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.

Ours is the Most Beautiful House

...at least, on the street, if not farther out. To say the least, that Robin's Egg blue isn't on our house anymore. The painter's finished the day yesterday sooo close to being completely finished with the house and for the first time this week, we came home before sunset and were actually able to see their work. Two days ago, we gathered up all the paint samples that I'd left out on the porch and put the one we'd chosen on the porch rail for the painters to see. But silly me, of course, even though I've been viewing the color choice as an extremely serious decision, I was less than serious when I was quickly moving the samples about before work on Monday morning. I believe I accidentally left the second choice color for the house on the porch. heh. heh. Luckily, choosing between those last two colors was very difficult and I really loved both of them.

Soooo... It not like I'm narrating this in person and you haven't actually seen the final pictures yet but~~~ *drumroll* Ta~dah






Even our garage with its tiny little window looks beautiful.


Maybe you can see (but probably not) that there are a few spots that need some corrective painting . We're not complaining though since it free and goooorgeous. We'll want to paint the trim white around the two back doors, and that small spot on the middle pillar blue. Then, just two harder ones, that we might not do anyway, the top of the chimney wasn't painted for some reason, it's still quite pink but we might be getting the chimney rebuilt anyway, and the rafters on the side of the porch and house would be better white, not that they stand out strangely for being blue. Then, that back porch, ick. But really, in person, you can see that once the siding is taken off it will be fine and it is straight and level, as well, though for some reason it doesn't look it in the picture. Probably because of that siding.

The only thing lacking now is the landscaping and now that the painting is done I can finally plant around the foundations!! Not that I have any money hah.

So to finish...
Come on Google Street View!! I'll let you retake the pictures for our street now.

Boring Little Things

Over the last couple weeks, progress has slowly been made. The garage is still electric doorless since the door is a bit rich for our blood, at least until about new year, but there is now a side access door and Abel's part of the job is finished (except for them emptying it of their tools etc).


The french drain is working well, now with it's entire tubing buried and a let-out at the front of our property. Also, I noticed the other day that the drain pipe from the garage is properly connected to it now and so is the drain pipe on the side of the porch. The back porch is in progress now, the men poured the concrete supports about two weeks ago and built the frame about a week later.


Also, you can see a bit from the picture above, but the guys have also been scraping and sanding our house all the way around over the past two weeks. You can see it more dramatically in these two pictures:



And you can also see that our window bars are off! I love the way it looks without them, so much brighter and friendlier. But Patrick insists that we'll have to have them put them back up after the painting because our windows are old easy-shatter ones. But they'll be off again some day once we get the windows updated. Also, on the lower picture, that large dirt plot next to the house isn't there just because the men cleaned up, they cut out a couple feet of concrete so they can repair and regrade. Before the foundation was practically at the same height as the small strip of dirt that was there before.


Now, I was surprised to see the concrete gone in the first place, but not only were they preparing to repair the rotten sills and the grading issue, but I found yesterday that they had actually poured additional concrete on the lowest parts of the foundation on that side.



After that, there are a few more things, but I'll post about them in a few days when I have pictures. In the meantime, so that I have a couple of pictures that aren't so brown and dull, here is how the front garden is doing.


The plants are filling in nicely, it's been a bit more than a month and a half since I planted all these and they're not quite double in size yet but then everything has been slowing down now that it's getting colder.


And in the larger beds, the seedlings are doing even better, only the Lantana is looking a bit scrawny, I think it's waiting for high heat again to burst into growth. I also finally got some of my larger plants in the ground, the Penstemon in the front and Coleonema 'Breathe of Heaven' in the back.

Oh and just for fun - I caught my older grumpy cat being nice to one of our new kittens hehe.

New Foundations, Lil' Front Garden

So pulling into our driveway on the first, we found that the carcass of our garage had been carried away during the workday (well, most of it, some being around the backyard).

And we now understood the sign we saw hooked onto our back door the day before.

We quickly decided to take their advice and have been using the front porch for the last week. Then, in the past week, the crappy old foundations for the garage were beefed up. One side was knocked down and wholesale replaced. The other two foundation walls were built up half a foot or so and all of them now have rebar to strengthen the bond.

