Landscaping the West Fence - Part 2

Last night I came home with the kids to find H in the back yard, digging up the dogwood. This is kinda how he operates - he'll be focused on something, like making dinner, and then go "Oh, I'll just do this 3 hour task real quick."

It's like my dad's version of a "half hour job".

So he and G stayed out there (WELL past G's bedtime) to finish digging it up and transplanting it. In his rush, he snapped off the taproot, so we'll see if it survives. He did get a nice large rootball otherwise.

Still, the results can't be argued with. She nicely fits in between our neighbors two shrubs - a lilac and another red-twig dogwood - to create some lovely screening.

Now I just need to get the other plants put in the ground and mulch the bed.

Which reminds me, I need to order a mulch delivery.

Landscaping the west fence - Part 1

FINALLY!  We've only been sitting on these garden plans for 2 years now.

Saturday we rented a sod remover and H went thru and cut it all out. G alternated between helping me roll up the strips of sod and playing in his water table while C hung out in his exersaucer. By the end of the day all of the sod was removed. The bed is 70 feet long. At the widest two points 10 feet wide and no narrower than 5 feet.

The Curly Duo were very curious what was happening to their running path. They're the reason we're doing this - they race along the fence with the neighbor's dog, so we're putting in a lot of screening bushes and plants. Just look at how compacted the soil is from them!

Of course, he didn't follow the landscaping plan or how I had staked it out. So now we're looking at much more garden bed than I had purchased plants for

Today we rototilled the bed, which removed the rest of the grass from the fence line. Then I spaced the plants out but didn't have time to plant them.  The dogwood you see in the top photo is going to be transplanted along the fence in the first large curve. The other plants are: 12 Karl Foester Feather Reed Grass, 3 rose bushes, 6 gailliarda, 10 daylilly, 10 shasta daisy. I am still looking for a supplier for the variety of spirea japonica that I want.

Baby birds

We have a nest of baby birds on our deck's pergola.

G is especially excited about this. He can just see the babies popping their heads up from his room, so we watch the adult robins feeding them each morning and evening.

More organizing - bathroom edition

So, my husband has this disorder. He is constantly buying multiples of items we have because he cannot seem to actually check if we have it before going to the store. So this is how we end up with 3 bottles of garlic powder, 5 canisters of hair product, and 12 bars of soap.

In my attempt to make this house more streamlined, especially once I go back to work, I needed to fix at least one of these areas. So I focused on the bathroom closet.

See the thing is I was storing all our "extras" in the tupperware bin on the top shelf. But my husband is apparently incapable of looking there to see if he has anything.  Additionally we have lots of large bottles that don't quite fit into a neat container. Rubbing alcohol, mouthwash, that sort of thing.

So I've moved it to the door.

The rest of the closet could use a good cleaning out and reorganization. I'm not sure exactly what's in that black bag there, for example, and there has to be a better way to store my hair dryer and curling iron. Still, this is an improvement. And hopefully will reduce the number of bottles of hair mousse.

Pantry organization

There's nothing truly magical about organizing a pantry. Not really. It just takes some thought to figure out what you use, how you use it and then having the right organizing accessories on hand.

Take, for example, our pantry.

This is before I really evaluated it. You can see some past attempts at organizing with the canvas baskets but, really, nothing major was done. Now, granted, we don't keep an overstocked pantry, but we do use it for bulk storage of paper goods, dog food and some cooking supplies that don't fit in other cupboards. It also was home to our picnic backpack and wine tote, which was kept on the top shelf.

So, upon evaluation, I made two major changes. One: the picnic backpack and wine tote went into basement storage with the rest of our outdoor summer gear. Two: I reorganized the bulk storage by placing things we use infrequently (like plastic silverware) on the very bottom. Then I just picked up some additional organizing supplies from The Container Store - an extendable can shelf so we have clear view of what canned goods we have, two white buckets for storing snack foods, bags of specialty rice, etc. and voila.

Nothing magical about the execution but there is something magical about the result.

New Laundry Room

The downside of a garden blog when you live in a northern clime is that you spend 6 months out of the year unable to garden. So, with the winter months heavy on us, we switch our focus to indoors.

