The Winning Stake

22 March, 2013 Reply

To Plant Or Not To Plant

Property line stake that is. Last weekend we planned to mark where our blackberries and marionberries permanent homes are going to be. However, when we tried to decide where to put the marionberries, which were to be near the property line, we couldn’t find the marker for the SW corner of our property. Try and dig as we might, we didn’t find a thing.

Brand new markers are easy to find. After 13 years, though, they can be elusive.

Brand new markers are easy to find. After 13 years, though, they can be elusive.

I remembered reading about a metal detector group in our state that had put on some event about a year ago, so I looked them up online and contacted the president of the organization. I asked if there were any members around where I lived that might be able to help us locate our markers.

He sent the request out to the club and I got two responses. I arranged for one of them to come out. This morning he arrived with all his paraphernalia. It was pretty impressive.

Finding The Markers

We started at one corner of the property, where we thought the marker that we’d found wasn’t the correct one. He had a dickens of a time because there were so many bleeps that he kept getting all kinds of false readings. We finally went to the back stake, which we knew almost exactly where it was and got our bearings. We finally dug up the post we’d originally found and decided it was the correct one, even though it looks like it’s in an entirely different place than our plat shows.

Then we moved on to the other front marker. This one eluded us even more. He’d get a hit and we’d dig and find a screw, a piece of wire, etc. He was such a nice person, and just kept locating and digging, again unearthing screws and bits of wire, and one possible old button, which he gave me as a souvenir. We dug about a dozen holes, when I suggested I go stand at the back marker on that side, which was above ground and easily found, so that they could get an idea of where to dig. I did that, and still we didn’t find it. However, while my husband was back working on a better way to mark the back corner, Pat, our metal detectorist, found the other marker. I think he just needed us to get out of the way, so he could do his work.

It was fun, even though it was wickedly chilly out this morning. He let me put on the headphones and play with his detector a little. I could see where people could really enjoy this as a hobby. It’s like a treasure hunt, even though I didn’t find anything interesting (one piece of wire and a rusty screw).

Now we know where the property line runs and we’ll be able to safely plant the marionberries right where I’d planned them. Oh, I also found out that the big patch of violets that my neighbor kept cutting down last year is on our property, so they’ll get to stay and bloom their little hearts out this year (if he didn’t kill them with all the cutting).

This Could Help You Out

If you ever need to locate your property markers, and you know they are metal, just contact you local club and see if someone would be willing to help you out. Of course if you need it for something legal you should probably hire a surveyor, but for our purposes Pat’s finds were just what we needed. Pat’s a great guy, retired marine, who worked with us for two hours to find the markers in our “treasure” filled property. It might be interesting to see if there’s anything of value under any of the multitude of bleeps I heard…

Preparing For Spring Projects

5 February, 2013 Reply

It’s Planning Time

After moving a tree and large shrub that were blocking the front of the house. Now's the time to sit down and plan some landscaping.

After moving a tree and large shrub that were blocking the front of the house. Now’s the time to sit down and plan some landscaping.

It may seem early to a lot of you, as you look out your window at the mounds of snow, but here in the mid-Atlantic region I need to get my list of spring projects organized and ready to start working on them. Even now we’ll be having a few warmer days where I can get out and start on some preliminary projects, but March through May will be prime months for getting projects completed, while the temperatures are mild.

Review Of Last Year

In looking at my list from last year I only managed to get a few things done. Of course a bigger project, that I hadn’t really planned to do, but it suddenly came up – putting a roof on our back deck, took up a lot of time I could have been doing other things.

Also, I started some projects, but didn’t get many of them done. We got most of the soil in place for putting up the greenhouse, but then Sarvasri hurt his back and we couldn’t go any further. I managed to get one of the two japanese maple seedlings permanently planted.

Also, I ended up doing a lot of projects that are no longer on the list, or didn’t make it there in the first place. I put in a garden for melons and squash. We worked on the secret garden in the wooded part of our lot. We did buy and plant a bunch of fruit trees (that are all doing splendidly at this point). I permanently put in the herb garden where I wanted it.

