I can’t hear anything and other news

I am now strep throat free! Wah-hoo! The antibiotics did their thang and as of Thursday my throat was no longer planning my slow painful death. However, my each ache is still alive and kicking. I went to the doctor on Friday to see what could be done, and the verdict is not a whole heck of a lot. The antibiotics for the strep will wipe out the infection for my ear as well, but it will take over a month for all the fluid to drain and my hearing to go back to normal. Sigh. At least it is just in one ear and not both…

Anyway, on Saturday Bill and I hung out with some friends of ours who had been stationed in Alabama for the last 2 years, but have now been transferred to Fort Lewis. Yay! We also got to meet their adorable baby girl, who I believe is 7 months old today. She is super cute… but, I didn’t bring my camera so no towhead baby photos for you.

Today we worked out in the yard for a bit. We started by planting two new (free!) rhododendrons in the back yard. My classroom assistant’s daughter just bought a house  these had recently been put in her front yard (I’m thinking the previous owners were trying to boost curb appeal.). Anyway, she was not a fan of these two rhododendrons, so they made their way to our house. If I was buying them myself I probably would have gone with another color, but free is free and I am not one to look a gift horse in the mouth. You see, they are a deep red, which I think is very pretty, but I have been sorta-kinda planning on making my garden colors be purples, pinks, and yellows. That being said, I already have a bunch of red in the front garden with the anemones, tulips, and what not. Who knows if I will be able to stick to a color scheme in the garden or not. I’m assuming that they won’t really bloom a ton this year since they were transplanted in the middle of flowering. We planted them underneath a bunch of low hanging crisscrossing power lines. Ah, the joys of having a transformer behind your house. We want to eventually landscape the back yard and add some trees and more perennial flowering bushes, but we will have to plan according to the wires. We figured the rhododendrons would work well under the lower lines since with time they can get pretty large, but never tall enough that they would cause issues with the power lines.

I also planted the rest of the seed packs I had laying around the house. Some of them were expired by a year (or more!), so it is even more of a crap shoot than usual as to if anything will actually grow. I put some petunia seeds (not expired) along with some lobelia seeds (expired) into containers to give some color to the back yard this year. Of course at the moment they are just look like pots filled with dirt, but keep your fingers crossed that they will be bursting with pink and purple petunias before too long!

We also put in 2 ferns and 2 hosta bulbs in the back yard. Both are shade loving plants, and we really don’t have much shade (what with the lack of trees and all), but we put them underneath our already established (possibly original to the house?)rhododendrons, so hopefully it will be shady enough for them to thrive. I also sprinkled some seeds around them so who knows what will happen.

The rest of my (expired) seed packs were strewn about the front yard, in the new-ish planting strip and in the old flower patch. The planting strips are a thing of mystery. One side is has a gazillion starts in it and I am very perplexed as to what they all are. Some are obviously the seeds and bulbs I put there, but the majority of them are all the same mystery plant and I am dumbfounded as to what that might be...  We decided to let them be and see what happens. I might be that in the not so distant future I will have a ton of weeding to do, but hopefully not and they turn out to be some gorgeous flower.

The other side looks more like what we were expecting. Some things are making their way up, but mostly it still just looks like a dirt strip. I’m fairly confident that it will look pretty and colorful this summer. I added a few more packs of seeds though, just for good measure.I was happy to see that our Spanish lavender which we planted last year has come back. It is looking full and healthy and the bees are buzzing with delight. Our (formerly) mysterious irises are also in bloom. Last year there was a few leaves, but no flowers. For some reason the majority of the irises were covered with a big old rock when we moved in. Of course, we moved that bad boy out of there last year, but of course by then it was too late for the irises to shoot up any buds. So, I have been waiting and waiting to see that color our irises would turn out to be. I was really hoping they wouldn’t turn out to be a hideous brown color (that my mom had in our yard when I was growing up. Seriously, mom, what was up with that?). Well, as luck would have it they are not hideous at all! In fact they are a very pretty light blue-violet. And they smell delightful.

The last of the planting of the day was some cute pink petunias I picked up while grocery shopping. I know the containers are not very exciting. And, I know, you can see dirt smudges on them. But, my plan  is the petunias will get so big that you won’t even be able to see the pots at all! Good plan, huh?

