Haiku for the Yahoo! Weather App

Yahoo! Weather app
Stopped clocks are right more than you
Weather app you suck

Yahoo! Weather app
Uninstalling is too good
For this sucky app

I had to start somewhere

I got tired of looking out the french doors to the back patio and seeing dirt...and fence. I may not know what I want to do with the rest of the back, but I was suddenly inspired to experiment in the one area I can't avoid looking at. I'm pleased with it:

I love this Crepe Myrtle - I think maybe it's Natchez? It has beautiful pendulous branches with white flowers. I'm going to plant another one parallel to it on the right side of the garden. Symmetry!

More angles:

I got it all in the ground last Sunday, just days before the great deluge. These pictures are post-deluge, which is why you don't see a lot of leaves on the ground: they're all washed up against the roots of the big oak tree. I plan to use them as a mulch for a bit, and then when I get real mulch just leave them under it to decompose. [I read things that say not to do that because it acidifies the soil, and messes with the pH too much for native plants like Crepe Myrtles? Argh, I don't know what the right answer is. To quote Barbie circa 1992: "Math is hard. Let's go shopping."]

Here's the outline to the left:

If you squint, the yard already looks better with the wood outline alone. Structure!

I laid the outline of the bed with some 2x4s left over from the patio overhang repairs. I plan to do it with brick, like danger garden! [I asked her via email about the edging and she very kindly shared the info. Then I told her I was going to Single White Female her garden, which in retrospect might freak a person out a little. Nothing in HER garden will die by my hands, so the similarity pretty much ends with me being a big fat copycat.]

I planted:

• 2 of some elephant ear (dang it!!)
• 6 Varigated Giant Liriope
• 3 Cast Iron plant
• 2 Giant Apostle Iris 'Regina'
• 3 Canna (the 'Blueberry Sparkler' canna I pulled up from the front beds)

I know the canna will never bloom there but that's okay, I just want them for the darker foliage. The only ones likely to survive winter/come back are the liriope and Cast Iron plants, but it's worth rolling the dice.

Yes, I'm avoiding doing anything substantive with the ugliness of that entire left side of the garden yard. And the right side, for that matter. I just needed something back there to give me hope for the future.

My name is Wendy, and I'm an over-planter

It's 75% strategery, and 25% a really poor sense of dimensions. Or I might have that backwards.

That reminds me of a joke: why are women so bad a math? Punchline: because they're always being told that this [holds up hands spaced approximately 3 inches apart] is 6 inches.

I really do read the tags and carefully consider the size of each plant before I dig the hole. My issue is that I consider the size of each plant individually, rather than looking for overlapping diameters of growth. (I'm sure there's a gardenery technical term for that.)

You'd think an awareness of this would empower me with an ability to fix it, but I've come to the conclusion that it's part of my process. I will plant things too close to each other, let them fill in, and then decide what stays and what goes.

I love an exuberant garden and have an inability to leave empty spaces empty. It isn't because I don't appreciate the value of empty space, it's just because there are too many awesome plants.

Which brings me to today's garden activities. I've been trying to incorporate more dark foliage into my front bed. It gives a garden some gravitas and maturity, I think. To that end, I ordered a small tree called 'Ruby Falls' Weeping Redbud. Here's the picture from the online nursery:

Sooner Plant Farm, Ruby Falls Weeping Redbud

I know our neighbors keep commenting (positively) that my makeover has really opened up the front of the house, but I felt some height variation was in order too. So I planted this baby right here:

This necessitated moving those blue grasses around a bit, which needed to happen anyway. I also planted another 'Lafter' rose in that area (to replace the one that didn't make it back in August), and then I planted some Salvia guaranitica 'black and blue' on the edges next to the walkway.

I'm the least confident in the Salvia planting, because:

1. That area gets a lot of sun, and my experience with those is that they like filtered sunlight
2. They're ultimately too close to the rose

But right now everything looks lovely.

