Painting and Weeding

Forced to stop due to the rain, this seems as good a time as any to give an update. Last weekend was busy with Patrick pushing me much harder than I prefer to work. But as long as he's working, I feel bad to relax. Right now it's a bit different though, while he finishes the final touches in the closet, I'm resting my back. I guess I pushed myself too hard and have had a horrible back ache since Wednesday.

So yes, we're finishing the closet now because last weekend we got a bit distracted and painted the kitchen.


Now we finally have a finished room. We even put up our first picture frames. The light yellow makes the room feel so wonderfully warm and cheerful. Patrick has had breakfast in there a few times now, despite the wobbly table and ugly cabinets. Now it's about the nicest looking room we have. We also spent a large chunk of our time, most of Sunday, creating a frame on the wall above the washer and dryer so that we could put up shelves. We attached the frame to three vertical studs and then were able to attach the shelves nicely in the middle of the nook. I helped draw up the design and find the correct dimensions for everything, but mostly this project was Patrick's. He's clearly very proud of the job he did.



Those three pictures took all our time last weekend and shockingly, even though we were so close to finishing the closet we didn't work on it at all. We just can't focus. The closet is finished now though. We sanded down the new plaster and painted yesterday and Patrick has been in the bedroom most of the afternoon assembling the closet organizer.


The rest of this weekend, I got out into the garden and finally put in some good time pulling up Oxalis.


Actually, this one isn't a before picture, these pretty flowers are still taunting me in the corner but here is the nice stretch of ground that I worked on.


I cleared out everything around a bunch of irises that we apparently mowed over last year, not being able to see them under all the weeds. They're badly in need of dividing which I'm sure I'll get to eventually...

But the irises that I divided last fall and moved to the back of the garden look wonderful and now that the lavender next to them is in bloom, I really love the contrast.



Everything is finally starting to come up, even the bulbs that I planted far too late in the season. And I can't really be bothered to think of transitional phrases etc. so here you are.


Our Dark Star Ceanthonus, still only partially blooming.



Grape Hyacinth growing around some of my roman chamomile. The chamomile helped while I was picking out the tiny clovers in and around the grape hyacinths, the smell was absolutely wonderful. I'll be putting many more of them around the garden.


The daffodils in this group will be opening any day. Two have already opened in a slightly more sunny spot.


There are two left over tulips in front of the group. Then, the same tulips, just plain red ones, in the front have opened on each side of the front stairs.


Not quite up yet but looking promising are the Hostas I had in pots last year.


Other things coming up aren't so welcome. I have slightly fewer onions spread throughout the yard than Oxalis and their pretty white flowers are starting to emerge.



I quite like the flowers but the leaves are pretty ugly, besides the fact that these are weedy. The blackberries are also coming back.


And I guess that's about all.

A Month Later

My last post pretty much corresponded with the beginning of my new job. Things have been far too busy for me to even imagine what I could write about but luckily, not so busy that I haven't been able to detach from my job over the weekends and spend time enjoying the garden and working on the house.

Not much has changed in the garden since we dug the trenches last month except for some rototilling. We bought ourselves a small rototiller to tear up our weeds and grass and it's worked quite well for the little we've used it.


One note, I've seen more than a few times people advising against rototilling oxalis... I think I disagree. We went over a couple square yards of wonderful clovers without going deep into the soil, no more than an inch (very easy to do with a small rototiller). So we ripped up the green vegetation in a very short matter of time and the bulbs are still undisturbed underneath. Seems to me that the result is the same as handpicking but with sooo much time saved. It's also so much more thorough. Now, we'll just wait for the clovers to reappear and go over them again to weaken the bulbs. Hopefully in a few years the bulbs will about give up.

Anyway, for some whimsy, I bought a bird feeder!


I don't know why but growing up we never had a bird feeder at any of the places I lived. It's made me so giddy watching the birds fly around. I caught a squirrel hanging down from a branch and spinning the feeder to knock down the food. Mischievous, but so fun to watch. As soon as I have some free money, I'm getting an Adirondack chair to read and watch from.

So, I have few wonderful photos of my back yard moving into spring. First, the most dramatic blossoms, our star magnolia.


At first the magnolia flowers were looking pretty bad because of the occasional frosty weather, but now the blooms are better and with the leaves half emerged, I think it looks better than it ever will.

Next, the tiny clusters of flowers on my new Manzanita (not sure what variety sadly). Not in the ground yet but blooming like it doesn't care.