Spring Break- Day 1 Recap

Which also may end up being known as “The Only Day of Spring Break that it didn’t Rain”… but, lets hope not.

My first ‘project’ Saturday morning was removing some kitchen cabinet doors. I was suppose to be doing the dishes, but I quickly lost focus from the task at hand and took off cabinet doors instead. I felt pretty Dunphy-esque during the whole escapade. I wanted to include just a clip from this week’s show with Phil being all distracted and whatnot. However, I couldn’t find just a clip… So, here is the whole episode!  And, never mind. Hulu is awesome and you can create your own custom clips!  Of course, the entire show is hilarious and I fully recommend viewing it in its entirety. I’m just assuming that you already know how awesome it is and, therefore, just need the clip that is actually relevant to my topic.

Anyway, here are the kitchen cabinets sans-doors. I think they will look really nice once we paint them and add the corbels. We like the look so much we actually want to take off another two doors, but that would require us to rearrange where things are stored, because no one needs to have a open air view of our mess of tea bags and medicine. Or, we could just get some cute little baskets and throw all that crud in there. That way it would at least look organized.  P.S. Lets pretend that I actually cleaned off the counter and arranged the dishes to look all pretty like. Oh, and, that my camera’s battery wasn’t about to die and that I was able to create some decent lighting. Ah, it looks much better now. Pretending is so much fun.

Anywho, the majority of the day was spent working on our front yard. You remember how it looked at the end of last weekend, right? A little something like this: Well, after hours of manual labor it now looks a little something like this: Ooh la la! We finished digging up the gravel and corroded plastic. Then we added Miracle Grow Garden Soil and and covered that with a layer of Tagro that was left over from tree planting. We got the little wooden picket fencing at Lowe’s. So far we have installed 3 sets and we have another 2 to add to the sides to bring it even with the start of the house. That will have to wait until we rip up the rest of the sod (and by ‘sod’ I mean moss with weeds and the occasional clump of grass). We did make a discovery which might just make it that much easier to de-sod the front yard. At least part (if not all?) of the grass is sitting on top of… plastic! That is right, folks, more plastic! This time it is heavy duty thick plastic sheeting. The topsoil and grass is only a few inches thick. Potentially this will make it very easy to rip up the sod in chunks and get rid of the plastic as well. Keep your fingers crossed!

I also planted a bunch of bulbs and seeds into our new garden patches. Hopefully all the rain this week will get those little guys a sowing and we will have bunches of pretty flowers in no time! I put in 2 peonies (which I looooove, but Bill does not), 25 freesias (go, fragrance, go!), and 2 astilbe (which I had never heard of before, but the picture on the package looked pretty). I also tossed in too many seed packs to list. We shall see how many actually make it. I am very lazy with the vast majority of my seeds. I know I should start them first in a little well kept and tended green house and only transplant them outdoors after they are yay high, but I don’t. Hell, I don’t know if what I do even counts as planting. I basically just sprinkle them around and then after all the packs are empty I go through and mix up the soil with my hands. I figure that is pretty damn close to 1/8” or 1/4” worth of soil cover. Good enough. I hope. It sure will be pretty if even a quarter of these grow and bloom!

I also added some cute, cheery, pink zonal geraniums to the two blue planters that sit on our front steps. I will fill them later with more color from petunias and whatnot that I actually will sow in my little portable greenhouse, but until that day comes they needed at least a little pop of color to stop them from looking so dang sad and dilapidated. Here is the final look at the fruits of this weekend’s labor. We hope that the fencing will do a better job of defining ‘our’ space. And hopefully people will get the hint to not have their dogs poop in there. Or, at minimum, if they do to freakin’ pick it up!

 

Happy Spring!

Today is the official first day of Spring and mother nature did not disappoint. It was a perfectly sunny day. We worked outside for a good chunk of the day. We even saw a Bald Eagle soaring overhead. Bill mowed the lawn. I planted 3 begonia bulbs and 9 dahlia bulbs. Last summer I put in 4 or 5 dahlias, but I’m not sure if they are going to come back. Our winter was pretty mild, so I am really hoping they were hardy enough to make it. Check out our cute new bird bath dog water dish. We bought it with the best of intentions for our backyard birds, alas, it happens to be at the perfect height for Ralph to lap up all the water. Oh well, it is still really cute and cheery. This the ranunculus I planted last week. It is doing well, with a bunch of buds in the works. Success. Here is the azalea I planted. All the beautiful blooms that were on it when I bought it are dead and there are no new buds looking to take their place. Fail. Hopefully it will be healthy enough and bloom next year. And here is one of the aforementioned anemones. There are a bunch more coming up. Success.