New Commitment For 2013

I know the biggest thing on my list for this year is to get control of all the gardens, and to get permanent walls up for the raised beds. The other real biggie is to get the greenhouse up. I’m going to spend a bunch of time planning the front landscaping. Something I’d wanted to do last year, but when the deck project came up, my attention turned that direction.

This year, now that the giant autumn olive has been relocated, I want to get a complete design done for the front of the house, and start putting in the permanent foundation plantings. I found that some of the plants I originally planted I don’t like. They didn’t grow as described on the tag, so they’ll need to be moved and others need to take their place. I need to do some research and think about what I want the front to look like and exactly where the porch is going to go, so that I don’t plant anything there. It’s time to have a beautiful, attractive entrance to our house, instead of the tumble down wooden steps the builder supplied.

There are tons of other things that need to be completed. So, over the next few days I’m going to make a complete list of everything I see that needs to be done and then prioritize it. I’ll also set up some categories of quick jobs, moderate projects, long-term projects, etc. That way I can look and see what is a good match for the time I’m going to have. Working on a long-term project might not get very far if I only have an hour, but knowing what all the quick little jobs that need to be attended to would be perfect.

I’ve made lists before, but I’ve never prioritized them by these categories. I’m hoping this will help me have a better idea of what to spend my time on.

Procrastination Is A Four Letter Word

14 November, 2012 Reply

Procrastination Doesn’t Pay

Front entry with monster bush in front

It doesn’t look very foreboding in this picture from a couple years ago, but the bush in the center of the picture grew to enormous size and pricked everyone who tried to enter the house!

Well, at least it ought to be! Yesterday my procrastination caught up with me. Seven years ago we moved into our house, just a few days before Thanksgiving. At that time I transplanted a tiny little autumn olive from the property we moved from. It was probably about 12” tall. Yesterday, after seven years of being planted in a temporary home, that was only supposed to be there until the next spring, we moved the “tiny” autumn olive. It is now taller than me and the trunk is bigger around then my upper arm.

For the past several years I’ve been singing the song of not buying plants until you have a place for them, because of my tendency to fall in love with something before I even think about where I’m going to put it. I stopped that practice totally this year, because I had lost several beautiful plants, due to not having a plan. Oh, I have a generalized plan, but not specific. I know about where I want all the gardens, but not what’s going in them or when I want to do the work.

A place to grow tall and wide!

Now our “tiny” tree has a place to grow to it’s heart’s content, and we can smell it from the back deck each fall. We’ll keep our fingers crossed that it makes it through the move.

My dear, sweet husband, who is no muscle man, grunted and pushed and shoved from around 11:30 a.m. until 2:00 p.m. to get “tiny” out. Finally, after rigging a pulley system we managed to get the plant to let go so we could move her.

Hopefully I will never, ever make that mistake again. It was exhausting. Every muscle and joint in my body ached, I had scratches all over (they have honker thorns), and the poor plant had itself ripped from a nice cozy home, only to have to start all over.

We did pick a really nice spot for it. Out of the way of the underground power and septic, but enough at the corner of the house that, should it survive, it will bless us with it’s intoxicating fragrance when we sit outside on the back porch. That’s where it should have been all along, but I never had a complete plan.

Preparation Does

So, this winter I’m going to get a complete plan put together. Oh, I might not know exactly which perennials are going where, but I will certainly know where trees and shrubs are going to be placed. No more temporary homes. It’s just plain too hard on me, my unsuspecting husband, and my dear plants.

You can see the front door and windows now!

The house looks shockingly open, now that the monster bush has been relocated.

One thing Feng Shui talks about is the flow of energy. Well poor “tiny” was definitely not in the right place. She would grow so much every summer that her thorny branches would stick out right into the path up to the front door. Not very friendly, and not very auspicious for us. The front of the house looks startlingly open now. Hmmm, wonder if things will open up for us as well!

One other thing I realized is that I haven’t taken pictures of the property since Christmas 2010. So, next spring when everything is starting to green up. I’ll certainly be out there, and every spring thereafter. It’s really the only way to have a “journal” of the changes.

Have you ever made a planting error? If you did, how did you correct it? Were you able to save the plant? Share your landscape horrors with us.

