Category Archives: Gardens

Renovation Journal 4/18-4/22

4/18- The goal for today is to move this heater:

that we didn’t even want (it was an FHA requirement, and lucky for us, it’s resemblance to a hand drier puts one in mind of a public restroom, which was obviously just what we were going for) to this wall:

since it turns out the first wall is the only one that bunk beds fit on without obscuring access to doors or windows.

I’m ready for pretty progress.  I’m sick of accomplishments that look like this:

I’m also cranky because this is the one and only room that I thought I was completely done painting.  bleh.

4/19- Fixed our broken bed today.  I wish all of our stuff would just stop breaking already so we can spend our time working on the house!

4/20- Went out to start digging up the back garden and ended up taking down the entire fence around it.  Which I had no intention of doing this year, but just spending some time inside made it clear that it was necessary.  It was broken in many, many places with rusty, pointy bits sticking out every which way.  A couple of hours later two deer wandered into the yard.  I’m glad I didn’t get around to putting any seedlings in the ground!

Before from afar:

before, up close:

This one was taken the next morning:

4/21- Did I mention I accidentally took down the arbor too?  I didn’t really mean to.  It just kind of came down of it’s own accord.  We started building a new arbor today.  Put in a few fence posts too.  I’m pretty sure that I found the rock that the entire universe rests on.  Did I mention that we decided to make the garden bigger too?  Right.  We’re doing that too now.  Hence the new fence posts.

In progress:

Steve sanded the boys’ floor.

4/22- While Steve was up putting the finish on Iain and Elijah’s floor, I took advantage of the gray and chilly, but bug free day to put in more fence posts.  I got the last two in just as the rain started.

freshly sanded:

finishing in progress:

I think it’s going to be beautiful!

It took all day, but the floor is officially finished!  Too late for photos though.  Next up will be trim.

This was my quick catch up post because I am going to try to participate in Week in the Life 2012.  We are so busy and I am so, so tired at the end of each and every day, that I really don’t know if I’ll be able to keep up, but I would like to try.  You can see my posts from last year’s Week in the Life starting here.  By the way, that house from day three?  The one near the pond with the rope swing?  That’s this house!  That’s how long it took us to actually get in here!

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Gardens, The Renovation Journal
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Around the Garden ~ early spring

the first bloom of the season in our yard

I have window sills full of potential.  And floors and counters and tables.  There are seedlings everywhere.  I got completely ahead of myself with the warm weather veggies and now I have no idea what I’m going to do with this big, thriving plants that can’t actually go in the ground for another two months yet!

I’m all set with starts, but less prepared for actually putting things in the ground.  There is just literally too much ground to cover.  There is so much space that needs cultivating and so much we (I) want to accomplish in this one short season.  There are all the things that we want to do because it’s a new to us space, but also we have made the difficult decision, after 10 years, to not return to our beloved CSA.  As wonderful as our experience there has been, and as dear to us all as that community is, it’s very far away now.  We talked about it and came to the conclusion that what we really need is more time all together as a family, without anywhere that we need to go, then spending one of the only days we have to be all together, running all over creation doing errands (the CSA being close to town means that it only makes sense to do all of the grocery shopping, etc, at the same time).  So instead we’ve decided to use the money that would have gone into our share to try to grow as much as we can at home.

So far this time together in the garden thing is not really working out.  We are so busy, after work and on the weekends, that poor Steve never seems to get any time out there.  Which is sad for us both as we’ve always enjoyed working side by side to create our gardens.  Things will get easier as we cross things off of our house work list and our schedule lets up considerably in June.  For now the garden is my domain.  With lots of little helpers eager to get their own small plots in order.


We are out there in the afternoons, after school work, nearly every day.

Oh, it is good to be surrounded by green growing things and have a garden of my very own to putter about in again!

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Food, Gardens, Kids, Life, The Renovation Journal
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Renovation Journal: Getting Sidetracked

3/23- Today we moved all of the flooring boards again. Twice. Then cut two more holes in the sub floor, one big and one small. The Wee Girl and I planted spinach and my Middlest Boy and I worked for about and hour by star and porch light at clearing more garden space.

We’ve been sidetracked again. This is the way that it always seems to go. Isn’t it amazing how interrelated the things within a house are? Much like in a family I think. If one person is suffering then the others will feel it in some way. An individual person can’t be altered without affecting others and an individual project can’t be undertaken without consideration for other projects. We started to paint, which lead to thoughts about the baseboards and their relation to the flooring, which lead to shifting our focus to flooring, which lead to considering what we should do before the floors go in. Like, for example, installing overhead lighting on the first floor. It’s much easier now just prying up some plywood and dropping them down from above then opening up the walls after the fact. Oh and those holes in the floor? One of them needed to be right under that nicely stacked pile of floor boards, hence the moving. But we are all ready now for the electricians to come next week.

