gardening — Page 12

P: The Porch, A Pot, A Plant, And Pruning

May 23, 2015 at 9:15 am by Claudia

I pruned and shaped the boxwoods in front of the house yesterday, as well as the tall bush in the big garden bed. Do you remember my saying that the hens & chicks that I had planted in front of the porch didn’t come back this spring? Well, you never know what some pruning might reveal:

5-23 hensandchicks

Hello! I was wrong to doubt you, little one. You were there all the time.

5-23 glider

Behold our funky, rusty glider. Don found it when we were living in San Diego. He arrived home with it in the back of his Blazer. $25.00. It’s been with us for years. Some might think I should paint it, but I really love it this way. I do, however, want to find a cushion that fits the entire length of the glider.

And no, I’m not in the mood to make one.

But for now, this works just fine. For those of you who are new to the blog, the floor of the porch is made of bluestone and I fell in love with it when I saw this cottage for the first time.

5-23 gardening stuff

Caroline, the owner of the dollhouse, has her own potting shed. I do not. So this is what you see as you enter the porch. Supplies, clippers, soil, mulch, garden gloves, recycling bins. I guess you can say my potting bench is this bench, along with the picnic table which is to the left.

I got the sign several years ago in an antique mall.

5-23 deutzia

Currently blooming in the big garden bed: Nikko Dwarf Mound Deutzia. There are two of them. I planted them the first summer we lived here, so that would make them nine years old. They’re especially pretty this year.

And, I was standing in the kitchen yesterday, I glanced at the Vernors crate that is on the island and realized I had neglected to include one piece of McCoy Pottery when I did the series.

5-23 little mccoy pot

It’s a tiny little flower pot, a wee bit crooked, that I found locally. It holds all of our pens and pencils and sits in the crate. It’s from the 1940s.

5-23 nm mark

It has the Nelson McCoy mark – an intertwined NM.

I didn’t want this little piece to feel left out!

Last night, we had a frost warning. Next week, the temps are going to hit ninety degrees. This has been the strangest spring!

Happy Saturday.

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Lilacs, Mulching & Mistaken Identity

May 9, 2015 at 8:51 am by Claudia

5-9 lilac 3

Mulching in sunny, 87° weather proved to be a bit daunting. Correct me if I’m wrong, but the calendar read May 8th yesterday. Too hot – much too hot for this time of year. It looks as if it will be with us for a few more days. Still a bit under the weather, but much better, I unloaded 5 bags of mulch throughout the garden beds; dumping a bag into my new cart, scooping, carefully arranging it so as not to damage the base of already established plants, scooping and scooping some more.

I took a couple of breaks, drank lots of water, stopped for lunch, but let me tell you, I was exhausted at the end of the day. I supposed it was a combination of the heat, a still recovering body, and pollen. Lord, do we have pollen. But I couldn’t let it go much longer or I would have had to thoroughly weed everything again.

All the while, however, the scent from the lilacs kept wafting in my direction.

5-9 lilac 2

Oh. my. heavens. Such a glorious scent. This particular lilac is called the Pocahontas Lilac and it has deep purple blooms. This year, in particular, there are a lot of flowers. I planted it on Mother’s Day in 2008 (not long after I started this blog.) Seven years later, it is nicely substantial. As I was writing this, I wondered just when it was that I planted it, so I searched the blog posts and found my answer. A blog turns out to be a very nice way of keeping track of events!

The two big rose bushes are questionable at the moment. One shows some green leaves coming in at the base. The other, older bush is still bare. I wonder if this winter was just too much for it? The thought of digging it out of the ground is daunting. Keep your fingers crossed. I’m hoping that the late spring is the culprit and that some growth will show itself soon.

The peony shoots are about 10 inches high, so it looks as if we’re right on track for bloom in and around the first week of June. The trees have all leafed out and the catalpa is starting to show baby versions of what will become giant heart-shaped leaves.