Preparing New Gardens In The Fall

19 October, 2012 Reply

Fall Is Mellowing

Fall is an excellent time to prepare new gardens for planting the next spring. When you prepare gardens in the spring any amendments you put in may not have time to break down and be available to the plants right away. Not only that you can put amendments into the garden, which you can’t in the spring.

Gardens Were Needed for Survival

We no longer need to plow huge gardens, but growing flowers and food crops still bring a lot of pleasure and healthy foods to our tables.

For instance, fresh manures of most animals are considered hot. That means that they will burn the roots of seedlings, causing them to be stunted or die. If you put fresh manure in a garden in the fall, it has all winter to mellow and “cool” down. Then in the spring your plants will find all the wonderful, natural nutrients it contains available to them and they’ll flourish.

Another item that you have to be very careful with is lime. When you put lime in a garden that is going to be directly planted you have the same problem as manure. It can burn the roots of plants and seedlings and stunt their growth or kill them. It is not as strong as manure, though, so adding a small amount of it when planting a garden in the spring can be beneficial. You just have to be extra careful with it.

One other thing that you can usually do is plant a cover crop, which can then be turned under in the late winter or early spring, depending on your zone, to add a huge amount of nitrogen and help to keep friable clays and help bind sandy soils together.

Keeping Weeds At Bay

One thing to keep in mind is to keep the soil from getting contaminated with lots of weed seeds. You don’t want to have to rework the soil the next spring. You can prepare the soil and then put a permeable cover over it. You could use weed barrier. If you cover that with some mulch it will look nice until the next spring, when you can remove the covering and add the mulch to the soil. Of course you can only do that if you use a mulch that will be advantageous to your soil. In other words if you have highly acidic soil you don’t want to use a mulch that will add even more acidic compounds to your soil. So you might want to use straw (hay has too many weed seeds). I’ve done this a couple times and I’ll usually get a few wheat plants coming up in the spring, but that can be fun, or you can easily remove them.

Pick A Project

So, if your landscape isn’t complete, pull out your plans and decide which gardens you want to plant in the spring and start preparing the soil now. You’ll be rewarded for preparing a nice home for your new plants. They’ll be stronger and produce better (be it flowers or food) than if you simply dig up some soil in the spring and plant, even if you do amended them both.

A New Garden Experiment

26 July, 2012 Reply

My System Doesn’t Work

I’ve made a decision. After spending the last two mornings rescuing my tomato plants from over-zealous bean plants I realized that my gardening has not been very successful in the past few years. This year everything started out great, but now, as the weather gets really hot, the gardens are looking miserable and the production that was so abundant earlier has stopped. Disease is setting in on many plants, and others are not producing much of anything.

Learning How To Communicate With Nature

Many years ago I purchased a book called Perelandra Garden Workshop by Machaelle Small Wright. At the time I was all excited about it, but the techniques seemed cumbersome and after working with it for a short time I dropped it, because I just didn’t have that many hours in the day.

I’m giving the book a second look. I’m going to give the techniques a try, a real try this time. However, I will probably try to find shortcuts to getting the information, as having to ask 100 questions to get the answer to one problems is still too time consuming. I have a lot of knowledge under my belt now, though. A lot of understanding about energy and how to work with it, so it should be a faster process.

Her technique involves working with all the energy spirits or devas that oversee an area. They know what is going on in the area, what the soil needs, what the plants need, where placement of plants will be most beneficial for the plants success, etc. Now, whether you believe in devas or nature spirits really doesn’t matter, because, in essence what you are doing is tapping into the energy field that nature resides on. That you can’t deny exists. Science has proven that we’re 99% energy. That the physical form that we see is not really solid, etc. So, what I’m going to do is start to work with the energy of the property we live on and get it balanced so that the plants and my family can flourish.

Right now I feel more like I’m on a battlefield and all I do is go from one skirmish to the next. If I had taken the time to connect with the energy of the garden, the tomato plants, and the bean plants before I allowed them in the same garden together I would have gotten a huge no from the tomato plants.

No Foresight Causes Disaster

Here’s how it unfolded for me. I planned to put the tomato plants in a certain garden, because you need to move them from year to year, so as not to allow disease to settle into the soil. So, you try not to plant them in the same place for three years. This has been a challenge for me, because we don’t have all our garden space finished and finding a garden that hasn’t had a tomato plant in it for three years can be a challenge. Anyway, I chose the garden, but had to clear it out of some major weeds. That took some time and during that time a bunch of volunteer bean plants came up. These beans did extremely well in our heat and humidity last year so I just left them. I planted the tomatoes amongst the small bean sprouts and waited to see what happened.

