Just A Reminder - It's Not Over

There is still much ... much ... to be done. Please do not forget.

This was a Very Good Day

I'm psyched. I had a good day. This was in part because I wasn't hungover for a change (shup), and had the energy to tackle some projects. I'm sick to death of having lived here over a year and not gotten nearly as much done as I'd like. So today, progress ensued.

You may recall that I have a vision for what I call the 'dining room garden' - the area right outside the dining room door, which we use as our main entrance. I had decided to turn it into a little private garden. That's only a small part of my ultimate "re-landscaping the entire front half of the property" project, but it's where I wanted to start.

Last year I dug up the evergreen shrubs under the dining room window, and planted my azaleas. One of them is blooming nicely; the other two not as much, but I'm not worried - they'll be okay.


Phase II was this.


Or rather, that's the start of it. I wanted to put a fence along this row of shrubs, not a total and complete privacy fence, but just a nice little delineating fence. So yesterday we bought that fencing, and the posts, and all the stuff we'd need for this project.

Today we tackled it. This is what it looked like before.


But we couldn't fit a fence up against those shrubs, so I decided they were going to get trimmed to accomodate the fence.


In some cases that involved just about cutting them in half.


But I'm not too worried about it. I don't really care for the evergreen shrubs and plan to take them out entirely at some point, anyway (just not today - too big a job). So I'm not really concerned how this effects them. The taller green leafy shrubs I'm hoping to keep, so I'm just going to hope this doesn't hurt them. I don't see why it should - we only pruned off some branches from the bottoms to make them - well, flatter on the back, so we could get the fence in. We did far more slaughter to the evergreens than the leafy shrubs, and as I said, the leafy ones are the ones I plan to keep.

I don't believe this is going to look nasty from the dining room garden side, once the fence is up to camouflage some of it. If it does, well, I'll deal with that then. And from the front, they still look perfectly normal - you can't even tell they've been pruned.

After the shrubs were trimmed we set the post anchors and dropped the posts in place, just to check the fit.


Perfect. I couldn't finish this today because it was going to rain. I'm going to paint the posts and fence, but I didn't want to leave them out to get wet in the rain, then have to wait for them to dry to paint them. So they're all stashed back in the garage until a sunny weekend when I have time to do all the painting.

But I'm psyched. I think this is going to look awesome! After I get the fence up, I'm going to plant stuff along the edge on the dining room garden side (that's partly why the fence had to go in far enough that we had to trim the shrubs - I wanted a planting strip on the sidewalk side), and will probably affix some window-box type planters to the fence itself if I can find the right type (they'll need to hang) and if it feels sturdy enough to hold that weight. So I'll begin to have bunches of flowers adorning this area. I may even plant some climbing vines or something.

As soon as a better selection of annuals is out, I'm going to be planting some stuff in front of the azaleas too. I was at the garden center the other day, but despite the good weather, it's still a little early yet and the selection's still kind of limited. I'm ahead of the game this year, anyway, so I can be a little patient. (Most years I'm thinking about going to pick out some annuals around the end of May, not the end of April).

Greg did the majority of the work on that project, pruning the shrubs and setting the post anchors (a massive chore). I chose to use those rather than digging holes and concreting them in for a bunch of reasons. This isn't a good area of the yard to be trying to dig holes, with electrical wiring running around somewhere (there are several outdoor plugs installed out here), massive tree roots in the way, etc. And, I kind of liked the idea of them being a little less "permanent" - in case I ever change my mind about having the fence here.

But I didn't merely sit on my butt and direct traffic today. I did accomplish something myself. My first goal of the morning was to finally clean out the damned garage. It's been bugging me for almost a year, when we emptied out our rented storage unit last summer and dumped it all in the garage. Now that I'm getting all psyched about my gardening, I desperately wanted room to organize all my stuff.

So I tackled the garage. It started off looking something like this.




Except there was a big-ass pile of firewood running up the middle of it (where the empty spot is now, that was filled with firewood). I forgot to take a picture before I moved it, but this is the pile I moved ...