I’ve been sidetracked as well by the weather, it’s kept me from progressing with my bathroom goals. This unseasonably warm weather has all of my perennials thinking it’s time to get growing in earnest. They are all squished together in pots (in some cases there are tubers and roots stacked on top of each other!) that get easily dried out in the sun. They need to be in the ground, but getting them in the ground means creating gardens from sod. And so I go out to dig instead of staying in to paint.

Before:

complete with a bit of snow and a sled

On Friday afternoon the kids and I went out and tore up the sod, double-dug an approximately 14′ x 9′ plot and planted 20 shrubs and perennials.

at work

well,

some of us anyway!

and “after”, only it’s not really after because this is just a start!

I have big plans for this area and this is just a little start, but it’s a start! Steve got home very late, just as a call came in from the septic guy that he could make it out Monday morning (yes, we finally did make that call!). Since our weekend was already booked, he went out to do his own share of digging, while I served banana splits on the porch for dinner, twenty minutes after bedtime. Only as it turns out, we weren’t exactly sure where the septic tank was, exactly. I joined in with the digging after coconut ice-cream, closely followed by Boy One and Boy Two. Let’s just say that a good portion of the soil in our back yard is *very well* aerated now. Which made me think that it’s been a long time since I’ve read any Chris Bohjalian (pick up Idyll Banter: Weekly Excursions to a Very Small Town and you’ll understand the connection). I think that’s something I shall have to remedy.

Update: the septic guy arrived Monday morning and announced that he had just pumped that tank a couple of months ago.  Presumably *after* our inspection.  doh!

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Gardens, The Renovation Journal
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making a vine wreath

I wanted a wreath for our front door this holiday season, but I didn’t want to buy one or even buy the supplies for one.  I wanted to work with what we had.  I considered our resources and mulled over my options for a bit before deciding to try my hand at making a vine wreath.

This meant a trip to the area where the forest and our yard meet.  I had help in the harvesting.

And our coming and going earned us a great many burdock burs to pick off ourselves.  But we gathered up a sizable heap.

These are all wild grape and wild cucumber vines.  Both of which we have in abundance here.  For those in the south I’ve heard that kudzu works well too.  Most of the vines we cut were around 10′ long.

I knew that I wanted to keep my wreath fairly simple, with sparse decoration.  So I wanted it to have a lot of texture.  I specifically looked for vines in a variety of shades and thicknesses, especially seeking out ones that had interesting looking tendrils.

I started with one of the thickest grape vines and made a loop of it, gently twisting and twining the overlapping ends.  Then slowly started layering over vines on top, twisting them around and tucking the ends in where ever they fit.

I added many, many layers because I wanted it to be thick and sturdy.  If I had one piece of advice to offer it would be to keep your work away from your pile of vines!  Otherwise they grab at each other and tangle again and again.  So, if you are working at a table, keep your supplies on the floor.  If you working on the floor put them in a different room, or better yet, just leave them outside and bring in one vine at a time.

 

When it was done, I decorated mine with baby rick rack and some clippings from the yard.

I think the more official way to attach ribbons and things would be with a hot glue gun, but I wasn’t willing to permanently commit my rick rack to the wreath, so I just tied the ends to the wreath in the back.  Everything else I slipped into the nooks and crannies created by winding the vines.  This way I figure I can redecorate it with the seasons if I choose.

 

Galen made his own.  He was all about the ribbons for decorating his.

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celebrations and festivals, crafts, Gardens, tutorials
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in the garden

This is where I’ve been the last week or so, while it’s been unseasonably warm.  The garden here is a neglected place.  A rental home garden.  We’ve worked and made and loved and left too many of those to be much bothered with it this time around.  But there was a garden here already, much ignored by previous tenants.  And we scrapped out a few little green spaces of our own, full of plants that I’ve been moving about with me for years on end.  I’ve had some of them for longer then I’ve had children!  My favorite of these spots is but the stone steps, just outside the door; two roses, a pale yellow columbine, several lady’s mantles, and a sizable patch of lavender, with violets, left to grow wild around the edges.  It’s a sweet smelling plot of the old-fashioned flowers that are dearest to my heart (with lilacs just beyond, to complete the vignette).  There are others as well, full of hydrangeas, foxgloves and peonies.  Cone flowers, delphiniums and sedums sprinkled here and there.  And three half-barrels full of herbs.  These are the things that we brought with us and the things that we will take away with us, when someday we leave.  Even these small gardens are a bit over-run, after our busy spring and my summer of not being able to spend much time outside, they’ve been mostly left to fend for themselves.  I’ve been out now though, very belatedly.  Puttering and thinking and shifting things around; digging and weeding and dividing.  Most of the snow is gone now, though I still sometimes come across a patch of it in shady and sheltered spots.  But the weather is shifting again and more will be coming soon.