I'm so happy with the Manzanita and the Ceanothus, just now bursting its buds, that I'm sure I'll buy at least one more of each.

Next, no flowers yet, but I'm loving the leaves on the irises I moved to the back last fall. They're finally growing large enough that the blades are growing wavy and really quite beautiful.


I've also started a majority of the seeds I ordered and collected last year. Before now, I'd never collected and planted seeds before; before last year, I had never started plants from seeds. But I bagged up a few seedheads from my plant pots last summer and a couple from plants I'd put in my parents backyard. I've also recently harvested over a hundred little black seeds from the penstemen gloxinoides I planted in the front this winter.

This time around, I decided to go the slow and steady way and have had my seed plants growing outside from the beginning, avoiding the problem of my curious inside cats. My seedlings may be slightly small, but they are very strong. They even survived that surprise hail last week! No casualties.


Columbines collected from a double pink and a double purple variety I bought for my parents (they actually reseeded at my parents house despite the poor soil). I have four or five pots of these.


Dianthus 'Ideal Violet' from Parkseed.com


Galliardia 'Mesa Yellow' and 'Arizona Sun'. Galliardia was what I meant to buy when I got Gazania last year, but oh well, I have dozens of them now.


Here are some of the poppies. The long thin blades are regular California poppies from a seed packet, but the thicker leaved ones are Red horned poppies from the first seeds I ever harvested (hehe my babies). Click on the picture, the hairy leaves are so weird.

Lastly, I haven't written about work on the house in some time because there hasn't been much that was picture worthy. Perhaps in another month, I'll be able to post pictures of our living room, painted and decorated for the first time. As of now, the paint has been scraped off the plaster and maybe a tenth of the wall space has gotten a skim coat of new plaster.

More later.

Finally Emerging

I've been horribly negligent about the bulbs that I so badly needed to buy over the last few months. Not on the buying side, I bought lots of bulbs but never got to planting them. Not until past all the recommended planting dates. On either January 8th or 9th, can't remember, I planted the Muscari I bought back in November. While I've already seen pictures of other people's gardens with emerging Muscari flower buds, mine are just getting started. But I'm very very glad to say that I didn't plant them too late! It's been just under two weeks but the tops of the leaves are starting to emerge.



I was trying to count up the emerging tips but kept getting lost and seeing more where I'd already counted. There are at least 30 already coming up.

And on to the bulbs in the front yard, I discovered three days ago that my tulips are also starting to pop up. Does anyone have tulips coming up already? I thought I waited too long to plant these too but it was still in early December. Much better than my other bulbs. These are on either side of the steps to our front porch.



You can probably tell that I didn't amend the soil as much (as well) with the tulips as I did with the Muscari. I think I'll work some more compost into the soil when the bulbs die back next year.

Like the bulbs, everything else in our garden just now is in the development stage. There seem to be just two plants blooming just now, the breath of heaven shrub in the front and the ground cover Gazania next to the street tree.



I'll just have to do my best to add more plants that will give winter interest before the next one comes around (shouldn't be difficult as I have so much to add). I've already taken one step in that direction by finally planting one of the barberry 'red glow' shrubs that I bought, again, ages ago. It looks small and pitiful with only a few leaves remaining but those leaves are gorgeous.


Then there's the Dietes or fortnight lily that I planted a few weeks ago which is finally starting recover some of its darker green coloring. It had been going slightly yellow in its pot but this year will be a better one for it. (This is my baby of two and a half years now, I'm determined it will be happy this year and bloom abundantly).


Last, on the topic of my developing plants, the newly planted Ceanothus 'Dark Star' that I mentioned before has little buds meaning I can be sure that it's happily developing in its new home.


Last of all, I just have to post a few pictures of the new exterior of the house. The better lighting in these pictures is just begging for me to post them.



And I told you, see? The back porch, though still with ugly siding attached to it, is straight and level.

