Going up?

One of the crazy things about our backyard is there is no easy way to get to the top. It's a fairly steep hill, with a four foot high retaining wall. It's wonderfully private. There's a nice flat spot near the top that will make a lovely spot for reading or coffee, but only if you have billy goat in your ancestry.

Last summer we still owned the house in Saginaw, so our budget for improvements was pretty limited. This summer we had a little more to play with, so the first thing we did was cut a staircase into the wall. Of course, I'm using the royal "we" here. I think up these crazy things and Kent is a willing participant.

Aren't they wonderful? It was decided that the new railroad ties needed to be stained to match the existing ones and Kent set out to accomplish that one morning while I was out. He said he knew pretty much at the first brush that the color was wrong. But the color had looked right in the store, so maybe he needed to do more just to be sure. After a while, even though he was convinced that the color was wrong, he had already done so much that he decided he might as well finish. Luckily he ran out of stain.

I had to laugh. We've all done it, haven't we? We push on, even though our gut is telling us we're on the wrong path. The rationale can be so silly: we bought a whole gallon of the paint, the store for replacement is closed, it will quilt out. Pretty soon we're so far in that going back seems impossible. So instead of trusting ourselves enough to quit at a false start, we plow on until there's no way to redeem the project. Not only is the project spoiled, but we had a miserable time doing it!

We don't know what to do next, it's a good quality stain, even sand blasting hardly made a dent. I'm hoping that a little weathering will do the trick. Because I'm an incorrigible optimist I'm hoping that an answer will present itself next spring when the snow thaws. Keen eyes will notice the stone stairs going in at the top of the hill. There are a few more steps to go, but by next summer we'll be able to easily get around in this crazy, vertical garden.

Secret Agent Spy Stuff

It's been deliciously quiet here, so I have been quiet on the blog. The days have been filled with the satisfyingly mundane chores of everyday life. Nothing to see here. Little things give me ridiculous pleasure, like having a clothes chute from the master bedroom to the basement laundry, but are hardly worth a blog post. (Well, except for this one, I guess.) My days are a lovely mix of quilting, knitting, spinning and cooking. I have finally embraced this gift of unregimented time, this sabbatical from the frantic pace of teaching/travel/publishing of the past decade or so.

The weather has been unseasonably warm, autumn has lingered well into winter. They are predicting some measurable snow for over the weekend, so I'll be hustling to get the last of the tulip and daffodil bulbs into the ground later today. I'm down to the last forty or so, which shouldn't take long. I've already planted nearly a hundred bulbs. This spring there will be color!

A Fine Romance did get put aside for a while. There are other things that I'd like to get cracking on, and there were a couple of deadlines to be met, for projects I can't show you. I've sent off a block to Quiltmaker for their 100 Blocks publication. I really like it and think it needs to be quilt, so I will be fussing around with layouts until I find one I must make.

I've also been messing about with some new machine quilting techniques. I can't show you that either just yet. I can tell you it's been the most fun I've had with my clothes on. After years of swearing that I'd never wear gloves for quilting (when will I learn that "never" usually means "next week"), I've discovered that gloves are just the thing for this new process.

I still hate having to take the gloves off to thread the needles or even work the touch screen on the sewing machine. Until someone makes quilting gloves with the special conducting fibers in the fingertips, I've solved the problem by cutting the tips from the thumb and index fingers on my right hand glove. It also serves up a bit of cooling. Since my inner child is playing with matches again, any cooling I can get is a good thing.

A garden where none was before

It is fair to say that the folks who owned this house before us were not into gardening. They said so themselves. Most of what lives in the ground here has been in place for almost thirty years. Like the evergreen bushes that left the front yard earlier this summer, and the ones blocking most of the sunlight into the studio.

My original plan was to turn this area into a dry river bed, shade garden. It was dark, gloomy and uninviting. But when those nasty bushes (does anybody really like them?) were removed my whole plan changed.