I potted up a lot of the herbs from the half-barrel gardens, mostly in a set of terracotta strawberry planters that I got at a tag sale a little while back.  Usually I grow nasturtiums and calendula in them.  We had a large one, planted just that way this year, but the others came recently and were empty.  I’ve had a lot of luck in the past, bringing in herbs for the winter, but I’ve never brought in any that had already been under over a foot of snow!  I guess I’ll just have to see how it goes.

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Gardens, Herbs, Life
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Pumpkin Harvest

It was muddy, and well, muddy and did I mention muddy?  But it was also so Good.  So good, in that way that only something you do, year after year, can be good.  Nine years to be exact.  When you can look back at pictures from years past and compare the size of the pumpkins carried.  “Remember the year Elijah went everywhere in a puppy suit?”, “Look how long Iain’s hair is!”, “Look how tiny Galen is!”, “Do you remember when you could only carry teeny-tiny pumpkins??”.

Màiri Rose wrinkled up her nose disapprovingly, saying, “they’re dirty.”  With much encouragement she picked two little ones and declared she was, “all done punkin pickin’”.  Very funny, as she’s not the least bit squeamish about dirt at home!  Later on, Iain got her back into the harvest as a part of the Iain-Màiri Pumpkin Delivery System.  And still later on, she found some dirt that was to her liking…in the form of a mud puddle.
As a contrast, Galen decided to crawl through the pumpkin patch (in other words, through the mud), on his hands and knees so that he could push the pumpkins that were too large for him to carry, where as Elijah, carried most of the pumpkins that he harvested on his head.

I expect that two or three or four years from now they’ll be saying, “remember the year that we all insisted on going everywhere in matching, but not necessarily fitting Phillies shirts, much to Mommy’s chagrin?!?”

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Gardens, Kids, Life
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Week in the Life 2011, Tuesday

Tuesday

~We had a visitor this morning, the neighborhood cat that Galen has christened ‘Ginger Cat’.  Ginger Cat let Galen pet her for the first time ever, and quite a bit more.  They played and snuggled together outside for nearly half an hour.  They are very good friends now.  Not even Rosebud running out and squealing with wild excitement disturbed them.  After kitty had left, Màiri Rose decided that she should be called ‘Baby Cat’ instead and a heated argument ensued.

ginger cat

dew

~More cooking for the boys this morning.  This time the herbed almond bread that they make so often.  Màiri Rose, who was feeling fussy at the time, decided that she only wanted certain herbs in hers and not others, so they made her her own little loaf.  She is so clearly their little darling.

gathering herbs

baking

brother and sister

~Over breakfast Elijah was talking about how he’d hit a baseball through a window a couple of months back.  He concluded the story with, “and we never played in that spot again….except that we did.”  Then he told the story of Iain and him inadvertently hitting a ball into a bush which, unbeknownst to them, contained a hornets nest, with painful results.  And that story concluded with, “and we never played in that spot again……………………..except that we did.”bath

~I took a hot, hot lavender bath trying to ward off an impending migraine.reading

~The fixing of remote control cars was on the agenda today.

car

~I’ve been messing with all kinds of crazy braids and things, now that my hair is getting long again.  Today was a dutch-lace, half-crown braid, heavily rumpled by laying down to read to little ones at nap time.

queen anne

crown braid

birdbath

~Màiri Rose got a piece of a cornstarch packing peanut stuck up her nose.  I had to bride her with a frozen strawberry so that she would let me extract it with fine tip tweezers.

playing a game

Asian slaw

tiny crocs

~Galen took it upon himself to harvest a big bunch of violet greens to have with dinner.

violet greens

Elijah tree

~More thunderstorms late in the afternoon.  Steve is convinced that God doesn’t want him to cut the lawn.

laundry

~We opened the next to the last jar of green tomato chutney from last summer to have with our chicken, green and yellow beans and violet greens at dinner.monopoly

~Màiri only changed her clothes four times today.  I think that may be a record.

bedtime

~Galen insisted on wearing long sleeves and pants, all in black (well, some navy blue, but it’s best not to mention it), so that he could be a gorilla.

bedtime 2

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Books, Food, Gardens, Housewifery, Kids, Life, Our Little Home
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July 25, 2011

This post is part of the Week in the Life project.

planes

This feels like a throw back sort of day.  Suddenly there are paper airplanes everywhere again, after not seeing one for months.  Likewise there is a baby doll in a sling going along with us everywhere, for the first time in a very long time.  Maybe even a year?  Or more??

elijah

~Started a big batch of pickles fermenting this afternoon, in our new crock with the little blue bird on it.  By evening they were already  starting to smell pickle-ish.

for pickles

~Galen in a room alone, telling jokes to himself; “What do dinosaurs eat? Kale!”

rain

~lots of reading and silly boys playing in the rain in the afternoon.  Rosebud thought it was too cold on her face.