At first it seemed like a good match. They were growing at about the same rate and the beans were actually holding the tomatoes up. Then things started to turn south. I found that some of the bean plants were smothering the three hot pepper plants I had put in the garden, so I moved the beans to the outside edge of that part of the garden.

My poor tomatoes are devastated.

Time to try a new method of knowing what my plants need. This tomato was beautiful and healthy just a couple weeks ago. Now, because of damp conditions and the beans stopping the air movement it is just a twig with a couple tomatoes hanging on the end of them.

This last week I realized that I wasn’t seeing very many tomatoes on my plants and on closer inspection I realized that the beans were trying to make the tomatoes their trellis and they were in-fact now smothering the tomato plants.

Because of circumstances I wasn’t able to get to them until this week and in that one week disease set in and my tomato plants, which were huge and beautiful, are now a mass of black leaves, early blight has struck again. I was so careful not to water them from above this spring, but the leaves of the beans held moisture in around the tomato plant, which was a prescription for disaster.

So, for the past two days I’ve been hacking back bean plants until they are just around the edges of the entire garden and trying to salvage at least some of the tomato plants. I don’t know if I have, we’ll have to see how they fare, now that they are no longer buried.

I’ll do some testing to see if there is anything I can do to curtail the early blight and get the plants healthy again, but I fear that there’s not much that can be done this year.

So, instead of guessing and putting out fires over and over, I’m going to ask the land and the plants what they want and need and give them that. Hopefully then I can start to see healthy productive plants in all gardens every year.

I’ll keep you apprised with the progress and any modifications I do to Machaelle’s program to make it simpler to use.

How Do You Communicate With Nature?

If anyone out there has used Machaelle’s method I’d love to hear from you. Or maybe you have some other method of communicating with nature that you could recommend.

 

Garden Overflowing With Color

18 June, 2012 Reply
Hydrangeas freshly cut from my garden

It’s always delightful to bring a little bit your garden into your home. The hydrangea was just stunning this year. I had to bring some in to enjoy.

I’m fortunate. I have two sisters that love gardening as much as I do. We enjoying seeing and hearing about each others gardens. Each of us lives in a distinctly different climate: Washington state, North Carolina, and Germany. We’ve each enjoyed seeing what we can all grow in common and sometimes envying when something will grow for someone else, but not in our own climate. Our love of gardening was seeded by our mother. People used to pass our house and ask her who her landscaper was. She did it all herself, and it seems we have each inherited the gardener’s gene.

“Just wanted to share with you an email I wrote to them today. I was lamenting that I was missing being outdoors in absolutely perfect weather, because of a project that has hit its deadline. To console myself I took a few minutes on a break to wander the gardens and make note of what was in bloom…

This is turning out to be a banner year in the garden. All the vegetables are looking fantastic. I even picked my first cucumber a couple days ago! We’ll be munching yellow wax beans at any moment, as we finish off the spring harvest of sugar snap peas, broccoli, and lettuce. The tomatoes have buds all over them and look almost like miniature trees their stems are so stout this year. A far cry from the sickly plants I raised last year. I learned my lesson about overhead watering and tomatoes. I already have the drip hose in place, but have only had to use it twice, as we’ve had ample rain. Of course we’re still harvesting our quarter-sized blueberries and will be for the rest of this month. Unfortunately the critters found the marionberries so we might not get hardly any this year. They’re munching them before they are ripe enough for us to eat! Next year will have the berries all in place, penned in and we’ll have critter deterrents in place, so that we get to eat them.

Cosmos and anise hyssop growing in my front garden.

It’s always great when you find a new color and texture combination you like. I really like the cosmos with the anise hyssop. Do you?

I’m eagerly anticipating the harvest of peaches, but they just don’t seem to be growing! Ack! I think the cool weather has slowed them down a bit, as we harvested the few we had by this time last year. Much less bug damage this year, so I think that using neem is the way to go. I still want to try the Surround clay spray, as they say neem can’t be used in hot weather. The oil heats up in the sun and bakes the plant or fruits, but we’ve not had any problems so far this year.

