Tuesday, April 01, 2008
Instant Spring
I love my friends. They are very good to me.Yesterday Cathy, one of my West Farms buddies, brought me two big tubs of snapdragons and dianthus that she had taken out of a flower bed at one of the local apartment complexes. I knew just the place for this generous donation! I love this flower bed next to our sidewalk, though I've neglected to do much with it over the past couple of years. The new plants fulfilled a vision that I had for a happy, welcoming entrance to our home.
The butterflies were all over these flowers before 
I even got them out of the buckets. It'll take a couple of good rains/waterings to wash the detritus off of these reclaimed beauties, and as that happens they will fill out and fit this spot wonderfully.
As I was cleaning up and picking up my tools, the first hummingbird that I've ever seen on our property stopped to check out the new additions. A good sign, no?
Even with filling this bed to its brim, I had a handful of snapdragons left over. What to do with them? I wasn't about to toss them. So I spread some of the snap love over to the side stoop. I can't wait to come home from lunch to see my new flowers greeting me!
Labels: Gardening
Sunday, March 23, 2008
Spring has sprung
My sweetie of sweets raked and cleaned up the front yard today while I was at work! It was such a fresh, clean feeling to come home to, and now I'm very excited about clearing the dead plants out of their little pots and refurbishing the front stoop with new growth. We'll try to grow some grass in front of the house this year, and I'd really like to get the entry flower beds settled up so that I'll only have to maintain them next year. Fill it full of lots of happy, flowering perennials and such, with some annuals in the front. I can't wait until my day off on Tuesday so that I can go play in the yard!
Labels: Gardening
Monday, June 18, 2007
Le Sigh
You know those weekends where you don't really leave the house, but on Sunday night you realize that you'd just had a wonderfully perfect, quiet weekend at home? C&I just had one of those weekends.
I still try to plan and cook dinner on Fridays, even though I'm back to working normal days on Fridays. I usually opt for something easy, if not quick. We've had frozen pizza on more than one of 'my' Fridays. This week it was Shepard's Pie. Mashed potatoes on the bottom, saucy meat* in the middle, and a biscuit-y concoction as it's crowning glory. Make one for now, freeze and save one for later. As I was deciding what to cook on Friday I emailed Chris to ask him if we had any butter at home. He replied that we might have a stick or two, so I said that I'd buy some more. When he realized the recipe was put together by Paula Dean, he understood why we needed more butter no matter what. That lady makes some good shit.
Our nice, homey, comforting dinner on Friday was followed up with a lot of work on Saturday. I had brought home a ton (And I really mean a ton. Not like, 'Oh, I have a ton of homework to do.' More precisely like, 'There is a ton of dirt in the back of my truck.') of dirt from work so that I could start building up my flower beds. After unloading that from the truck (With Chris' help, of course. And yes, I'll put a tarp underneath it next time.) I mixed about half of it up with six bags of cow manure and started building up my beds. Six full wheelbarrow loads of enriched dirt doesn't go nearly as far as I thought it would. I figure 4 to 6 more wheelbarrows worth and I'll be ready to put in plants and drip lines and mulch along the first, oh, maybe ten feet or so of flower bed. And that's the most narrow part of the future bed. I had no idea how huge this bed was going to be until now. I'm thrilled that it will be a gorgeous entrance to our property! But it will take me at least the next several months to make it all happen. Baby steps, people! And real plants soon, thank gawd. I was beat after that, so C&I mostly just hung out and watched movies and tv and stuff for the rest of the day on Saturday.
Sunday brought a total house cleaning, all of the laundry washing, and the smoking of a pork butt. So much house cleaning that I even organized my craft/storage/junk room, and so much butt smoking that we'll be eating meat sandwiches for weeks. I love waking up on Monday morning to a pristine house, and I love eating meat, so I'm set for the long haul.