Suddenly we had sunlight! When I say "we" worked in the garden mostly I mean Kent does the hardest, sweatiest parts and I zoom in at the end and make the pretty part happen. I'm also usually the one who thinks up the plan. Luckily, Kent is willing to play along. The walkway stones are leaning on the retaining wall while the sod goes in.

The angel, who has followed us from Wisconsin to Michigan and back to Wisconsin again has finally found just the right spot. Since this corner remains pretty shady, I've planted ferns around her. The birdbath end of the path gets marvelous afternoon light, so it's planted with sunny to partly shady plants that will bloom in the spring. I couldn't resist adding in a couple of mums for fall color. (I just may sneak a few pansies in there before the end of the planting season.)

With the bushes gone I can see the entire garden from my desk. The bench is a wonderful place to be quiet and thoughtful. I think this will be the last big change we'll make to the yard this year, honestly there's not a whole lot left to do. Next spring Kent would like to turn that screen tent into a true gazebo. Slowly we are making this place into our place. It's hard to feel fully invested here, with the ties remaining to the house in Saginaw, but we're coming along. It may take a while to feel truly at home, but we do like it here.

On the street where I live

This song has been running in my head for a while now, the smarmy one from My Fair Lady. It started one Sunday morning when I went out for the newspaper. It was cool and just a little bit misty, the morning sunlight dappling the street. At that moment I realized that this is exactly where I'm supposed to be right now, and I was content.

We had such a list of desires for our Green Bay home, and a ridiculously small budget for it. I think we were suffering from HGTV poisoning, at least I was. I mean, where are the Property Brothers when you need them?

In the end it was a compromise: two and a half stall garage instead of three and a family room turned into a studio. The lot is tiny, especially when compared to the Saginaw house, and the back third of it goes straight up.

But here we are, and it's beginning to feel like home.

It nearly broke my heart to watch as the garden centers around town blossomed with plants for the new season while I was stuck in a tiny two room hotel apartment with no dirt to call my own. Even after we were in the new place there was just so much to do before we could even consider playing in dirt. I cringed every time I passed this monolithic shrub at the front door. I mean really, could one say "stay out" any more plainly?

We (meaning mostly Kent) tackled it Independence Day weekend. In the end it turned out to be just two plants. It took a chain saw, a pick ax and a whole lot of sweaty digging to clear them out. The county's garden waste center is nearby so off went the bushes (which all fit into the back of my minivan) and we returned with rich black compost.

The swan bird bath looks a little overpowering now, but it might even disappear once the plants get to growing. I followed no rules except for "taller to the back". The flowers were chosen in hopes of attracting butterflies and humming birds, oh, and for cutting as well.

This fall I will tuck in a few mums and bulbs for spring flowering, I think I left enough room for that, maybe. There are yarrow, shasta and gloriousa daisies, purple coneflower and balloon flowers in pink and blue, along with anise hissop, blackeyed susans and russian sage. (And a blue frisbee for Gracie, but that moves around the yard.)

There now, doesn't that look so much more inviting? The big shrubs under the windows? Well, their days are numbered too.

Open House

The long-awaited other shoe has finally dropped. The job transfer has come through and we finally know where we're headed. There are still some details to work out, but it seems that Kent and I will be moving to Green Bay, Wisconsin sometime this spring.

The time has come to say goodbye to our treasured home. We have lived here nearly twenty years. This wonderful old house is practically a member of the family.

We're hosting an Open House on Sunday, March 1st, from 2 - 4 pm.

Click Here for more information, and a tour of the house.



When the realtor, my mom and I turned the corner into the driveway, all those years ago, it was love at first sight. We hardly got past the back hall and into the kitchen (which was orange and black, for heavens sake!) before I was convinced that this house was the perfect place to raise my four rowdy boys. More than that, though, I felt like the house was choosing us.

We've left our mark on this historic old home, to be sure, a lot of living has gone on here in the past two decades. This house has been filled with love and laughter, even when times were hard. We've celebrated birthdays and graduations. We even had a bride come down the wonderful old staircase, something this mother of boys never expected to see.