Together we worked on digging up the gravel strip that lined our front yard. Seriously, why the hell would you put gravel there? Why?!? Isn’t it lovely? Why put in a garden or even shrubbery when you can have gravel? Ugh. So it turned out that underneath the gravel was a layer of plastic. There were two types of plastic: brown and black. The brown plastic was thicker and much easier to pull up. The black plastic was pretty flimsy and a lot of weeds had broken through (as evidenced in the photo).Ah, brown plastic. You made my job that much easier.   Black plastic, you suck.

We ended up digging up about 2/3 of the strip. We didn’t finish because we went to help plant the last 3 trees from the city: 2 Jacquemont Birches and one Red Maple. If you are thinking about planting trees yourself, let me make a recommendation. Do NOT get a Red Maple. Their root balls come straight from the devil. They have been far and away the worst to plant. We were able to plant both of the birches from start to finish, meanwhile we were barely half way into picking apart the maple’s root ball. Blurg.

Maybe we will finish digging up the gravel tomorrow, well, at least the digging up the bulk of it. We need to go buy some rakes to get the last loose pieces. We will also need the mini white picket fencing we want to put in. Of course, we also need to get some soil and mulch to fill in the now gravel-less pit. Once that is done I can really start going wild with planting seeds. Wah-hoo!

 

Trees!

As I mentioned in Spring Cleaning, our block filled out a request to get trees from the city to put in our planting strip (the area between the sidewalk and the street). Well, the trees (15 in all) were delivered on Thursday and we had a neighborhood planting on Saturday. We had six varieties delivered: Red Maple, Sugar Maple, Oregon White Oak, Golden Locust, Silver Linden, and Jacquemont Birch. Of course, there are already quite a few trees on the block to add to species diversity such as redbuds, holly, some other ancient (and gigantic) maples, and some other trees whose names escape me.

The trees were a lot bigger than we were expecting. We had to attend a tree planting class the other weekend and the demo tree that was planted was maybe half the height of the trees we received. The Red Maples were the tallest by far, but all the trees were surprisingly substantial.

It was a lot of hard work planting and, who-doggy, was my upper body sore later that night. The hardest part, by far, was cleaning off the root ball and making sure the roots were not tangled around each other. We learned at the planting class that if you plant the tree as is from the container the roots may not know that they out of the container and will continue to wrap around instead of traveling out and creating a supportive structure. In 10-20 years the tree could just- BOOM- topple over one day because the roots had kept that original restrictive ball.  

Here are the roots of our Silver Linden after some extensive work.  We had to cut away some of the roots that were too tangled;  that is okay though, because the cuts will support new growth.

 Here is the Silver Linden all planted and ready to grow. One day it will look like this:

We also planted a Jacquemont Birch on our strip. Our first choice was a Chinese Paper Birch, but I guess they were not able to get one so we wound up with our alternate, the Jacquemont.  

Here I am working on the birch’s root ball while Bill puts the finishing touches on the hole. The birch’s roots were much easier to seperate than the linden because the birch had been kept in a bag container that had quite a bit more give and flexibility than the regular plastic container.  

It will be so nice when the trees have matured a bit. We now no longer have a treeless lot! So exciting. Now we will just have to go and purchase trees for ourselves to plan in our front, back, and side yard.

All in all our neighbors planted 8 trees on Saturday. We have 7 more still sitting in our side yard waiting to be planted… This was a nice neighborhood activity which will benefit us all for years to come.

It sure will be lovely as our trees grow and one day we will have a gorgeous tree lined street like the image above.

Spring Cleaning

…except outside.