I found no less than seven knitting-projects-in-process in the craft/storage/junk room. So what did I do Sunday afternoon? I started another. It should be done tonight, though, and I don't think the receiver of the knitted gift reads here regularly, so I hope to have some knitting progress to post soon. And I plan to start another knitted gift as soon as I'm done with this one, so those poor seven unfinished projects will just have to wait.
I still try to plan and cook dinner on Fridays, even though I'm back to working normal days on Fridays. I usually opt for something easy, if not quick. We've had frozen pizza on more than one of 'my' Fridays. This week it was Shepard's Pie. Mashed potatoes on the bottom, saucy meat* in the middle, and a biscuit-y concoction as it's crowning glory. Make one for now, freeze and save one for later. As I was deciding what to cook on Friday I emailed Chris to ask him if we had any butter at home. He replied that we might have a stick or two, so I said that I'd buy some more. When he realized the recipe was put together by Paula Dean, he understood why we needed more butter no matter what. That lady makes some good shit.
*Most Shepard's Pie that I've had has been made with meat in a Guinness or gravy type of sauce. I haven't ever liked them. This one is made with tomato sauce, and is right up my alley.
Our nice, homey, comforting dinner on Friday was followed up with a lot of work on Saturday. I had brought home a ton (And I really mean a ton. Not like, 'Oh, I have a ton of homework to do.' More precisely like, 'There is a ton of dirt in the back of my truck.') of dirt from work so that I could start building up my flower beds. After unloading that from the truck (With Chris' help, of course. And yes, I'll put a tarp underneath it next time.) I mixed about half of it up with six bags of cow manure and started building up my beds. Six full wheelbarrow loads of enriched dirt doesn't go nearly as far as I thought it would. I figure 4 to 6 more wheelbarrows worth and I'll be ready to put in plants and drip lines and mulch along the first, oh, maybe ten feet or so of flower bed. And that's the most narrow part of the future bed. I had no idea how huge this bed was going to be until now. I'm thrilled that it will be a gorgeous entrance to our property! But it will take me at least the next several months to make it all happen. Baby steps, people! And real plants soon, thank gawd. I was beat after that, so C&I mostly just hung out and watched movies and tv and stuff for the rest of the day on Saturday.
Sunday brought a total house cleaning, all of the laundry washing, and the smoking of a pork butt. So much house cleaning that I even organized my craft/storage/junk room, and so much butt smoking that we'll be eating meat sandwiches for weeks. I love waking up on Monday morning to a pristine house, and I love eating meat, so I'm set for the long haul.
I found no less than seven knitting-projects-in-process in the craft/storage/junk room. So what did I do Sunday afternoon? I started another. It should be done tonight, though, and I don't think the receiver of the knitted gift reads here regularly, so I hope to have some knitting progress to post soon. And I plan to start another knitted gift as soon as I'm done with this one, so those poor seven unfinished projects will just have to wait.
Labels: Gardening, Knitta please, Yummy in my Tummy
Monday, May 28, 2007
The Strip of Death, Step Two
When we last met our hero she was bravely fighting off the blackberry bushes from hell in hopes of reviving the strip of floral death that runs along the driveway entry to her home. She successfully transformed the area from being overrun with sticks and twigs and the hated blackberries and weed to this:
No, it's not pretty yet, but these things take time, patience, and hard work, My Sweeties. The time and the patience are particularly tough for me. I want to run out and buy all of the flowers that I see and plant them in the ground! But then they die. So sad.
Along the preparatory lines, today I began to kill off the grass and weeds that reside in my future Strip of Bounty. I used the newspaper method because 1) I'm cheap and 2) I'm lazy. The newspapers were free from a friend who was saving them to recycle, and I didn't have to dig up any of the weeds and grass other than the larger pests that I took care of a couple of weeks ago.
