garden — Page 111

The Woods, Planters & Hidden Daffodils.

May 7, 2018 at 8:00 am by Claudia

New additions to the porch. I was inspired by a post by Liz Marie Galvan (who decorates in all white and wood tones, a look very different than my own and one I’m normally not drawn to, but she does it beautifully. She’s also a Michigander, so what’s not to love?

Anyway, she was doing a post for Tractor Supply, of all places, and the white planter/tub and finial are part of a collection by Trisha Yearwood. Liz showed them on her porch steps and she plopped a fern in her planter and I liked it. So off I went to two Tractor Supply stores before I found the two pieces. (I also found a cute top to wear there, also. Go figure.) And I got the fern from my local nursery yesterday morning.

I’m choosing to think of the logo on the planter/tub as a pig that lives on a rescue farm, not one that is slaughtered for food. I like pigs a whole lot. They’re very intelligent and they have feelings and you know the rest. I don’t eat anything with a face.

Back to the look – I like it. It suits the former kitchen island that is now the holder of potting supplies and a pretty addition to the porch.

It rained on Sunday, so I was forced to take it easy. I walked around the property and into our little wooded area. There are several trees down. I suspect most of them fell during that awful snow/ice storm that took down the huge limb from the catalpa. I could hear cracking sounds everywhere that night, which was basically a nightmare.

Daffodils hidden in the woods, from a time when things were less overgrown around here. You have to know where to find them.

Don and I placed this old street sign from the corner we lived on in San Diego here among the catalpas several years ago. Last year Don replaced our mailbox and pole. Imagine my surprise yesterday when I saw that he had put the old one on display. That scamp! I laughed out loud.

I’m off to NYC this morning for a 24 hour visit. Then I’ll be home again to do all the things that need doing and then…hopefully…I’ll be done with the big stuff.

I’m going to take tomorrow off, simply because I don’t want to have to take my laptop along for such a short trip. I’ll be back on Wednesday.

Happy Monday.

Overdoing It

May 6, 2018 at 9:31 am by Claudia

Beautiful little maple leaves. I can’t believe how quickly every tree has leafed out this week. I suppose it’s a combination of the bizarre hot spell and rain – which we’re getting today. Now, almost every tree has leaves. The catalpas – always the last to leaf – are still bare.

I overdid yesterday. I started lopping off brambles, trying to open up some areas of the back forty that have been overrun by them. They’re like the cockroach of the plant world. They just keep going and multiplying. And then I mowed the back forty and the corral and the grassy area behind the kitchen.

I took a break, had some lunch, thought about showering. But then I looked at the front lawn, which was getting quite long very quickly and knew it was going to rain today and I wanted it to look good when Don came home. So I mowed it.

At the end of the afternoon I was well and truly exhausted. My arm muscles ache from using the lopper. My leg muscles ache from mowing.

And the irony? Don asked me this morning if I could come there, rather than him coming here, because he’s tired and his legs ache. That’s fine – he deserves to rest and he’s really sore at the moment.

But that’s why I mowed the dang lawn!

Anyway, I’m going in for the day and night tomorrow and I’ll come home on Tuesday. I have to plant seeds, weed, and mulch this week. I can’t put that off. And there will be a rainy day or two, so I have to get cracking. Soon, everything will be potted and planted and mulched and I’ll be able to pull way back and just enjoy. And spend a bit more time in the city with Don.

More pretty pink crabapple buds.

Happy Birthday to my brother Dave, who would have been 71 today.

Happy Sunday.

On Saturday

May 5, 2018 at 8:10 am by Claudia

Insanely hot and humid yesterday, with storms popping up all over the northeast last night. Interestingly, we didn’t get any rain, but we sure as heck got a lot of wind. Scary wind. I had to run out to the porch with my flashlight a couple of times to batten down the hatches.

What a bizarre 3 days! I told Don I would just like some spring, please. For more than three days at a time.

Today, it is much, much cooler and sunny. I’ll take it.

I bought a long handled lopper the other day, and yesterday found me lopping away at brambles that were climbing up other plants or blocking my way or just plain annoying me. Today, I have to face the music and transport all the cut branches to the woods.

Flowering quince. Note the teeny tiny bug on the leaf.

I love the splash of orange/red.

They’re just about to pop. The heat moved everything along at hyper-speed. The trees have actual green leaves now! What a change in just a few days. It’s almost like Mother Nature was making up for all the spring days that were more like winter days.

This was part of the reason I was hacking at brambles. I had to break through them in order to take a picture of this – my favorite crabapple. I have a question: there are about three or four of these little trees that I would call crabapples. But they’re not all the same. This is the only one that has the pink buds and the flowers are slightly different. Is there more than one kind of crabapple?

Mowing the back forty is on the docket for today, plus cleanup of the aforementioned bramble branches. And some more topsoil. It’s going to rain tomorrow.

Happy Saturday.

The Woods, Planters & Hidden Daffodils.

Overdoing It

On Saturday

Lambs Like to Party

A Note

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