5-9 lilac 1

Thank you so much, everyone, for alerting me to the fact that my ‘dogwood’ was really a crabapple! That’s one of the wonderful things about blogging, this sharing of information. I don’t begin to pretend I know everything about gardening, or trees, or rose bushes. And one of the areas in which I know next to nothing is flowering trees, perhaps because we didn’t have any of them in my yard when I was growing up, and we still don’t have them here – save for what turns out to be a baby crabapple tree.

But I’m actually more excited about the crabapple than I was about the dogwood, because I’ve always thought them to be so beautiful. So now we know: dogwoods have 4 petals, which are really leaves/bracts, and my little tree’s blossoms had 5 petals. Once Nancy alerted me, I googled ‘crabapple photos’ and there, staring at me, was just what I was seeing through my own camera lens.

Let’s see, last year I was certain the big bush over by the shed was a wiegela and it turned out to be flowering quince. This year, I was certain my little volunteer tree was a dogwood and it turned out to be a crabapple. We never stop learning, do we? I love it.

Today, maybe some weed whacking. Or wacking. I’m never sure just what it is.

Maybe a trip to our local nursery. Definitely a trip to the grocery store.

Happy Saturday.

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Potpourri on Saturday

August 9, 2014 at 8:45 am by Claudia

I have to say the weather here has been simply gorgeous for the past few days, even though my time outside is limited. Low humidity, sunny skies, cool nights….heavenly, indeed. In fact, I’m sitting here in the blogging chair wrapped in a lightweight throw. Who would have thought?

I’m halfway through The Mockingbird Next Door: Life with Harper Lee and I’m completely caught up in this wonderful peek into Miss Lee’s life in Alabama. I spent most of the day reading it. Oh, Harper Lee, what an amazing person you are. Look for a review Monday on Just Let Me Finish This Page. I’m also halfway through Laura Lippman’s After I’m Gone, which will be reviewed on this blog next Thursday. I’m reading two-handed at the moment.

spirea & bee

I missed the first bloom of the spirea because I was in Chautauqua. But there’s always a smallish second bloom, which I’m grateful for.

After I wrote about my obsession with Palamino Blackwing pencils, a couple of you ordered some and….you like them! There’s always a risk when I go on and on about how wonderful a thing is that you just might not feel the same way. So I’m very happy that you find them as terrific as I do. That makes me smile.

In that same vein, I want to pass along a couple of sites that I think you might like. You may already know about them, but I only recently discovered them and I’m hooked. There are so many design sites out there and some of them are regular stops on my daily travels around the web. But I find a lot of them a bit limited; too much mid-century modern, too much all-white, too much of one thing. I tend to avoid them. But my new favorite site, Remodelista, is full of all sorts of interiors. Yes, the hip is there, but there is so much variety that I think you’ll really like it. And it doesn’t just focus on ‘trends,’ thank goodness. Trends make my eyes glaze over. (Though, they do use the word ‘trending’ a lot. I just ignore it.) It’s run by a group of contributors and the content is fresh and varied and there’s something for everyone. The homes featured are from all over the world. When I first discovered Remodelista, I spent about three hours going through the archives. Because, like all of us, I like to look at photos of interiors, but I prefer seeing interiors that speak of the person living there, that look real and lived in and individual and are not so staged that they might as well be in a model home.

Then I discovered Remodelista’s sister site, Gardenista. Need I say more? Such gorgeous photos of all sorts of gardens; big, small, and in between. Lots of handy tips. And, like Remodelista, the gardens are from all over the world. I think you’ll like both sites.

spires of liatris

And I also have to pass along a link to this feature on Houzz. This is the most adorable tiny cottage in New Hampshire. I just saw it this morning and fell in love with it. You’ll be fantasizing about living in your own tiny little cottage, not as tiny as the one room Tiny House movement, which is wonderful but more than a bit impractical for most of us, but in a perfectly small and perfectly perfect little clapboard cottage.

It’s now 8:30. I have to stall for another thirty minutes before I can have my second cup of coffee with half and half. I’m counting the minutes.

Happy Saturday.

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P: The Porch, A Pot, A Plant, And Pruning

Lilacs, Mulching & Mistaken Identity

Potpourri on Saturday

Lambs Like to Party

A Note

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