Paint-tastic

So wonderful news, we're getting a New Years Gift from our contractor! He's painting our house, completely, instead of just priming it like he's required to. So no more pink house! He told us this last Thursday when he came by in the evening and they started painting on Friday. We had already been thinking about the colors we wanted and had grabbed some paint samples from Home Depot probably over a month ago so we gave those to him since he wanted to use a tinted primer. Fine with us, though we did make sure to tell him that we don't know the final color yet. Good thing too cause the colors we pick out were UGH Ugly! Take a look:


Easter candy blue, don't you think? Quite a shock to come home to. Apparently, choosing lighter colors than you would guess you like is something you do for inside paint colors, NOT outside. So over the weekend we went back and forth to Home Depot two times before we had all the paint colors you can see on the front of the porch. But I wasn't really satisfied yet, so I went back one more time Sunday afternoon and pick out three more (total 12 samples = about $48, I think worth it for an exterior color choice) and applied them to the other side of the porch.


Love, finally I'd found the right shade and saturation. I was crazy for both of these colors so spent a ton of time making large swatches to compare. And then, I just couldn't decide. I made Patrick, who was getting quite tired of the process and seemed a bit convinced that I was trying to get the house painted teal, go outside and look at the colors twice before he finally convincingly said that he would like either one of them. So.... I decided as I was going to sleep that the brighter blue that I do very much love might not be acceptable to enough people, or me after it was on the entire house so the one of the left it is.

While I write this now, the men have probably finished spraying the correct color on the house and should be painting the rails and trim the whitish color we chose. Also, today, the men should be taking down the ugly metal awning over the front window. Seen here along with one other dramatic front yard change:


Do you see it in the shadows? No?


No more Port-a-Pottie!! That wonderful surprise greeted us about a week ago. Also, quite a few other things have been completed in the last few weeks. The regrading, new drainage, and concrete around the chimney is finished. It started out like this:


This picture was clearly taken on a dryer week and the problem isn't so obvious but just out of the picture is our chimney - our water trap. One morning after a rain, we took a look at this area and saw puddled sludge, because the water was just collecting there, trapped two inches below the concrete drive, and over the past century slowly making the chimney sink along with the rest of the living room. But now the foundations are a bit taller and the downspouts lead into a buried pipe diverting all the water down past the chimney. And to block any other water from pooling there anymore, we have new sloped concrete over this area.


It doesn't look obvious from the picture but the new concrete is nicely sloped and water won't be collecting there anymore.

Now walking up the drive in to the backyard, we finally have a back porch again!


...it isn't quite what I was expecting... but this is my fault for not drawing up plans for what I wanted. I was pretty much thinking that a small back porch is a small back porch, there's nothing really to explain. Well except the landing, I wanted that to be brick so I did talk with Abel about that and the men built it to the pattern I wanted using the extra bricks that we'd found around the yard. I'm happy enough with that. We'll have two planting beds on either side of the landing so the rough concrete underneath won't be visible. Now the siding however... Don't know why they put that on there. But then I didn't specify that I expected the lower part of the porch to just be open. I thought that later I might add lattice to it the open porch but of all the problems that have come up due to bad communication, this is one of the smallest so I didn't complain. All the side pieces of the porch are just screwed on so we'll just take off the siding sometime on our own.

So anyway, next, to the lemon tree at the back of the garage.


And yes, I know it looks like I just weeded a spot next to the tree but I actually finally planted some of my suffocating bulbs. This patch has about 50 little muscari all over and 5 lily of the valley towards the right side. Then I took my ailing chamomile from the tiny pots I should have removed them from months ago and put them on top for a pretty, mossy cover growth (eventually). Also, good to note is that the muddy pit just visible below isn't full of pooling water anymore, after the week of dry weather, all the standing water has finally drained away and even better, despite all the water clearly flowing down the trenches to the bottom of the yard, the bottom area was dry after only 2 days (not so for the top half of the yard, we still need to do a little digging but we can only do so much on our weekends).

Our last bit of progress is in the back corner of the yard. Here's what the blackberry patch looked like in spring before we had the house, before we'd even been able to cut down the weeds.


You can just see a red spot from a rose buried inside it and an orange spot from a nasturtium. Well, we took down the pear tree the first weekend we had the place because it honestly had no roots and was obviously dieing. But it took until the weekend before last for us, that is to say me, to cut through the rest of the thicket. It took two weekends but now it's almost gone.


Sorry for the bad lighting but then the picture wouldn't be very pretty even in the best lighting. The lump towards the left side is apparently a bush that the blackberries engulfed and I assume, killed from keeping light off it for two or more years. Next to that is the pretty rose that had been throwing up reddish purple flowers during the summer and that now had bright orange hips, looking very healthy despite the brambles. Then, there are the three volunteer trees that I'll just have to get to later... when I've gotten over this cold.