mini shade garden

The string of creative names continues.  Not too far from my "Shade Garden" is an area that I am calling, for lack of better words, "Mini Shade Garden".  It's less than 1/4 the size of the "Shade Garden," and is basically a triangle in front of a large Hemlock.

The kennel wire around the tree is leftover from my blackberry fence, and my thoughts are to wrap it around the tree, and plant a flowering vine at the base.

I wanted the focal point of this garden to be a hydrangea, and if you read my blog yesterday, then you won't be surprised to know that a few weeks ago I begrudgingly added an Oak Leaf Hydrangea.

It's a tiny stick now, but as it matures, it should spread to a 6 foot shrub.  We'll see.

Also in the Mini Shade Garden:

• Lily of the Valley
• Native Columbine
• No ivy.  This is an area that we pulled the ivy out by hand. 

Both the Lilly of the Valley and the Native Columbine are known to spread, so I planted both to see which wins out Darwin style.

shade garden - close ups

I want to keep track of how fast things grow and fill out, so I took these pictures of the plants in the Shade Garden right after they were moved.  The idea is I can look back at them this spring before I move on to other areas, and see what my spacing / density needs to be.

The hydrangea with the best chance

This hydrangea may not make it.

Center section of Hearts-A-Bursting

Huckleberries

Holly - moved 1 week before 1st frost

Little Brown Jugs

Azalea

shade garden

One day, maybe, I'll come up with creative names for my gardens.  Today is not that day.  Today the best name I can come up with for the area that my mom and I have been working on is "Shade Garden".  It's a horrible name.  All of my gardens are in the shade.  "Shade Garden" in no way distinguishes this part of my yard from any other.  The important part is not the name, but the fact that it's finished.

Before we get any further, let's talk about hydrangeas, and specifically Oak Leaf Hydrangeas.  I have a love hate relationship with hydrangeas.  When I moved into my house, I decided that I wanted to include as many 'old-fashioned' plants as possible.  Hydrangeas qualify. They've been around forever.  They're shrubs, so they're good habitats for critters, and I do love nature.  They also bloom, which is plus when you're dealing with shade, and they make good cut flowers.  That's a lot of positives. This is what I don't like:

1. Hydrangeas are trendy right now, and I'm not the kind of person who follows trends. 
2. Blue hydrangeas make me think of trailer parks.  (You can say that when you grew up near trailer parks.  And I'm not the only one who things so, so don't judge me alone.) There's nothing wrong with trailer parks, but they've never been my aspiration or inspiration.  
3. I hate their foliage almost as much as I hate iris foliage.  Plants only bloom part of the year, so for me, what you're looking at most of the time is important.  When Oak Leaf Hydrangeas aren't blooming, they look like they're trying to be trees, but their leaves got fat instead, and they grew out instead of up.

So you can guess what the first plants to go into the "Shade Garden" were.  Oak Leaf Hydrangeas.  They grow very well here, and as such, I have access to almost an unlimited supply of free Oak Leaf Hydrangeas. Free always wins.

OK, back to the story of the newly named "Shade Garden."

So last summer we got out the Round-Up, and went to war with the ivy behind my shed.  It was a hot and dry summer, and after two applications ivy was gone.  Last fall we blew leaves into this area to help with the mulch, and the ivy stayed away. Hallelujah! There was an azalea, a holly, some huckleberries, and a few Hearts-A-Burstin in this spot, so the foundation of a garden was there, it just didn't look like anything yet.  It was a mess, but I called it natural and didn't loose any sleep over it.

Fast forward to about a month ago.  My house was finally painted, and it was time to make my yard as spiffy as my house.  The area behind my freshly painted shed needed to go from 'area where the ivy used to be' to some type of garden.  'Garden' being an area with things that bloom and laid out in a way that you can see said blooms.

I'm a big fan of plants that have grown with little or no attention over the course of the past 20 years, so I decided to keep everything that was growing in this area, but move it around so that the tall things were in the back, and the short things in the front. I also brought in 2 baby Oak Leaf Hydrangeas from my parent's house, and a mix of hostas from my house and my parent's house to add blooms.  It was a very sophisticated plan.

The end result is that I have something that resembles a garden.

Or should I say, looks like a garden after I label everything, and you don't have to play Where's Waldo to find the plants.