I planted another 'Lafter' rose (for a total of 3) over on the far right end, to replace the Atlas blue palm that died. (In my defense, I watered it the same as I did the Bismark Palm which is doing GREAT, so the blue palm can suck it.)

That picture isn't worth posting because the light was awful and my iPhone didn't do it justice, but I'll take a decent shot and post it just for record keeping. Rest assured, it's all likely too close together.

I have grand plans for that side of the house: I'm going to have that stupid giant green shrubbery pulled up and plant a Castor plant! I don't know how big it will get before winter kills it (it's an annual), but it will be a fun experiment. Let's pretend it will look like this:

Photo: Purdue University, Purdue Plant and Pest Diagnostic Laboratory

I planted another one here, just for kicks:

Forgive the ugly shadows, it was early afternoon

I moved the Agave 'Live Wires' closer to the walkway, but that thing will still overtake them if it gets as big as pictures indicate. Luckily it's easily killed if I don't like it.

THIS necessitated moving the poor germander 'Azure' yet again, but I think it's now in a permanent home. I moved another in that far right bed. I also moved the Saliva clevelandii, and I worry it will punish me for that. (I moved a lot of plants today, come to think of it....)

Ironically, my primary goal today was to plant all the irises I ordered from Schreiner's Iris Gardens. Of the 18 I ordered, I got a whopping 6 in the ground before I ran out of dirt. (I always underestimate the amount of dirt or mulch I'll need. See math joke above.)

Droppin' some wisdom on you, gardener style

Everything this guy says here.

It's always darkest before the dawn...and in the shade garden

Last weekend (maybe the weekend prior?) some guys came through our 'hood and trimmed our neighbor's trees, and then offered to trim ours.

We ended up paying them to trim our trees a bit, and pull up a bunch of the shrubs in the back as well. I was dreading yanking out that Holly myself:

These pictures were taken by the seller's realtor, so trust me when I tell you that these pictures make it look waaaaay better than it actually was. It was a hot mess.

And now I have this, which is a hotter mess:

I left some of the reasonably decent looking trees, 99% of which are Crepe Myrtles. And of course the bazillion year old Oak with giant roots everywhere.

Don't get me wrong, I LOVE the Oak tree, I'm just not sure how to garden in its proximity. I will not, I repeat NOT, do that stupid thing people do where they plant a bunch of tiny plants in a circle around the base of the tree. It looks ridiculous. (It appears the former owners haphazardly - as they did all things - attempted that with some Mondo grass.)

I don't want grass at all. I want to do pea gravel and big flat pavers, with deep beds along the edges of the fence and house. This is my Pinterest page for the back.

Not sure how to put down pea gravel around all those big roots and not have it get washed toward the house in a good rain. And there are weird things going on over by the fence on the north fence side: I see tattered and half-buried landscape cloth to the left, and what appears to be wood edging from an aborted raised bed.

I might need to consult with someone on getting the back garden "foundation" set up properly before I dive into planting. Sigh. That part's not as much fun, but with Summer winding down it's the smarter move. I'd love to get enough settled that I could get a couple of trees in the ground, though. I'm thinking about three Texas sun tolerant Japanese Maples as my anchors. Apparently such things exist....

This post is called 'Before and After', or 'Reason #437 I'm a terrible blogger'

Reason #2 is that I take terrible pictures. Reason #437 is that I never take 'Before' pictures, or if I do I forget to post them! But the good news is:

1. I found the pictures from the original listing, so better late than never
2. I decided to stick with the yellow color in the sunroom. For now, anyway.

Here's the sunroom, since that was on the top of the to-do list for the weekend.

Before: the blandest room in all of Blandville

What this photo can't possibly convey is how ugly the tile is, and how much the windows need to be replaced. (You know, the windows hidden behind the gawd awful curtains on brass curtain rods.) Mind you, the room hasn't looked quite like that since the day we got the keys: the first thing I did was to pull down all the window treatments.