... so you can do the math. (That stuff in front of it is two concrete benches from my dad's house, that I haven't yet found a place for, but needed moved to accomodate the firewood).

Then I cleaned up and organized my stuff, and this is the semi-finished end product.




I have more to do, but this was a great start. At least I can get to all my stuff.

I've given up getting my truck in this garage until we can ever get a storage / gardening shed. There simply isn't room in the back of this garage for all the gardening and lawn stuff, and all Greg's outdoor workshop stuff, together. Not happening. So until we get that shed, the garage is it, and my truck's going to have to live in the driveway.

And that was a day's work, and I'm sore and exhausted, and headed off for a shower.

But it was a really good day.

Some Steampunkery for the Imaginarium

I've been wanting to do it, and we finally did it.

When I painted this one wall last winter, I had removed a light switch cover, and hadn't replaced it because I didn't want to put the plain, boring one back up. I wanted something special - something to take the first baby steps towards steampunking the Imaginarium. But I hadn't figured out what yet.

The other day we were wandering around in Home Despot, and I spied these little push button switches, and thought, "Ah-ha." After a little more poking and searching, Greg and I put together a scheme (I had the vision, he had the ingenuity to make it work on this one).

And then yesterday I came home from work to discover he'd already put it together. My steampunk light switch.


I like it. A lot.

This is Cool

Check out what we got.


It's an old Wurlitzer organ. A friend of ours was moving, and didn't want to take this with him. He was going to throw it out, and we said, ummm ... it's a musical instrument, it works, we have to rescue it. And he gave it to us! How cool is that?

We debated on whether to take it (another musical thing in the house?) but I'm glad we did. I had one of these growing up, in fact, it was probably the first thing I ever learned to play music on. I remember learning several Kansas tunes on it (Miracles Out Of Nowhere, for one) - I had this Kansas songbook with the sheet music, and some of it sounded awesome on the organ.

This one works great, and the sounds this thing produces are really unique!

But what's going to be even cooler is when we, um, refurbish it a little bit. The best place we could find to put it was on that big bare wall in the living room.


But in its current state it doesn't fit in very well with the decor. We've figured out a great way to work around that.

It's getting steampunked.

Shire of Rivenvale Spring Training 2010

First event of the season this weekend. It was nice. I didn't take many pictures, but here are a few of the fighting. We had the kavehane set up (turkish coffee bardic hangout) but, I forgot to take pictures. I wasn't quite operating on all cylinders, primarily because I'd been up till 4:30 in the morning working on a new song. As I've recently told Robin, art trumps sleep.

Gardens Are Shaping Up

I got a bunch more work done today toward the first garden phase.

I cleaned up the first half of what I've dubbed the 'dining room garden,' removing a bunch of dead leaves and tiny twigs and stuff. It now looks like this.


Doesn't look like much yet, but I see both the improvement and the potential. There are 3 azalea plants there, the one in the middle pretty tiny, the two on the sides slightly bigger. The one on the far left (and the one in the middle, for that matter) are doing really well. The one on the far right is having a few issues this spring, as during the big snows this winter, a giant chunk of snow and ice fell off the awning and buried it, then re-froze solid. The poor azalea was encased in a giant ice ball for quite awhile, and I wasn't even sure it was going to live. So I'm happy it's doing as well as it is. After it blooms (if it blooms), I'll trim it up somewhat, and it should fill out more next year, and not be so thin and sparse. (Assuming I can protect it from any more avalanches next winter).

Then I dived into the other half of the dining room garden, which I hadn't even started on last year. At first it looked like this.


And after cleaning it up, like this.




So that's a start. There were two tiny creeping evergreen shrubs of some type in the middle, which I had intended to pull out anyway, but they cooperated by apparently dying over the winter, and just easily pulled out of the ground today while I was cleaning up.

I still have a lot to do in this area (as in all of them, for that matter), but this is a good start. I plan to remove that evergreen shrub in the lower right-hand corner. I'm undecided about the one down at the other end, I may leave that one - it's out of the way and unlikely to annoy me. (I don't really care for these types of shrubs). In the center, I plan to put some kind of small water feature, then plan my plants around that - probably primarily ferns and hostas.

