Weekend photos

A few photos of the busy weekend!

The deck certainly changes the view of the house!

Work begins on the North wall of the addition.  The door is being removed and replaced with a window.

As you can see, this was originally a window and someone replaced it with the door (badly installed!). So we are actually restoring this to the way it was.

 Framing goes in- this is no longer a door!

The window opening takes shape.

My discount blackberries will probably need watered tomorrow.  We had a thunderstorm roll through about 6 am. The lightning flashed and the thunder rolled. Sadly, we got a disappointing 0.08 inches of rain.  sigh....

The lineup of ferns.  Justine and I made a run to the grocery store today since she had friends over this afternoon.  I noticed that they had just marked down all the garden center stuff to 50% off!  So, of course, I had to look.  I picked up two new ferns since we'll soon be able to work on the shade garden.

I also picked up this quite healthy looking forsythia bush for $8.  It is about 3 feet tall!

I picked up this hydrangea last week, when the garden center stuff was only 25% off.  I think it's lovely.  And there weren't any left so good thing I got it when I did.

As well as this one.  I've never actually owned a hydrangea before.  But they will go into that northwest corner where the shade garden will be.  Both of these are types that if we change the pH of the soil they will change color.

The herb spiral is filling out.  You can also see that we need to mow.  The grass hasn't grown much with the dry weather but the clover is going wild.

And the window is in!  This is just a temporary installation.  It will come back out tomorrow. The siding can't be removed until the deck is gone and with the deck there, there has been so much water damage to the siding (and the deck itself and the underlying sheathing) that the project was bigger than could be completed in a single day.  Tomorrow, V will need to go pick up three new sheets of siding panels to replace the damaged ones and then he and the children will finish the wall.  The next few days look to be great weather for something like this but toward the end of the week we are forecast to have temps into the 100's so V wants to get this finished while it is still cool (it was near 90 today! but tomorrow is forecast only into the low 80's)
This will be another long week.  We've got no forecast rain in sight and with hot, hot, hot temps I'll have to water the garden.  I'm now looking at a 6 day stretch of work at the hospital so I'll not have lots of time at home.  I was hoping to get my fall broccoli started today but it didn't happen.  Oh well, there's always tomorrow.

Muddy Monday

I got to spend another afternoon digging in the dirt- some of it was fun- others- not so much.  I got to plant some flowers in hanging baskets and started digging the trench for the border for the new flower bed along the South side of the house.  And V and I did some digging that was deck related as well.

The South flower bed seems to be taking forever to come together.  Saturday, I worked to rip out all the old landscaping fabric that had been put in there.  We think that it was either someone's failed attempt at drainage control or just lame-o landscaping. Anywhere, there was a layer of old landscaping cloth, topped with a few inches of sand, followed by gravel.  This, of course has been mixed in with all sorts of stuff over the past who knows how many years and was just awful.  But, the fabric has been removed and several bushels of compost, peat and topsoil have been dug into the sand mix.   Today, when on a run to the home store, I picked up some edging that will be going in next.  I would have worked on it more but I discovered a nest of very unhappy ants at about the same time V needed me for deck work so I stopped to let the ants calm down.   If the weather holds, hopefully we can finish both the flower bed and the deck this week.

This morning, while waiting for it to dry off outside I was catching up on all the household stuff I had been neglecting while playing in the dirt (read laundry and kitchen cleaning!)  Now I'm a bit more back on track with all of that and can refocus for the week.

The weather has been bizarre.  We were so dry for so long and now we have had nearly 7 inches of rain in the past 2 weeks.  It has been too wet to get into the garden for much so the weeds are really taking off.  I desperately need to weed my potatoes, kale and lettuce. Yesterday,  I think we hit 80 degrees.  Today, we barely made 70.  But at least the sun was shining and we only got 0.15 inches of rain overnight.  The forecast for the next few days looks dry so I'll keep my fingers crossed.

But I'm tired.  All this digging over the last three days has left me weary.  And I've got a huge bruise on my right arm that I'm not sure how I got....  

The next two weeks will be a blur.  This week we've got 2 band concerts- K12 tomorrow night and I14 on Wednesday.  I work all day Saturday, Sunday the 13th is the plant sale and I've got a student starting with me on the 14th.  That evening, we've got the Senior Recognition Ceremony, the 15th is J17's birthday and then it's wild and crazy cooking and cleaning time for the party on the 19th.  I'll be checking in regularly but I can't promise how often I'll be posting.

Early Mother's Day and a few more photos

I got an early Mother's Day gift today.  And I got to spend more time digging in the dirt.  What better day could I have.

V and I were talking about how exposed the deck is to the highway so we wanted to make a living screen to shield us from the road.  So, today, we went off and he bought me a bunch of lilacs.  I LOVE lilacs.  At our old house we had a huge lilac hedge with three varieties intermingled.  Here, we have one old fashioned purple lilac- which I love, but we just had the one.  Until today!

 I got 5 lovely little lilac plants!

 One is still blooming- This is Sensation.  Purple flowers with white edges.
I also got: Ellen Wilmott- double white flowers; Charles Joly- double magenta flowers; James MacFarlane- single pink flowers; and a "Bloomerang" reblooming lilac.  I14 helped me plant them all this afternoon in a lovely arc along the hillside.  We are also hoping to add more things into that planting area so we don't have to mow that slope.  This is the area where the old septic tank was located- it was already on a hillside and it has sunk as the soil settled and is now quite steep and dangerous to mow.
A few more photos:

 The comfrey is blooming and attracting bees.  This lady was busily buzzing around for several minutes and it was fun to watch her.

 The hot pink peony has opened.  It went from fairly tight bud to this in just a day.  The pale pink ones are opening slowly but then they are much fuller flowers.
And finally, my favorite photo of J17 from pre-prom last night:

Her dress almost matches the shade of her eyes.  If you look really closely, you can see the detail stitching she put on the tie ends- a little decorative leaf motif.  Ok- It's a mom thing but I'm really proud of her and think she's absolutely beautiful.  She had a lovely time out together with her friends.  14 of them went out to dinner together and to the dance and party after.  

Tomorrow I've got my day off so if the weather holds we'll be decking it!

A pile of dirt!

I was playing in the dirt today.  I made a big pile of dirt.  4 wheelbarrow loads of the stuff.  We're slowly whittling down the big dirt pile they left for us when they replaced the septic system.  We've got a few places to fill in the yard since it settled more over the winter again and we still need to move more to backfill behind the retaining walls.  But today, I moved dirt for my project.

This is the beginning of my herb spiral.  A pile of dirt on a 5 foot circle of layered newspapers to block the grass.
Hopefully tomorrow I will go pick up the bricks to construct the spiral.  I'm pretty excited about this project.  It has been on my list since we moved.  And I've got little plants on order to arrive in May so I'd better get it done.

 I think what took me longest to decide was where to put it. It is on the southeast corner of the house near the iris bed and one of the roses.  Not too far from the house from either the front porch or the deck.  Oosh, you can see how bad our lawn is in this photo!!
And while I was out working there.  I decided I need to do something with another area that has been sorely neglected:

The south wall.  Some previous owner's idea of landscaping was to put down landscaping fabric and gravel.  So far the only thing I've got planted in there is a clematis.  But that space is crying out for some edging, topsoil and plants... and the eradication of the masses of Creeping Charlie that are threatening to take over the world.  Let's see how I do before J17's party in mid May....