It's magic here, it really is. I wonder who the house will choose next.

A summer for gardening

It's been a lovely, quiet summer so far. The weather has been mild, a good mix of happy sunny days and charming all day rains. The flower gardens are really coming along, although I still have some major weeding to do on a couple of them.

Our hard winter was really tough on my perennials. Quite a few didn't survive, including several of my roses. I put off weeding and planning to see what really was gone, and what was just taking its sweet time about coming back. I've had a few nice surprises, especially from roses I was sure were gone.

The pond also suffered from the hard winter. We lost nearly all of our fish. The ice was nearly three inches thick when we finally hefted it out of the pond, near the end of April. We'd been waiting for it to simply melt away, but our cool spring prevented that. Despite having lots of aeration, I think the fish suffocated. We've added three new fish and a few new water plants. and I think it is looking well again.

 
Gracie is learning that grass is good for sprawling, but mom gets super mad when she lolls around on the flowers. I'd lay prickly rose branches between the plants to discourage her, but they seem to be her especially favorite to chew. I catch her swiping them out of the weed cart all the time.

The gardenia is now constantly in bloom, adding its scent to the lavender and roses. I've left the few milkweed volunteers, hoping to coax a monarch butterfly, or two. I haven't seen a single one so far this year.

My garden in May

Our spring has been goofy. It's been super hot, into the ninties for crying out loud. And then almost within the same day, the temperature would drop to way below freezing. It has wrecked havok on my perenials, and has made me very skitterish about putting in any annuals.

But finally, with nothing but good temperatures in the forecast, I started easing into the garden. We are not, NOT, going garden mad as we did last year, for the wedding. I don't even want to think about how much we spent last year.

Filling the planters with annuals starts with deciding on  a color scheme. I love geraniums, and they have some really gorgeous colors now-a-days. Good old cherry red geraniums are perfect for our old house, and I love them, so I will likely continue with the red/white/blue theme in the front.

In the back is a whole other story. The patio, pond and many planters are right off my studio sliding door. This is my happy place. For this year, I'm going with a white and pink palette. Actually, I've found it challenging to find truly pink flowers, so they are actually almost lavender.

I have this concrete urn thingie in my rose garden. A twelve inch plastic pot fits perfectly inside, making it easy to bring it in to over-winter.

In the past I've filled it with annuals, mounds of lobelia, and little bell petunias and trailing verbena, plus a couple of huge geraniums.

This year, in the spirit of cutting back, I decided to fill the urn with hardy English ivy. The little wire tower will add the height I wanted. It will be fun to train the vines to it. I used three different varieties of ivy, one edged in yellow, another edged in white, and two plain leafed. Half of each plant will be trained up the tower, the other half encouraged to drip over the edge.

To fill in the space, I added a little summer color. In keeping with my pinky-lavendar colorway, I've added in pink/lavendar and white super bells, which are lovely, trailing, minature petunias.

The urn is centered so that it lines up with the trellis and forms a lovely vignette coming into the back garden.

I like the idea of creating garden "rooms".  I also like the Japanese idea of making the path crooked to slow the journey. Often my garden dreams are way bigger than what I could ever keep up.

The pond is really coming along. I can't remember when what year we put it in, but it's at least six years old. The water plants are getting established, offering shade and hiding places for the fish. I think, this year I will need to break up the big clump of iris. But I'll wait until it's done blooming.

It's amazing how quickly the water lillies shoot out of the bottom of the pond. Here are my two first blooms. I'm hoping that the pink plant will bloom again this year too. Time will tell.

I love the moss growing on some of the rocks. This one is so happy that it's blooming. I've had to add more of the smallest rocks (which fill up the spaces between the larger rocks) to the edges of the pond, especially the edge touching the patio. A certain couple of grandchildren (cough Alex and Nicole cough) love to toss the little rocks into the pond. As long as they don't target the fish, I'm completely okay with it. Another bag of little stones costs just a few dollars, and the giggles of my grands are priceless.