Where I've got the table and chairs is pretty much where they'll probably stay.

And for now, that's it for the dining room gardens.

I was very happy to see the rose survived it's first year of transplant.


I wasn't sure, because in late winter it looked pretty horrible, stems all black or brown. There is still a large black spot on one of the stems, but about mid-way down, so it's not like I can just cut it off. I'll let it go for now and see how it does - it may get a heavier pruning this fall, which it looks like it needs anyway, as it's getting kind of leggy. I also think I'll cover it this winter. I've had this rose for something over 10 years at least - my dad got it for me at the old house, and though I don't remember exactly when, I know I hadn't lived there long when he did. And I lived there 14 years. In all those years I never covered it in winter, and it has survived this long. But this year worried me, so I don't want to take a chance on another harsh winter damaging it.

The next area I'll be working on is this ...



... around the lamp post and the first tree. ('first' as in first I'll be planting around). This is the area I cleaned up yesterday, it was all cluttered with twigs and branches and winter debris.

My worst concern is how to plant around that tree. The soil there is just so compacted, hard like rock, yet everything I've read said you can't really cultivate around trees like this, you risk causing all kinds of problems - that if you want to plant there, you just have to dig up small holes for each individual plant, and deal with that. I guess I can do that, but I'm unsure how that's going to work, since I can't really work any amendments into the soil deeply.

I think putting in and maintaining any kind of planting under that tree is going to be seriously labor intensive, as I'll have to dig each little area individually, work in some compost, and then every year probably just work in little bits around the plants gently.

But, it's what I want, so I'll see how it goes.

Even though there's not much there yet, just having the beginnings of my little private 'front garden' is cool. I sat out there all afternoon reading.

I'm pretty psyched that I'm starting to get to put my plans into place, even with such tiny steps. It'll take awhile, and a lot of it will be done in fits and starts - I mean, I couldn't do anything all winter. Now for a couple months there will probably be a flurry of activity and changes, then nothing again for most of another year. But envisioning it all this time, then finally seeing it begin to take shape is awesome.

Ahhhh ... it's that time of year.

Well, at least temporarily. I got to do yardwork today. Though it was the tedious not-as-fun kind, it was worth it. Looks much better out there. The yard had a lot of debris from winter - leaves we never quite got all raked up, tons of sticks and small branches. I cleaned all that up, and raked most of the whole yard just because I've been reading it's good for your yard in spring. I only saw a couple of pretty thatchy places, but when I raked them all up, they were all fluffy and tons of the dead grass / thatch came out, so I think that'll be good. I read online that when it's still minor you don't have to remove all of it, you just have to get it fluffed up and opened up enough to let air and water in, then it should be fine.

I still have the 'dining room garden' area to work on - the area behind the shrubs, between the shrubs and the house itself. You can't see it from the street, but it's the area I chose to focus on first, my little 'private garden' area (ish - it is in the front of the house so will not be all that private).

I want to put a small fountain in under the spare room window, but criminy - the prices they want for these things. I saw some at a local garden center today I liked, but the medium-sized ones were all over $400, and the little tiny ones were all between $170 and $240. Umm, no.

I checked K-Mart, and they have two for $129, which is somewhat more reasonable (still too much, but apparently it doesn't get much better for what I want) ... but I wasn't really thrilled with either of them.

I'm starting to contemplate making my own. It's easy, provided you can find appropriate components. I mean, the stuff I use has to be weather- and water-proof, is all. Since I'm going for a bit of a 'cottage garden' look all I really need is a sort of bird bath, with a hole in the center to let the water bubble up - it doesn't have to be a full-on waterfall or anything like that. (I'll save that for another area of the yard).

I'll do some more checking.

I said it's that time of year 'temporarily' because it's only early April - there could still be some nasty weather yet. But for the most part, spring's ramping up, and I'm psyched about getting more accomplished in my gardens this year.