garden — Page 220

Surprises in the Mail and in the Soil

April 8, 2013 at 9:02 am by Claudia

You all know my sister, Meredith, right? She blogs at Mereknits and she is an amazing knitter, crocheter and crafter besides all that other stuff: mom, wife, occupational therapist, wonderful person. She is my sister and she is my friend and we are very, very close. So, the other day, I opened the front door and there was a box on the front steps. It was from Mer. Hmmm.

I opened it up and this is what I saw:

sweater

Isn’t it beautiful? It was for me!

sweater2

I had been just about to leave the house to run some errands, so I quickly tried it on (it fit!) and took a photo of myself in the bathroom mirror with my phone and sent it to her. (I will not share that photo with you, my friends, as the mirror had not been cleaned and you can see the toilet in the background.) I ended up wearing it that day because I love it so much! There’s a story to this sweater: Mer wrote a post about it called “Can a Sweater Knit Itself?” Go over there and read it. She tells it much better than I could.

It fits like a glove and when I showed it to Don via Skype he said “Va Va Voom!” Thank you, sister!

Yesterday, I started the long project that is the Clean Up of the Garden and Yard. Oh my. It was windy out there and I, of course, did too much. But it felt good being outdoors, raking up the seemingly endless amounts of leaves and twigs that are covering the garden beds. It’s been a long, cold winter here in the northeast, but plants are coming up here and there.

sedum

Sedum Autumn Joy – always one of the first plants to peek through the soil

daffs

Daffodils. Will I see them bloom before I leave? I don’t think so.

As I was raking, I saw the hint of a green shoot poking through the leaves in a section of the garden bed where I didn’t have anything planted. After I removed the leaves, I saw this:

3bulbs

~~Four~~ Five plants. What the heck?

Then I remembered something from last year. I added that new garden bed to the other side of the house. It had previously been grassy there. I was digging in a section of the bed, getting the soil ready to add a new plant, and I found some bulbs rather far down in the soil. I had no idea how long they had been there or what the heck they were, but I took them over to the big garden bed and planted them, thinking what did I have to lose? And promptly forgot about them.

hyacinths

A little yellow due to lack of sun (they were completely covered by the leaves) but they look like Hyacinths to me. What a wonderful surprise! When I took them out of the other garden bed, I noticed that the bulbs were not pointed in the right direction, so I made sure to do that when I replanted them. I have no idea how long it has been since these bulbs have bloomed, if ever. We’ve lived here almost 8 years and the guy who lived here before us did absolutely nothing to the property (he was a weekender) and he lived here for four years.

These are the little garden miracles that make me so, so happy.

Temperatures are supposed to be in the sixties this week! Positively balmy for our part of the country. Don is on his way home, just got an email from him – he’s waiting for his connection in Zurich. He won’t get home until late this evening. Scout and I are very excited, indeed!

Happy Monday.

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Riley’s Dish Garden

November 12, 2012 at 8:04 am by Claudia

This was Riley’s dish. That boy loved to eat and this battered, not-very-attractive dish was his version of a plate. When he was able to navigate easily, I would fill it with food and place it on the rug by the kitchen sink. It was easier for him to stand there. When he couldn’t get up and down quite as easily in the last month or so of his life, I would take the dish to him and he would chow down right there from his perch on the rug.

I can’t throw it away. It’s my boy’s dish. Just as I saved some locks of his hair and his collar, I am hanging on to his dish.

But what to do with it other than storing it in a cupboard?

I had an idea. It reminds me of a planting dish, so off I went to a local nursery. I bought some succulents and some special potting soil.

Each of the plants came in a terra cotta pot with little rocks on top of the soil. I shook out all the rocks and added them to the bottom of the bowl for drainage.

Then I filled the bowl with plants and soil.

While I was doing all of this, Don and Scout were out on the porch with me. Ever the blogger, I picked up the bowl to find the place to photograph it. As I set it down on the bench, this happened:

Immediately. Our girl misses her brother.

Riley’s Dish Garden

Yes, there are prettier planting dishes – I have several McCoy planting dishes right here in the cottage. But this may be the most loved planting dish to be found anywhere.

It helps a great deal. Creating this garden is a fitting tribute to my Riley.

Miss you, my dear, sweet boy. With all my heart.

dogdishcollage

Happy Monday.

Fall Beauty

November 11, 2012 at 7:58 am by Claudia

The new boiler was installed on Friday and we have heat. At one point, I started to feel sleepy and achy, my eyes stung, and I would have sworn I was coming down with a cold. At the same time I could smell the solvents they were using and Don suggested I go outside for a while. That made everything better – I think I was having a reaction to the chemicals. We opened some windows and the fresh air did the trick.

Brenda asked me what a boiler is. She’s used to furnaces. A boiler heats water which flows through pipes, in our case, through pipes that run in our baseboard heating. A furnace heats air, which is blown throughout the house. Our boiler is fueled with heating oil, which seems to be the predominant way of heating a home out here in the East.

Let’s take a walk around the property. When I was forced outside the other day by the fumes, I grabbed my camera. There really is beauty to found even in the brown, stark landscape of late fall and winter.