The tile will be replaced someday, and I need to sew a cushion cover for the bench, but this is certainly an improvement:

 

It kind of makes me want to repaint the dining area, which is right next to it...but I'm going try to stifle that urge for as long as I possibly can.

So now on to the living area and the boys' playroom! (These will be more dramatic due to the addition of hardwood floors and removal of popcorn ceiling, but I'm taking credit for having done all that since I'll be paying it off for the next year....)

Before

After (this caption is probably superfluous)

Before

(Bonus shot of Ollie looking for his squeaky mouse.)

 

View from the informal (kitchen) dining area

If you look closely, you can see the unpainted edges next to the ceiling; I couldn't reach any higher with a paint brush on our tallest ladder. Someday I'll address that....

How about that carpet, huh? And note the strip of tile in between the formal dining area and the living area. It matched the kitchen/informal dining area, so it had that going for it.

Before

(Again: Ollie the photobomber)

Before: formal dining area

Now: a play area for the boys

I have to give the seller's realtor this: she took photos that look bright and clean, and the home looks ginormous! But despite my inept photography skills I think there's still an obvious improvement.

You might be wondering what's going on with the fireplace. As you can tell from the before and after comparison, I painted it white and that made a huge difference: it went from looking country to looking more modern and like an actual feature of the room. 

(Full disclosure: I haven't even painted it yet, I've only primed it.)

Those shapes in the middle are some rudimentary fretwork designs (just cut outs of paper). 

I agonized over what to do with that center space: it's heavily textured wall, and I didn't like the look of either a mirror or a picture. I'll need to get some very thin balsa wood cut to size, nail it up there, paint it, and then apply the trim in whatever pattern I settle on.

Here's what gave me the idea:

Image: Burnham Design (http://www.burnhamdesign.com)

Pretty amazing, huh? Here's something a little closer to what I envision:

(Sorry for the poor-quality photo)

Both rooms need the ceiling fans replaced someday, but we'll get there.

Garden updates

I've made a few edits to the front garden bed, but they were significant.

I dug up the Valentine roses and put them in pots in the back. I did this for 2 reasons:

1. I decided I really wanted an orange bloom instead of red
2. The deer were decimating them

I'll keep them there until it's cool enough to put them back in the ground, and then I'll plant them in the back. They're flourishing without deer snacking on them nightly, which doesn't bode well for the roses I plan to replace them with. This gardening-with-deer thing is more challenging than I anticipated.

I'm using 'Lafter' instead, which you might have seen in pictures from my old garden.

Image from Countryside Roses

I'm only planting 3, and if I can't keep them from getting stripped clean by the stinkin' deer then I'll have to find an alternative entirely to roses in the front. That prospect makes me sad.

I also bought some Canna 'Wyoming' from Karchesky Canna. I had some of those in my old garden as well. (I pulled up the 'Blueberry Sparkler' canna I planted in the Spring, and it's now in a temporary pot too.)

And now my favorite recent purchase: Yucca Rostrata 'Sapphire Skies':

I'd had the smaller one in a pot for a few years, and got the larger one for a really good price. (It's approximately 25 years old - they're slow growers.)

It's exactly what I'd originally pictured against that wall, but seemed too expensive at the time. You know how sometimes you think about making a big purchase for a long while, and then when you do it's not what you hoped? This wasn't one of those times. I'd spent all summer being dissatisfied with that bed's composition, and I finally feel like it's moving in the right direction.

You can't tell from the picture, but I have smaller yucca rostrata in the pots throughout the garden, so there's symmetry and all that.

I just received some iris I ordered from Schreiner's Iris, and I'm anxious to get those in the ground but I'm keeping them in pots until September. I can't afford to lose any of them to this heat!

I installed some drip irrigation today, so we'll see if that keeps things alive. It finally started getting stupid hot here. We were lucky to have had as mild a Spring as we did, for as long as we did.