First I marked the area that I want as my flower bed. I laid down several layers of newspaper in the bed area and wet it down well. I would lay a few feet of paper, wet it down, lay a few more feet of paper, wet all of it down again, and continued until I ran out of newspaper. Lay, rinse, repeat. Then I put dead leaves and some year old grass clippings on top of the newspaper. This serves a couple of purposes: It holds down the newspaper so that it doesn't fly away when it dries out, and it will compost with the newspaper to provide a good base for the bed. I wet all of that down really well too. All this water helps compact everything to keep it from flying away, and gives the paper and old plant bits a head start on breaking down into a nice compost.
If you plan to plant directly into the ground, you can go ahead and put down your mulch in this step instead of leaves and such. When you plant, just brush the mulch out of the area where your plant goes, dig into the dirt, and replace the mulch around the plant after you've planted. I prefer the look of beds that are mounded up, so in a couple of weeks I'll cover all of this with fill dirt mixed with Black Cow and plant into that.
I really liked how well the grass clippings worked over the newspaper! So much that I plan on push mowing portions of the lawn this summer in order to acquire more grass clippings to use for this purpose next year. Our push mower has a grass catcher, you see, but our riding mower does not.
And here are pictures of the fruits of today's labor. No, not quite gorgeous yet, but I'm getting there slowly and surely. I ran out of paper before I got all of the inside portion of the fence layered. That's ok because I'll be working around in the same direction as I put in plants, so I won't get back there for a couple of months. Anyhoo, I'm off to research what kinds of pretty flowers I'll soon be installing!
No, it's not pretty yet, but these things take time, patience, and hard work, My Sweeties. The time and the patience are particularly tough for me. I want to run out and buy all of the flowers that I see and plant them in the ground! But then they die. So sad.
Along the preparatory lines, today I began to kill off the grass and weeds that reside in my future Strip of Bounty. I used the newspaper method because 1) I'm cheap and 2) I'm lazy. The newspapers were free from a friend who was saving them to recycle, and I didn't have to dig up any of the weeds and grass other than the larger pests that I took care of a couple of weeks ago.
First I marked the area that I want as my flower bed. I laid down several layers of newspaper in the bed area and wet it down well. I would lay a few feet of paper, wet it down, lay a few more feet of paper, wet all of it down again, and continued until I ran out of newspaper. Lay, rinse, repeat. Then I put dead leaves and some year old grass clippings on top of the newspaper. This serves a couple of purposes: It holds down the newspaper so that it doesn't fly away when it dries out, and it will compost with the newspaper to provide a good base for the bed. I wet all of that down really well too. All this water helps compact everything to keep it from flying away, and gives the paper and old plant bits a head start on breaking down into a nice compost.
If you plan to plant directly into the ground, you can go ahead and put down your mulch in this step instead of leaves and such. When you plant, just brush the mulch out of the area where your plant goes, dig into the dirt, and replace the mulch around the plant after you've planted. I prefer the look of beds that are mounded up, so in a couple of weeks I'll cover all of this with fill dirt mixed with Black Cow and plant into that.
I really liked how well the grass clippings worked over the newspaper! So much that I plan on push mowing portions of the lawn this summer in order to acquire more grass clippings to use for this purpose next year. Our push mower has a grass catcher, you see, but our riding mower does not.
And here are pictures of the fruits of today's labor. No, not quite gorgeous yet, but I'm getting there slowly and surely. I ran out of paper before I got all of the inside portion of the fence layered. That's ok because I'll be working around in the same direction as I put in plants, so I won't get back there for a couple of months. Anyhoo, I'm off to research what kinds of pretty flowers I'll soon be installing!
Labels: Gardening
Saturday, May 19, 2007
Not in my back yard
I spent a few hours in the yard today, clearing out the Entry Space of Death in preparation of the installation of a new flower bed. Most of the tough work was clearing out the insipid blackberry bushes without totally trashing the yellow lantana (Wow. Great little Florida plant encyclopedia I found when looking for that link!) that re-emerged this spring. Don't get me wrong, I love fresh blackberries. They are sweet and juicy and just the right amount of sour to make my mouth water when I think about them. But have they ever shown up in your yard? And you were excited about that, yes? Maybe when you bought your property a year ago you even considered the existence of the blackberry bushes a selling point. Fresh blackberry cobbler every spring! Delicious! Then once you settled in a bit, started digging around in the yard to make room for some more pretty, native, flowering plants, an old dried up blackberry vine hiding away beneath your lantana bit you. Bit you hard. And you bit back, oh yes you did. After donning your heavy duty gardening gloves you ripped that prickling, invasive hunk of fauna right up from it's roots. Away with it! Away! And so went about your business. Until you ran into another blackberry vine. Then another. And then you started seeing the little bastard's baby runners popping up all over. So you went after them with the axe! Kill! Kill!