The flowering plants are truly amazing this year. I have 37 different varieties of plants blooming in my garden right now. The spring and early summer bloomers are still at it, because of the cooler than normal temperatures, and the mid-summer bloomers are already having at it. It is a riot of color and textures. I’ve not had mature gardens like this before so it’s really a treat.

Right now I have 15 annuals in bloom; Impatiens, vinca, dianthus, pentas, pansies, victoria blue salvia (is an annual, but comes back almost every year, so the plants are getting huge), lantana, clown flower (1st blossom today, grown from seed), zinnia (Old Mexico volunteer), bachelor buttons (also volunteers, one in the middle of the lawn), petunias, cosmos (more volunteers), red salvia (they call it sage here), cherry pink zinnia. I have many volunteer moss roses and cockscomb plants, but they haven’t started blooming yet, just about to though.

Yellow and peach daylilies bloom profusely, while the shasta daisies peak over the top.

Yellow and peach daylilies bloom profusely, while the shasta daisies peak over the top.

The perennials include gladiolus (quickly becoming a favorite, even if I do have to dig them every year), hydrangea, chrysanthemums (thought they were supposed to bloom in the fall), catnip, carnations (started these from seed last year, blooming for the first time this year), snapdragons (same as the carnations) pincushion flower (x2), deep red lily, hollyhocks (were supposed to be doubles, but are singles (from seed), coreopsis (a dwarf variety & moonbeam), anise hyssop (which the bees adore, also from seed), blue salvia, day lilies (even the ones I transplanted are blooming), stokesia, ice plant, asters (another I thought was supposed to bloom in fall), bee balm, loosestrife (a non-invasive variety, it has stayed put in one nice clump and is so beautiful and the bees and hummingbirds love it), gallardia (2 varieties), shasta daisy, echinacea, and I think the hostas out back might has started to bloom, they had big buds on them, but haven’t been to the woodland garden today.

One of the greatest things about the garden is that I don’t think I paid more than $2.50 for more than just a few plants. They are either grown from seed, or I bought them from the distressed section of the local big box stores. Oh, I did buy some of the annuals, but the lady up the street is still only charging $1.25 for 4 plants, what a bargain.

Yesterday I had to do a sad job. I finally dug up the dead Colorado Blue Spruce that unexpectedly died this winter. I had grown it from a seedling. It was probably about 15 years old, but only about 3′ tall, because it had been in a pot most of its life. A couple years ago I finally got it in the ground and it was growing by leaps and bounds. Suddenly the ends turned brown and within a month it was a complete goner. I replaced it with a Japanese maple that was given to me as a seedling. Hopefully it will do well in the space. I see them all over town, and these were dug up from underneath someone’s huge tree, so we’ll see. I put lots of leaf mulch in the gigantic hole I dug, as I’ve been told they hate clay. I had to wait to remove the dead tree until the daffodils had died back sufficiently. It is a relief to have it removed, as it was a sad reminder, its barren skeleton sticking out of the middle of the yard.

I have a bit more planting to do, especially in the woodland garden, then it’ll be on to the roof on the back deck. I’m almost finished painting all the wood, so this next week we can start putting it up. I think I’m going to be able to convince Sarvasri to put on a metal roof. We can do the whole thing for less than $90 and it would be fairly permanent. He was wanting canvas, but it would cost up about half what the permanent roof would and it would have to be replaced every few years.

Hope you two are enjoying your gardens as much as I am this year.”

Woodland Fairyland

10 June, 2012 Reply
Entrance to Our Secret Garden

From the moment we owned the property I saw a secret entrance to a woodland garden.

From the moment we bought our property I knew I wanted to have a woodland garden. About 1/4 acre of our 1 acre lot is covered by native forest. There is a clump of massive tulip poplars and two massive oak trees that anchor the woodland area. Most of the other trees are quite small and can easily be removed by a lopper. Only a few are large enough to actually need a saw.

The first spring we were here I was delighted to find that we have two native dogwoods and a few native flowering shrubs. I made note of where they were so that I wouldn’t remove them by accident.

