It's a beautiful spring (a little warmer than spring) day in our neighborhood! How is it in your neighborhood?
I have a huge schedule this week and I'm hoping to get it all done. Do you make lists? It always seems that I think I can get more done than is EVER possible. Does that happen to you? This weeks list I can put into two words GARDENING and SEWING.
This is what the house looked like when we first bought it. We did some work on the columns, etc. I'll take a picture later this summer and show you the changes. The original house was buildt in 1880 and the addition along with the entire second floor was added a few years later. We are trying to care for the old girl as best we can without changing her entire character.
GARDENING
I'm moving and building flower beds and cleaning out the garden beds. We bought this house over three years ago. It had some nice flower beds around the house but they just didn't suit me. The were surrounded with landscape blocks, which looked nice, but you can't mow up next to those things and my hubby HATES to use the weedeater. Let's face it, those things are frustrating, to say the least. Additionally several of the beds were buildt so that the dirt came up and over the siding.......a sure invitation for termites. It's like rolling out the red carpet for them and inviting them in!
Yesterday my dear hubby removed the largest bed that was commiting the red carpet crime. He leveled and sloped the dirt away from the house. The dirt area left is going to be planted in ferns and Lily of the Valley, if I can get enough of them to fill the bed. These guys aren't cheap. No bedding boarders to stop me from mowing right up next to the bed.
I put old fashioned Bridal Spirea around the front porch and removed the boarder material and plants from there. These shrubs are beautiful in the spring and fairly easy to manage. They are really coming into their own. I purchased a few of these but they are HARD to find. I happened upon a construction site last year and found a bunch of these bushes pulled out of the ground and waiting to be removed to the dump. I stopped and asked the guys if I could have them. They scratched their heads and said sure. I'm sure they were laughing as I loaded them into the back of my SUV but I didn't care. Most of what I brought home survived and are looking beautiful this year.
The bed on the south side of the house has molted sun and mostly shade once the trees leaf out. There was a variety of things in this bed and I've removed most of it. I still have some Iris to remove and I better do that today. They won't bloom this year but at least I won't hurt them by removing them. I'm going to plant the entire bed in shade and partial shade perinals this summer.
The poppies in the poppy bed around the Mock Orange bushes and my electrical pole in the yard are doing pretty well. I need a few more to fill in the bed properly.
Along the front of the house (I have a 5 acre yard here that includes my garden, the house, garage, a few other buildings and a couple corrals and lots of yard to mow) along the road I ran a line of lilac bushes. I could only afford the really cheap 10 inch variety for this long stip that is probably 260 feet long. Most of them survived. Last year I filled in a few larger varieties where they didn't survive. I'll do a few more this year. I used just a wire fence to hold the boarder and I'm sure folks who know this house and yard really thought it was rediculously ugly.....and it was, but now the lilacs are starting to show themselves. It will be another 5 years before they are 'really' beautiful. On the inside of the fence I am planting alternate Iris and Peony sections. This is the bed that is offering my biggest challenge. First of all it's pretty far from the house. Probably another 200 feet.
I need to extend one more bed this year. I planted two types of medicinal Echineca (Purple Coneflower) along a fence to set off the chicken yard from our yard. Only one set of plants took off so I need to put more Purple Coneflowers in that other area.
I have a little bed in front of the garage that they had planted with various plants that I can't seem to get pulled out of there. I keep digging to no avail. I have lavendar planted in the bed because it's heavily protected from the north wind. Getting this bed established has been a challenge.
It that isn't enough I had a son who used to give me a rose bush every Mother's Day. These roses didn't really have a real home here so I determined to put up a picket fence to seperate the drive/parking from the yard and plant them in front of it. I moved the roses last year and started beds of garlic and herbs around them. That bed is coming along even though I think I lost a few roses in the process.
Well that's enough GARDENING for today. Tomorrow I'll tell you about my FOOD GARDENS and Thursday we'll talk about my SEWING PROJECTS.
Praying you have a BLESSED WEEK. Be sure to spend some time with your FATHER this week and join us in our daily walk in the Word of God.
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