Monday was President’s Day so the hubby and I had a day off together, which is somewhat of a rare thing. We decided to celebrate by getting some yard work done together! Wah-hoo, we live life on the edge. Anyway,  it was pretty nice to get outside and make a dent (albeit a small one) on our front yard. We also got a bonus on our cleaning powers, because while we were cleaning up outside out housekeepers were doing our floors and bathrooms. And, let me say, hiring a housekeeper has been my favorite extravagance by far. It is just so nice to have those basic cleaning issues taken care of for us on a biweekly basis. If you can swing it I would highly suggest looking into getting someone to clean… but maybe that is just because I hate to clean. Hmmm…

Anyway this is what our front yard looked like when we started:

I think the hardest part about gardening at this point in my life is that I am not sure what is a weed and what I am suppose to out there saving.  This is aggravated because this is our first (early) spring (late winter?) in our house.  I know what some of the foliage it, but only if I planted it last summer. The ones I knew were the easy part; those I was just able to trim away the old growth and be excited by the new sprouts shooting forth.  I also planted a bunch of bulbs (crocuses, tulips, daffodils, and what not) last fall and it is fun to see those start to come up.

So far the only thing to bloom are the crocuses, but I am looking forward to the rest, especially because I don’t keep track of things all that well and cannot remember how many bulbs I planted, or all the varieties, or colors, or…

Bill and I couldn’t decided what all should be pulled up, so I just stuck to things I new for certain were weeds. And, let me tell you, there were more than a few of those to occupy my time. I also planted a bunch of seeds I had left over from last year.  I know it is a little early for seeds, but our winter has been so mild I am just crossing my fingers that it doesn't freeze and kill all my seeds. Plus, by planting all of my old seeds I know feel totally justified buying new seeds. I also need to set up my little portable greenhouse and get impatiens started for my blooming bags.

Here’s hoping at least a few of the seeds make it and I get to see at least one representative of all these pretty blooms this summer.

Meanwhile, while I was toiling away on the weeds and the seeds, Bill was busy taking out a monstrous and hideous shrub. I have no idea what type of shrub it is, some people have offered their guesses but never with much conviction. One of neighbors has also been battling hers for the last few years and was commiserating with us over the long hard battle. This shrub is obviously in it for the long haul. When we first bought the house last May we chopped down about half of the height and cut back the half closest to the house (because it was getting uncomfortably close).  However, the shrub was not to be deterred! It sent out tons of new branches from its base. Sigh, so this year we decided we would try to bring it down once and for all. Bill ended up braking a new Gerber handsaw on it, as well as bending our super duty loppers. We filled two lawn waste containers with the branches and leaves, and have enough left over to fill them again.

Here is Bill working away. And here is the massive stump that was left behind. I can’t even imagine how large this plant would be if it had never been trimmed. I am guessing it has been here since the beginning (i.e. 105 years). When we were first looking at buying the house we went down to the local library to do some research and found a photo of the house in 1920 when it went up for sale the first time. I need to track that down and see if the shrub is in fact visible at that point, and how big it is. Anyway, the stump:

That entire mass is all stump. Don’t be fooled by what appears to be dirt, it is still stump (just with a fine dusting of dirt and old leaves). I have no idea how we are going to get rid of that mess. I would be happy if we could get it shaved down to a level area and then I could just plunk down a massive outdoor planter and add some dimension to our front yard. There is another stump a couple yards back that is already flat that I definitely will be putting a planter on.  We have lots of grand plans for our front yard (Hell, we have grand plans for every inch of our house).

The forthcoming improvement is trees on our planting strip. Our neighborhood is taking advantage of an awesome program here in Tacoma where the city will supply free trees for our planting strips. We ended up getting something like 10 houses to participate for a total of 18 trees. We attended a tree planting workshop put on by the city last weekend and the trees are going to be delivered at the end of this month.

Our other major plan for our front yard this summer is putting up a fence. A cute little white picket fence to be exact. That way we should cut back on the neighborhood dogs who poop in our yard (and their owners who do NOT pick up after them). Plus, we would like to get rid off all of our lawn and mulch and landscape it. Dream big!

Here is what our yard looked like once we gave in for the day. It might not appear all that different, but give it a few months and the fruits of our labor will become apparent (I hope!).

 And to put it all into perspective here is the whole house shot.

What about all you out there? What kind of gardening and/or yard work are you up to? Or what do you hope to accomplish?