Last in the backyard, the men have also started on the french drain.

Then, starting last weekend, being blocked from easy access to my backyard maintenance, I decided to finally start digging up the front yard. Last Sunday:

Just about the very first thing I did once the house was officially ours was clean up the grass and weeds in the front sidewalks and growing in the little hole for the street tree. But until last week I hadn't done anything except try to deeply water it once a week or so (we still don't have a front hose bib so I've had to drag the back hose around or use a bucket). But last week I finally got out there and saved the tree from it's ugly weedyness. I've put in all plants that I started from seed at the end of July, not even 2 months ago.

My pretty little lambs ears. They should spread out over the whole area eventually.

Then, Chamomile. It seems a bit of a sensitive plant, don't know if it will do well in the low water street planting but they've been bursting from their little 3" pots. And I love the way they smell! And Patrick will like the little white daisies.

The last bit of the planting, they're hard to see but there are two tiny little blue fescue clumps on this side. I think I'll move the one that's farther back over the the chamomile side soon - that's probably not enough room for two clumps of grass. There are also a bunch of Gazania but I've decided since they bloomed about two weeks ago, that I don't really like them. They were listed as an annual though so I put them in anyway as by next year the lambs ears will have taken them over.

Anyway, this weekend we started digging up the front "lawn." You've seen it before in pictures like this.

Now we have this!

It looks teeny and insignificant BUT we spent hours and hours getting all the grass out of those two beds and out from under the concrete. We had to pick out all the roots you see below until the place was clean. It certainly wasn't quick, but I don't want to get this horrible grass growing up through our mulch and into my lil' baby plants.

But isn't it pretty for all of it.

It's mostly symmetrical, for this part. After the rocks, each side will be different.

See our new pretty little Cuphea and Yellow Lantana.

My Catmint from Seed.

More Blue Fescue. Just another two or so small pots of it that still need to find ground.

And Lavender Lady. It's supposed to bloom 3 months from seed but I guess in a month it will be too cold for it to flower, so next year.

Sadly, that's all we had time to get done this weekend but at least the change is quite dramatic. We have more than half a dozen more plants we wanted to get to but they will have to wait til next week I guess.

Surprises

Came home to see some quite unexpected things for the past two days in a row. First we find that our porch is finished. Yaaaay!

Although, I'm sure you can see, I forgot to take pictures yesterday. But two days ago, we came home to this and were very happy too. The only thing left will be the staining and priming. So... actually I guess we aren't really done but whatever.

We saw the boards on the porch platform as we pulled in front of our house, still on the street, but then when we got up the driveway, we saw our garage had been struck too! See the progress made in the last two days:

Now look closely, they removed all the roofing material. And you can see below, the siding on the back of the garage was completely gone too... or well, on the ground around the yard. But I didn't see piles and piles of roofing material so that made me happy. At least they disposed of some things. Not like last time...

The piles were bigger when we got home yesterday though. BUT the big difference this time is that I know they're reusing the siding - most of the siding - after they re-frame the garage.

And of course, the garage was storing some of the debris now around the yard. Apparently they put all our gardening stuff under the house and porch for safekeeping - except for the mower and chipper which may be too big for the door. We'll have to try and get those inside though... don't want the mower to go missing. The chipper turned out to be pretty crappy so that's okay.

As if these surprises weren't enough to make us happy, they also did this!

From an ugly cracked patio

To lots of grey rubble! Isn't it wonderful. Well, not easy to walk on anymore but great progress.

Isn't it funny how the lines of grass that were in the cracks of the patio are still there now that the concrete is gone.

Also, you can see in the picture above that these guys don't understand how to transplant something. The hole they dug around the rose there would have made me really mad... if I had in any way meant to save it. Luckily, there had been two roses in front of the garage and the one that I thought was healthiest I decided to remove in preparation of their work on the garage. The other one I cut all the way down and figured they wouldn't care about it. For some reason they thought that I had wanted to save the nub though, and had attempted to dig it out.... I have no idea what they were thinking, where would they have put it? but in any case, they seemed to have given up on it.

Anyway, in case there is any doubt as to why we have to have the garage rebuilt from scratch, here is an average picture of on of the timbers holding up the current shell.