january bloom day 2013

I'm a day late, but that's better than nothing right??

January is not my best month for blooms, but I did put in some Hellebores, or Christmas Roses as I call them, in my rock garden, and they're starting to show flowers.

My dad thinks the downward facing flowers on the Christmas Roses are depressing, so he had my mom remove all of  hers from the front gardens a few years ago.  They were pulled up, and tossed in the woods, where they thrived...which made them perfect candidates to be relocated to my shade, shade, more shade, and sometimes neglected environment.

I tilted this flower up a little so you can see the pretty mauve spots on the inside of the flowers.  My grandmother likes to keep the cut blooms face up in floating arrangements.  One day when it's especially cold and yucky outside, I'll have to do this as a reminder that spring is eventually coming.

The other flowers I have blooming I picked up by chance at our local Ace Hardware with some pansies.  (I saved the tag, but will have to come back later to identify it. They start with a C, but that's all I remember right now)  This picture is pretty terrible, but it's nice to have have a little bit of life beside my back door.

January

November

I want to show one non-bloom related picture because we have had so much rain in the past week. 

 

This is my pond.  The normal waterline is to the left of the trees that you see in the photo.  Last winter (our rainy season) the waterline rose to the base of the tree that you see second from the left.  We're way past that now.  What is crazy is that the pond has risen so much in less than a week.  We've had a ton of rain in east Tennessee (10"+), and as the water has soaked into the ground, the water table has risen and with it, my spring fed pond.   This picture was taken 1/15/13 around 2pm, and by 5:30pm the water had risen to the point where I had to move my benches (again).  They're now sitting at the base of a hill, and if they float away, I have bigger problems than replacing a bench!

Happy Belated Bloom Day Everyone!  If you'd like to see more of what is blooming around the world, please visit Carol over at May Dreams Gardens.

holiday recap

Now that the holidays are well behind us (and the SEC has won another National Championship) I thought I might as well share a little bit about what I've been up to on my holiday hiatus.

Sleeping, lots of sleeping...it really is my favorite thing to do, and it was glorious.

But I digress...  I didn't do a ton of decorating for the holidays, but I did enough to host the family's Christmas Eve and a group of my high school friends after Christmas without feeling like a grinch.

My sister took this picture of the pond on Christmas Eve

Our Christmas Eve tradition has always been dinner and presents with my dad's side of the family, but as my grandmother has gotten older, she's been a little more comfortable going out to dinner, then coming back to her house for dessert and presents.  Last year we transitioned to dessert and presents at my house, and this year I cooked and we did the whole thing at my house.  (My family was surprised that I could cook a turkey, go figure, this was like number 6 or 7 for me.) 

My Grandmother was thrilled to have dinner at my house, and I think it was the first meal she had eaten in the house since my great grandmother passed away in 1991.  It was nice to see her happy in the house, especially since I know she wasn't thrilled that I painted the kitchen yellow.

I spent the week after Christmas visiting friends who were in town for the holidays, and anyone who was still in town the weekend after Christmas came by my house to get togeather.  It's crazy that my group of high school friends has grown to include babies and puppies, but it has, and I think they had the best time out of anyone!  Little Bobby and Anoush (Armenian for sweet) are seriously best friends now.  Any time Bobby was upset...and that is hardly ever bc he is so chill...Anoush made everything better.  It was fantastic.

Our girl scout came through on the fire (since the ground was soaked), and I have to say it was a pretty perfect night.  (Well except for the part where a friend told us that she had to back to the UK for VISA issues, but she will better be be back)

from @Chandlee's instagram feed

New Year's Eve is one of my favorite holidays, and I have always celebrated with friends.  This year Clemson was playing LSU in the Peach Chick-Fil-A Bowl in Atlanta, and I apologized to the host in advance because I knew I was going to be preoccupied for the first half of the party.

Clemson vs. LSU was a pretty epic match-up, and going into the game I was nervous about how it was going to turn out.  LSU is good and consistent, Clemson is good, but no one can pretend that Clemson is the model of consistency.  Last year Clemson was on an emotional high coming off an ACC Championship, and was embarrassed by West Virginia.  So when I thought honestly about the game, it didn't look pretty. THEN Sammy Watkins was injured on the first drive of the game.  That was bad, there was a fumble, then LSU scored, but you knew that Clemson had success this year without Sammy, and all was not lost.  Somehow the team focused, rallied, improved at the half, and played the best 4th quarter of Clemson football that I have ever watched. (I've watched it about 3 times now, it was that good.)  4th & 16..4th & 16...it was just amazing.

Also over the holidays (but before Christmas, I know this is out of order) I got to spend time with an out of town friend that I don't see nearly enough.  The trip was not entirely planned, but we got to hang out, make a bazillion sugar cookies, and meet her new puppy.

Isn't she cute!!  She's a little sassy, but I think she's going to get a lot of that from her family (human and puppy brothers & sisters)

My holidays were great, and hope yours were too :)   And if anyone knows how to get rid of this 5 day work week, let me know, I feel spoiled!

garden update - plants!

I followed the plan and waited a full year before I started planting anything of permanence in my yard. I'm glad I waited.  I have wildflowers in unexpected places, and I now know that sunlight is a precious and rare commodity.  Most of my yard is what is considered not just shade, but deep shade. 