~the Phillies lost, Lee has a bad reputation around the house again

IMG_9861

~Buckwheat pancakes, with strawberries on top, bacon and fresh almond milk for supper, since we had guests during our usual Sunday brunch this week.  Iain and Elijah insisted on making the meal themselves, including the requisite little “Màiri Cakes” and refused any and all offers of help.  Galen insisted on setting the table himself. Galen and Màiri Rose sliced the strawberries with butter knives, Màiri in her typical fashion; slice a berry…take a bite…slice it again…take a bite…put whatever is left, bite marks and all, into the bowl, while reassuring everyone that she was only “tasting a tinesy bit”.

galen

~We mostly did laundry and straightened up while they cooked, but we also spent a bit of time with the two tiny ones, cuddling, singing “I’ll fly away” and laughing on the futon.

IMG_9869

strawberry

cow

IMG_9933

~Joking about Billy Joel and Elton John tunes over dinner.  The grownups that is, the kids resumed their, “our parents are acting crazy again” faces, and continued on with their food.  And no, I do not remember which album “Tell Her About It” was on.

~picked up the Jane Austen dress that I had tossed aside months ago because after tidying up my studio, I can’t remember where I put my notes and patterns for my other projects and I didn’t feel like looking for them.

~I can’t believe the change in the weather.  That heat wave really did break.  I wore a sweater for a while this morning.  When I came up to bed, after Steve had been settled for quite a while, I was mean enough to put my cold feet on him.  He was sweet and smushed them up between his to warm them, instead of say, violently kicking me away as would have been justified.

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Food, Gardens, Kids, Life, Our Little Home, photography, Yarn Crafts
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right now I’m…

noticing :: how very delightful it is to have a stack of brand new supplies for creating something beautiful.

supplies

feeling ::  excited, inspired and a bit over-whelmed as I start making plans for homeschooling next year.

smiling knowingly :: at this bit of wisdom from Donna Simmons (found in “A Rough Guide to Sixth Grade“), “And the more children you have, the more you have to be, on one hand, rigorously well-organized and, on the other, relaxed.  It’s a question of balance – when to let go and when to make sure it happens, whatever it is!”

wondering :: how it is that a 4th grader and a 6th grader sounds so very much older then a 3rd grader and a 5th grader?  I have no explanation.

moon

thinking :: that people just really shouldn’t talk to me in the morning during the hour after I take my pill (which makes me feel unwell) before I can eat (which makes me feel better).  If only they realized that we would all be a lot happier that way!

finally :: starting to learn to use my camera the way that it’s supposed to be used…but just starting.

as the sun goes down

enjoying :: the couple days a week that the big kids randomly send the two little ones out with tiny market baskets to gather herbs from the three half-barrel gardens I planted, for kneading into the herbed almond flour bread that’s fast becoming their specialty.

thinking :: I may have found a new craft to become obsessed about.

stitchesThe darling stitch holders above are a gift from a dear friend.  And she sent along the little bits of tatting below, just to entice me.  And well, it worked of course!

lace

I really should have pressed them before the photo so that you can see how truly sweet they are in their miniature perfection (instead of in their rumpled, just pulled from the envelope state).  I’m thinking these can’t go to waste.  Maybe some dainty trim on a pocket?  Part of a necklace?

glad, so very glad :: to be able to knit again

flowers

appreciating :: the old vanilla extract bottle full of flowers, that Iain placed at the window beside me when I was too ill to be up and around.

pleased :: to see them still blooming and also to know that I no longer bound by their side night and day.

loving :: berry season being underway!

missing :: the freedom to go outside whenever and however I want (photosensitivity concerns).

at play

thinking :: that if nothing else, our shade gardens will be well weeded.

finding :: twilight rapidly becoming my favorite time of day.

feeling :: tired still.  Still moving slow.  Still needing to take it easy, but taking more of an active part in life as each day passes.  And that is a very good thing.

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crafts, Food, Gardens, Herbs, Homeschooling, Kids, Life, photography, Thinking/Noticing, Waldorf, Yarn Crafts
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