Ahem. So, yes. Ripped out some blackberry bushes today. Ahem.
And the strip of death is more like the strip-of-pretty-much-nothing-but-a-couple-of-Lantana now. Nice. Very nice. I'll add some plumbago someday soon and who knows what else.
I also planted ten one-gallon containers of perennial peanut in the very front yard along the dirt road. I didn't take the existing grass up because I want to see if the p. peanut will choke it out. If this test batch goes well, C&I will consider filling that entire front area with the stuff. If not, well, who knows. Without irrigation our grass just sucks. In the places that we even have grass. Cross your fingers for us that we can find a decent alternative ground covering for most of our lawn!
Ahem. So, yes. Ripped out some blackberry bushes today. Ahem.
And the strip of death is more like the strip-of-pretty-much-nothing-but-a-couple-of-Lantana now. Nice. Very nice. I'll add some plumbago someday soon and who knows what else.
I also planted ten one-gallon containers of perennial peanut in the very front yard along the dirt road. I didn't take the existing grass up because I want to see if the p. peanut will choke it out. If this test batch goes well, C&I will consider filling that entire front area with the stuff. If not, well, who knows. Without irrigation our grass just sucks. In the places that we even have grass. Cross your fingers for us that we can find a decent alternative ground covering for most of our lawn!
Labels: Gardening
Sunday, April 08, 2007
Labels: Gardening
Sunday, February 11, 2007
Frost?!
FROST?!?! I thought it was supposed to be in the 40s at night all this weekend! It was 45 degrees when we went to bed last night at 11:00pm. It's nearly 8:00 now, and it's 35. It must have dipped just below that between then and now because my sweet beautiful happy Impatiens are *covered* in frost. ARRRGHHH! They're done for. The green stuff that I planted yesterday shouldn't have too much of a problem surviving, but I'll have to reinstall the annuals later on. Dammit!
Labels: Gardening
Saturday, February 10, 2007
I like plants.
I really do. But you can't tell it from looking at my yard. The Ropers left some good specimens here which I'm not about to get rid of, but the potted plants have gone to pot (Excuse the pun) and I haven't planted anything new since we've been here other than a handful of annuals last spring. But the sign that Timmah made for us has been installed for a week and has just been screaming for some attention. So I hopped to it. Evergreen Giant Liriope in the middle, Society Garlic on the ends, and Impatiens up front. They look kind of scrawny right now, but if I keep up with the watering the Impatiens will fill out beautifully. It's amazing how much a mound of fill dirt underneath and a garbage bag full of mulch makes a flower bed look so pretty. I guess learning that kind of stuff is one of the fringe benefits of working at a landscaping company. That, and free mulch and Society Garlic. =) Hrm, maybe in the spring I'll extend the bed so that the wires from the lighting will be covered with the mulch.
Next on the list of things to do is to put some Mexican Petunias in the corner behind the sign, and start to clean up and replant the Entry Strip of Death. I know it's still wintery so most everything looks dead right now, but that area looks horrible compared to the pretty new sign area. I still don't know what I'll fill it in with, but I can tell you what won't be appearing: Fucking Azaleas and Indian Fucking Hawthorne. I'm really tired of seeing those everywhere.
Oh! And look at the happy signs of spring I found today!
Daffodils with a bud! We don't get these much in Florida.
And one of last year's Snapdragons budding out:
Labels: Gardening