A small pile of garbage found in the woodland while cleaning it up.

The property had been used as a dumping ground by previous owners. They didn’t know what a gem they had.

It wasn’t until last summer that I finally got a chance to start cleaning things out and it was a good thing I did. The largest dogwood had been overtaken by wild grapevines and was near death. I pulled as much of the grapevine out of the tree as I could. Unfortunately I ended up covered in chigger bites. They had showered down on me while I was pulling down the vines. The nearly microscopic critters are next to impossible to detect, but their after-affects are visible for days or weeks!

I then put off pulling down anything else until the chiggers had died off due to cold weather. This spring I went back into the woodlands and  cut down all the tiny seedling trees in an area big enough for our 12’ screened gazebo. My husband helped me with the couple of bigger trees. Then we got busy with other pressing issues.

First we had to clear out a place to put our gazebo.

Lots of small trees needed to be removed to make room for our gazebo and plantings.

This weekend I finally took the time to dig up all the hostas and ferns I had planted across the front of the property when we moved in. From what I could determine when we first moved in the front of the house was nearly due north and would be in the shade. The reality, however, was that sets NW and heavy on the west, so in the afternoon it sits in blazing sun for the summer months, not the place for hostas and ferns.

Even in less than perfect location the hostas and ferns had grown massively and it took both my husband and myself to dig them out with a lot of grunting and sweating, but no swear words! I could only haul two at a time in my little garden cart! Away I went with my treasure to the back of the house and my dreamed of woodland garden.

Hostas and ferns dug and ready for separating and replanting.

These massive clumps were divided and planted throughout the woodland area.

I began cutting the huge clumps in to smaller pieces so that I could place them all over the area we’d cleaned out.

Once a manageable size I placed them all over the path and around the area where we’ll put the deck for the gazebo. Then I started to try and plant them. OMG, the soil was as hard as a rock and filled with big thick roots! To top it all off I had hurt my back digging them out, so couldn’t dig with much power. Lucky for me my husband put on his superman outfit (not literally) and dug out all but three or four of the plants holes. He’s not a macho-man, but he sure put on a macho show today.

Ferns and hostas replace trash and beer bottles.

Hostas and ferns replaced trash and beer bottles.

We managed to get all the plants in the ground and well watered. We’re both delighted with how it looks and the plants are not even well established. However, I moved one plant there earlier this year and it is now full sized and looking better than it ever did in the front garden. I recommend you stand back, because I expect to have a lush woodland garden quicker than you can blink your eye. Of course, since I just moved them I will have to watch them carefully and water them regularly until they get a good root system established.

Friendly gnome has already moved into our woodland hideaway.

Look who showed up! A woodland gnome already settling into his new home!

During this next week I’ll give them a rich fertilizer treatment with nutrients and a root booster (all organic and vegan no less), and then top them off with some leaf compost. I just needed to call it a day and take care of my poor, aching back. However, not before I took a few snaps of the dramatic change. Who wouldn’t want to wander back here now?

When Things Finally Start To Come Together

31 May, 2012 Reply

Whew! I didn’t think it would ever look like our yard was going to come together. I’ve been working on it for two years and it looked like I’d done almost nothing, but this year, year three, things are finally starting to come together.

Plants are maturing, looking really stunning this year; our permanent crop plants are producing heavily; we got most of the fruit trees in for our little orchard. So the yard finally doesn’t look like an orphan.

My asiatic lily blooms for the first time.

An asiatic lily, purchased after it had bloomed last summer, rewards me with many blossoms this year.

There are some notable exceptions. One of the biggest is a large autumn olive almost in front of the door. We planned to move it this spring, but only got to the maple tree before it got too hot. So, it’s earmarked for a move immediately after the temperatures begin to cool this fall.

All my seedlings are looking terrific this year. Last year, almost from the get-go, my vegetable garden looked terrible. None of the plants produced much; my summer squash only produced male blossoms; the tomatoes got early blight, so even though they produced some tomatoes, they looked terrible.

My decision to not expand, until I have what’s already in the ground under control, was a good one. Oh, I’ll tell you I’ve been tempted sometimes to start the new perennial garden I want out front, or to start new rows for the blackberries and marionberries, but I’m holding off.

