patios or decks since you don't need soil underneath them.

AND, and this is my favorite part, Mel teaches you how to stagger your harvest so that instead of having 800 cucumbers go ripe in a 3 day period, you plant your cucumber seeds a week apart from each other. That way you have some coming due every week for the entire harvest period.

Plus, it just looks nice. You can even use white vinyl instead of wood, if you are the type where aesthetics are important, and your garden will look amazing. Here are pictures of some square foot gardens (not mine):




This is Mel, the inventor of the Square Foot method.


If this sounds intriguing to you, I highly recommend you buy the book. This is my fourth year doing this type of garden and it is just so easy. I'd love to convert the whole world to doing this type of gardening!

As for now, I'm going to try to do a weekly or however often I get to it update on what I'm doing with my square foot garden.

I built my boxes and divided them and mixed the soil and planted the pre-frost seeds all 4-5 weeks ago. I planted lettuce, spinach, peas, watermelon, cucumbers and strawberries. Then yesterday I planted dill, cilantro, basil, Romano beans, green peppers, tomatoes, and radishes. I'll keep you posted!

Here's how my garden looks right now...

Oh How Lovely Was The Morning

When we first moved into this house, it was very late fall verging on winter. The first thing I did, before unpacking boxes or cleaning the house or setting up furniture, was plant my bulbs. A certain someone in the family thought I might be slightly crazy to do this before even finding the toilet paper and towels. But I knew if I didn't get those bulbs in the ground immediately, most likely, we'd have no flowers coming up in the spring. I wasn't taking any chances. I'm still not sure he cares as much about the flowers as he does about toilet paper, but I'm pretty happy with my choice...

So here are a few more pictures of some of the lovely things growing in my flower garden .....

Snowdrops

Tall salmon-pink tulips

Close up

Lilacs, my favorite

While lilacs, finally blooming! (It's their third year after planting)

Tulips, tulips, and more tulips!

Ahh, spring time. What chu got?
.

Flower Girl

When people ask me what my favorite flower is, I have a hard time choosing just one. I love flowers. All kinds of flowers. My favorite to smell? Lilacs. My favorite to get in a bouquet? Gerbera daisies. My favorite to look at? Lilies. My favorite to pick? Peonies. But overall, I'd have to say the flowers that give me the most joy are spring flowers. When the first crocuses push up through the ground in late February, I heave a huge sigh of relief; spring is coming. And then my grape hyacinths and daffodil spears start peeking through. Next my hyacinths and tulips. And by the middle of April, most of it is in bloom. And I swear my body feels 20 pounds lighter and my heart is a hundred pounds lighter.

Here are a few of my favorites from my garden....

This frilly, double daffodil

My favorite tulip. It's so tall and elegant. I transplanted a bunch of these from a different part of my yard, but only this one comes up every year now. It has the prettiest shades of pink and salmon and orange.



Although their stringy leaves tend to take over the garden, the intense violet of these grape hyacinths really pops against the green. And they're among the first to come up, so they always make me happy.


These darling jonquils are white with pale pink centers instead of yellow. They're tiny and delicate and adorable. I love them.

This is a parrot tulip. The edges are all frilly and spiky. Short, but very interesting.

I call these my fried egg daffodils. The centers are so orange, just like egg yolks. They're also really frilly and ruffly and interesting to look at.

What about you? What are you favorite spring flowers?




.