When we first moved into this house, we were more than satisfied with the second floor laundry storage situation. We had two spare bedroom closets of storage on the same floor and the two shelves were more than adequate for holding detergent and such.

So H and his mother just added a fresh coat of paint and put in the ironing board holder on the side. A few months ago I added the screw on the wall to hold the dryer's drying rack.

But then we had G, so that removed that entire closet - no problem. We had the second bedroom. Then C arrived this past November and suddenly we were short storage. We also needed a better solution for air drying clothes. So I decided to get rid of the rinky-dink shelves and maximize the space in that closet.

7 weeks post-partum. With an infant not fond of napping. Small hitch.

I started by removing the old shelves, obviously. Turned out when H and his mom painted they didn't do the same, so the paint had sealed the uprights to the wall. A few knocks with a hammer and they came out. But obviously that has to be painted.

Next I went to install the top tracks and realized I'd picked up the wrong hardware, so I needed to install into studs. And the screws in the hardware kit I had picked up did not want to screw in the whole way. Fortunately I had the wood screws from C's Elfa install and those worked fine.

I'd gotten all that done and one track up during C's surprising naps. But he wasn't having it after that. So...

Like a Boss.

With C settled in the Ergo, I finished drilling in the second track, put in the uprights, installed the shelves and:

Not bad! This adds an entire 3000+ square inches of storage space, plus 20" of hanging. I did discover, putting items back on the shelves that they are serious when they say you need uprights 2' apart. So I have to go back and get one more to put in that 3' gap. And then patch/paint.

Next up will be trying to clean out the basement work area. It's a disaster.

Happy Birthday to me

A garden hod! Just what I wanted!

Garden Update

Well here is August. We scaled back on the garden this year, planting only one bed fully and adding a pumpkin plant in the middle bed.

 

The reason for scaling back?

That'd be me, 6 months pregnant.  I found out after having planned out this year's garden, . Not wanting a repeat of 2010 (where I'd already planted all 3 beds fully before finding out I was pregnant with G), we immediately changed plans.

But we've taken in a decent amount already. About 6 zucchini and an equal number of squash and 4 cucumbers.  But the real winner this year, so far, is the pumpkin plant.

He's about half the length of the bed already and has overflowed on both sides.  So far I've counted 5 pumpkins on the vine, with more blossoms appearing, including this big boy.
 

It's going to be a fun Halloween.

Finally

After the wettest April on record, I finally got into the garden today.

For better or worse, it wasn't for the landscaping plans we had drawn up.  Instead, I decided to mulch and plant out the bed under our river birch clump.

Four years ago we had planted a few plants there - one lavender, two Russian sage, one prairie star - with the intention of planting more.

Yeah.

So!  Today I went thru the bed, weeded, added mulch, and then went to the garden center.  My inspiration was this post from Fennel and Fern.  I loved the idea of using only a few plants to create texture.

So I ended up with more lavender, cranesbill geranium and dwarf fountain grass.

Obviously on a much smaller scale though.  You can see that original lavender plant up front.  So I added 6 more of that (2 up front by the other lavender, 4 in the back row), 3 of the geranium and 3 of the fountain grass (that's G peeking out between the trees. he's 2 1/2 now).

It is harder to create the close plantings in the original photo because of the river birch's roots.  But if these plants fill in as much as the lavender, it should look lovely.  I may eventually try and add more of the geranium and fountain grass, but we'll see.

Looking forward for 2013

So, last year one thing I didn't mention is that we had landscaping plans drawn up for the backyard by a local Landscape Artist.  The reason I didn't mention it is because we had a massive drought last year, so we didn't do anything with the plan.

In the meantime, we've had a chance to pour over the plan and make changes and adjustments on our own.  So here's what we're looking at:

Our focus is going to be on the west side of the yard this year.  Diggers Hotline came today to mark electrical lines.  This coming weekend we're going to be transplanting the apple tree and probably digging out and potentially transplanting the shrub clump to the west of the patio before the ticket "expires".

Other yard to-do items that I can think of off the top of my head:

• thatching
• aerating
• seeding
• garage organizing
• yard sale

And, of course, the mutant veggie garden.  We're down to about 2 gallons of tomato sauce and pulled out the last bag of salsa just this week.