So far, with the help of my husband, we’ve managed to build a new, easily removed structure around the blueberries. This is keeping the birds at bay. Of course they holler at us every time we go outside. They are not happy that they can’t munch on all the berries before we get any.

We got 10 more fruit trees planted and just this weekend started to put down weed barrier around them and the berry bushes.

I managed to get several of the vegetable beds reworked with more amendments and the plants are doing terrific because of it.

Last we’ve started work on building a roof over the back deck, so we can sit outside and not get baked. It faces mostly south and is unbearably hot even in the early morning, so a roof will help cool it down so we can enjoy breakfast outside.

The herb garden is almost finished. Hopefully tomorrow we’ll bring over the loads of compost to fill it up and then this weekend we’ll work on the deck and I’ll move the herbs to their new home. Just in time to till up where they were and put in the last of the summer seeds.

Wish I’d taken before and after pictures, but I’ve been so busy just trying to keep ahead of everything I didn’t. From this point on we can at least show you what we’ve done, maybe even how to do it yourself.

So our little Avalon is finally starting to come together.

Preparing For The New Year And New Focus

2 January, 2012 Reply

Remodeling/redecorating both inside and out.

I’ve been contemplating what I want to start including in my blog for the new year. I’m thinking of doing a series of videos on my redecorating/remodel of the extra bedroom. That will give me the opportunity to hone my video skills, which I’ve not used for a while, and get some really good information out to people wanting to spruce up a room.

In looking at the schedule for the coming year, here are a few of the things on my to-do list: remodel/redecorating completed for rest of house; greenhouse up and functioning; storage buildings in place; deck completed; all garden borders in place on complete gardens; complete front yard gardens; design and install front porch/patio.

That’s a lot to do while still maintaining my regular schedule for both the house and yard. I’ll still need to prepare the gardens for this next season, plant seeds, weeding, trimming, etc.. In the house I still have to clean and maintain all the completed rooms, while creating havoc during redecorating/remodeling. I already know what kind of mess is created when you start to work on a room, so I know what I’m up against.

All this while marketing two businesses that are in their infancy and maintaining a reasonable relationship with my hubby. It’s going to be a very interesting year, with lots of growth potential, that’s for sure. Hope you’ll come along for the ride. The one thing I promise is to never sugar coat anything. I learned the hard way, from watching all kinds of redecorating/remodeling shows on TV that it’s not as easy as they make it look. There are all kinds of problems that crop up for your particular situation and how those are solved is what is worth its weight in gold. That’s what I’ll focus on, giving you the gold.

Elegant Pools And Ponds

24 December, 2011 Reply

This beautiful iridescent tile would certainly create a fairyland effect at night.

Now that the gardening season has come to a close for most of the United States, we can all start making plans for improvements for the coming season. Many of us may be considering a water feature for our yard. Pools and ponds are outdoor features that add a lot of value to your property, not to mention the enjoyment they bring.

There are a lot of different styles to choose from as well. You can go totally natural, to highly sophisticated, to renaissance elegance, creating just the mood you want.

On a home improvement show I saw an ornate glass tile scene added to the bottom of a newly installed in-ground pool. The owner’s house was two stories high and when you looked from the upper story you could see an ocean-like bottom complete with dolphins and whales, fish and anemones.

Not all of us desire, or can afford, to go that ornate. The addition of glass tiles around the border of either a pool or pond can add a more subtle touch of elegance. Add underwater lights and you have a sparkling fairyland at night. It really looks and feels magical.

Glass mosaic tilecan be used in other areas, as well. They can be added to an outdoor sink area, cooking areas, in the base of a fountain, even added to a brick or stucco wall with solar night lighting highlighting them. They can give you that extra touch of elegance you’re looking for.

For those wanting a more natural look, obviously buying a load of rocks and stones will work for a pond, but now they even have stone mosaic tiles for your pool! For a more sophisticated, modern look you might want to consider metallic mosaic tile. They would look great not only in a pool, but as a backsplash for a cook-out area.

So, during the snowy winter months, when your yard is asleep, you can be creating exciting new additions for the spring. You can get everything in order, including contractors and supplies, so that you can jump into it quickly and easily when the warm weather returns.

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