As soon as my year was up, I started on the Rock Garden, and Bird Garden.  I had already added edging here, broken up the soil (quite a chore), worked in compost, mulched, and tried a few annuals.(more)  In the process, I've learned a lot about this space. 

May 2012

December 2012

The impatiens did OK, (I think some were diseased) and the basil I planted in the tree stumps was no where near as successful as I'm used to.  Oh well, no more pesto for me this year.  Lesson learned, shade it is.

Deep shade or not, I'm really excited about this garden for next year...I just have to be choosy in my plant selections.  This area gets winter and some spring sun, but is mostly shade by summer.  Since we have already done some legwork here, I was able to start planting this fall. I added Christmas Roses (hellebore) and Hostas in between the hollow tree stumps, and planted Pansies in the stumps.

Look at the plants not the paint. I promise the house is going to be painted soon.

This spring I will replace the Pansies with impatiens.

But aren't they so pretty for now?

I also have some woodland poppies and money plants near my back door that I can't wait to see how they do next year.   This area will eventually become the kitchen garden, but all I have done in this area so far is weed and a little mulching.

Where the Rock Garden turns into the Bird Garden there is a singular spot that gets some morning  sun in the summer.  I planted a butterfly bush in this spot, and it seems to be doing well.  I'm excited to have some color here next summer.  Butterfly bushes can get huge, so I'm hoping that this one will get just enough sun to bloom, but still keep the size under control. 

The back side of my house is the area that I see everyday, as I come and go through the kitchen rather than my front door.  I've also started working on the sideyard, more on that soon :)

garden update - is it spring yet?

We've only had a few days of cold weather, and I'm already looking forward to spring...is that bad?  (I do love snow, but cold without snow is just not something I enjoy.)

Maybe it's because I'm really excited about spring at my house, specifically in the yard.  Last year was my first spring in my great grandmother's house.  It was pretty without me having to do anything, but it was very overgrown.  I loved it, but as my mom put it, 'it's a good thing you don't have neighbors who can see your yard.'  Ouch.  Over the past year we've done a lot of cleaning up, and I think spring is going to be fantastic this year. 

Since it's been a while since I've given you an update on my yard and my garden, I decided I would bombard you with garden posts for the next few days.  I hope you don't mind.  This is more for me than for most of you, but I know I'm pretending that you secretly want to know too.

Project # 1 Mulch
The biggest project of late was mulch.  It may not sound like a lot, but I think we unloaded 4 truckloads of mulch.  At some point I stopped counting and just kept shoveling.  The path to the pond was overgrown, and the beds around the house looked like they have been neglected for the past 20-30 years.  The dirt is hard and dry, and not suitable for much of anything without some serious TLC.

Luckily, utility crews were trimming near my parents house, and a neighbor who worked on the crew asked if they wanted mulch.  They said yes, and got over 10 dump truck loads of raw tree mulch...we're talking piles and piles of free mulch.  Accepting this kind of mulch is risky, since it can be a mix of anything and everything, but this looked good enough to use around my house.

The good thing and the bad thing about raw mulch is that it as it decomposes it kills everything underneath it.  This made it perfect for the path to the pond, and near the rock foundation of my house (the ivy is gone, and I want it to stay that way).   It took almost 2 truckloads to do the path to the pond, and the rest has gone around the house.  I protected the existing plants with older mulch, and used the raw mulch to fill in between.  I also put down cardboard in the areas that were weed or ivy prone before I added mulch, just to be safe.

You can see the darker mulch with a thin layer of raw mulch on top.

The plan here is to let the mulch decompose and have mother nature do her thing before I try and really work here. This gives me some time to focus on other areas and feel good knowing that when I'm ready to dig in here, it will be a lot easier. It already looks so much better having the beds defined and the weeds gone!

So much nicer seeing where the beds will be.

I'll be using rocks to define this edge more

While we were working on the mulch, we also took care of some drainage issues.  I'm not sure why the downspout drains were running uphill, (since my house is on top of a hill), but they were, and that was easily corrected.  My house can get a little damp, and this should go a long way towards correcting that problem.

It's always good for the water to flow away from the house.

The mulch has made a world of a difference, without violating my rule of observing for a year before I started planting anything.  

I have been busy, so look for more posts the next few days while I get caught up!

o christmas tree

I love Christmas.  I love the lights, the decorations, all of it. Since this is only my second Christmas in my new house, and last year I had just moved in, I don't have a lot in the way of decorations, and everything is either a hand me down or homemade.

What I do have are lights and a tree...and they're awesome.

My porch lights are so awesome that they stay up all year and are a feature of my Sunday night porch nights.

My tree is also fairly fantastic.  This year's tree is not quite as epic as last years 'go big or go home tree,'  but with a little help from my friends, I did cut it from the yard, and I love it.  It has a more traditional Christmas tree shape and still reaches the top of my ten foot ceilings.

The comedic value of last year's tree was enhanced by how sparsely it was decorated.  This year I've gone to the other extreme, and most branches have 3 or 4 colorful ornaments each.  Seriously.  It's wonderful.  Plus 75% of the ornaments on the tree are older than I am, which I think is pretty hysterical.  Apparently pink & blue & sparkle was what Christmas in the 70's was all about.
 
The only question I have left about my tree is whether to go all out and add vintage silver icicles to my tree...you know, the tacky, messy kind.  What do you think, too much or perfect?