Since I forgot to take a before picture, imagine all the plants clustered together around the azalea and the small tree up front. We moved everything back and out, with the exception of the azalea. (I was scared I would kill if we tried to dig it up.)  Now that we're finished, you can actually see the azalea, and since the holly is no longer on top of it, both plants should do better.  The hydrangeas have plenty of room to fill out, and the Hearts-A-Bursting & huckleberries should look nice in swaths in the back.  You can see everything, and it still looks natural.  In the spring it should look like a garden.  Mission accomplished.

This post has close ups of the plants we moved.

Garden Update

If you're reading this post, I just want to say thank you.  I have fallen back into my inconsistant nonexistant blogger habits, and if you've stuck with me through it, I really appreciate it.

So in the past month or so I haven't been out and about around Chattanooga much (I missed Southern Brewers Festival, the Tennessee Whiskey Festival, AND Wine Over Water), but a lot has been happening on the home front. Outside my house, inside my house, and all over the yard.  Here's a rundown of projects we've been working on, and I'll go into detail about each one in the coming weeks.

1. My house is painted!  You may have noticed that my house itself has been absent from my garden pictures thus far.  That's because the paint was peeling and falling off the back of the house.  The house is now painted, and we are at the cleaning up after my painter stage of the project.  It looks SO much better.
2. My living room has gotten an unexpected remodel.  What started with painting the back of my built in cabinets turned into new crown molding, work on my ceiling, and a whole lot of painting.
3. I now have an area that shall henceforth be known as 'the woodland garden' 'the shade garden'.  We have turned one random azalea and a few volunteer plants in the woods into an area that has a some structure (the tall plants are now in the back) but is appropriately disheveled for my liking.
4. My day lilies can breathe!  The only significant flower bed that existed when I moved into my great grand mother's house was a row of day lilies that might be older than I am.  While you think that might be pretty, (and they were) you have to remember that day lilies multiply, and these were way past over crowded.  Side note: if anyone wants day lilies, PLEASE let me know, I still have hundreds!  I'm not even kidding.
5. We've also done some work in the gardens around the kitchen and the driveway.  Some of it has been general maintenance, and some of it has involved transplanting.

Believe it or not, you're looking at around 50 day lily plants. 
They were extremely overcrowded

It actually has been a lot of work, but the weather is nice, and it's a good time of year to be working outside.  I know it will pay dividends this spring, when I can show you pictures that will actually include my house!

a recipe

Creative post title right?  I don't usually do recipe posts, but I made something this weekend that I really liked, and I thought I'd share.

French toast is one of my all-time favorite breakfast foods, but one that I don't usually make for myself.  It's messy, and I can burn grilled cheese, so I tend to stay away.  I've been eyeing some french toast bakes on pinterest, so I combined a few recipes, took a look around my kitchen, and came up with this:

Ingredients:

1. (1) medium loaf/baguette of sourdough bread
2. 4 eggs
3. 1 cup almond milk
4. 2 tablespoons of vanilla
5. 1 tablespoon-ish Alchemy Spice "Wake & Bake" (Cinnamon, nutmeg, good stuff blend)

Prep:
Wisk everything except the bread together in a large bowl.  Slice the bread into 1"-1.25" slices.  (Since I was doing finger foods for brunch, I cut them again into stick size slices.) Gently place the bread into the bowl, folding it once after all the bread is added, and let it soak for about an hour.

This is where I thought I was going to have a pinterest fail.  The bread quickly became mushy, and wanted to fall apart in the bowl, before I even finished adding all the bread.  I think this is because my bread had dried out some, but I had a small freak out.  I ended up with some small-ish pieces, but it came back together as it baked....and they were still really good.

Bake:
Place in a greased (and floured if you feel so inclined) 13"x9" pan, and bake in a pre-heated 350 degree oven for 30-45 minutes, or until brown.

ta-da - french toast sticks

This turned out really good.  Good enough for me to type out a post just so I can pin it, and have it for future reference good.

Some notes:  I have started keeping almond milk around because it lasts longer in my fridge.  It's thicker than regular milk, which I think works well here, but you can use whatever you have in your fridge.  Vanilla is always good, and the Wake & Bake Sweet Spice is worth keeping around.   I used it in an apple sangria last fall, and my mom puts it on apples.  A little goes a long way, so use it to taste.  Alchemy is a local Chattanooga Company, so gotta love that too.