Ahhhh...gardens

I wish I had more time to spend in mine lately. I was out watering things this morning and there's lots to weed, trim, mow and prune (and I have a small garden!). There's one lonely zucchini that survived the slug threat, but I don't think it will produce anything (keeps flowering then *ptht* done). I am, however, ecstatic about the honeysuckle this year -- for years I just swore at it because it was plagued by aphids, but it's had a banner year with tons of flowers and now *gasp* berries! (Lovely berries that are almost a candy shade of red, very beautiful to look at.) So I'm not writing off honeysuckle anymore.

Work has been busy this week too. Lots of tight deadlines (not my fault) and a nice 20-page brochure that's due tomorrow (I stayed up until 10pm last night working on it...phew). I'll be sending out emails soon to let all the clients know that I'm gone in October, and fingers crossed things won't get too hairy this month before we leave (although I know I can wish all I want, it seems like it always happens).

And reno's keep on going. I'll have pictures eventually, but we're still living with hardly any furniture in the room. Crown moulding goes up this weekend, and I have to put a coat of paint on the cupboards to freshen them up. (Oh, and have I mentioned that Trevor offered to have a BBQ at our place next weekend for some relatives visiting from LA? Yes, it's true...nothing like a deadline to get things done.)

photos via the very lovely Woodhams (which I might just pop into when we're in London!)

Tomatoes

There's something really satisfying knowing that I grew these from seed. These are the first two ripe and picked from the back yard, with many more changing colour. If I'm lucky, there will be enough for a salsa. (mmmm...salsa!)

Lilies in the garden

They were late in blooming this year, but there were a lot to look at (love those reproducing bulbs!).

Outdoor room

This yard is small, but it has everything you can imagine crammed into it, and it looks pretty good!
via The Inspired Room

Damn you Martha!

She always sets the bar so high. I post two pictures of my peonies and she goes and throws a 'peony party'. I swear, I will never live up to her standards. Sheesh.

Now to plan a weed-whacker social...

Peonies and a bee

Slowly but surely it's starting to feel like summer around here. There's been a few (rare) hot days and enough rain to keep everything green and happy. Finally, the peonies have bloomed!
(A gratuitous shot of a bee bum ;) )

Rosy Friday

These are the roses I would plant on an arbor, and I would plant them now if we weren't living in this house (the garden is pretty much out of room). It's called a Climbing Joseph's Coat and it's blooms range from yellow, peach, pink and orange, all on the same plant. I'm not a rose person, but these totally won me over. *sigh* One day...

So things on the work side have calmed down substantially. I will officially have a weekend off now! I plan on working on the basement, choosing some tiles for the master ensuite, finding some new decor ideas for the living room and hitting up a bbq we're invited to. It will be quite civilized!

Therapy

I'm waiting at the moment for my Monday morning to begin, (there's noon deadlines today, but at least I'm not the slow one!) but I took some time over the weekend to absorb my garden. It may be small, but it makes me happy. The lilacs are starting to bloom and everything is starting to grow like mad now. I've planted plenty of annuals for colour (my favorites being the monkey flowers, petunias and sweet peas) and my containers and baskets are starting to fill in. I also managed to get out on Sunday to fertilize the lawn (all natural, of course) and clean a few things up. So here's some garden goodness to take in:

A group of containers, with monkey flowers, wave petunias, coleus, and sweet peas.Close up of a monkey flower.Potatoes planted a la Jamie Oliver, in bags of soil (I think they need to be called the Three Tenors or the Three Stooges because they look like faces where we've stabbed them!).Urn planted with pansies, sweet peas, a trailing vine I forget the name of and those stinky white trailing flowers that just managed to survive the winter on the porch and came back again.One of the veggie boxes with tomatoes and a yellow pepper started by seed!My favorite container(s) this year, the one I was trying to emulate from the garden magazine, but I couldn't find all the plants they used exactly. So now there's a canna lily, pansies, creeping jenny, a big succulent that I can't remember the name of, kale and cabbage.The containers on the railing. A coleus that's dying (doesn't like all the sun there, who knew?), pansies, cabbage (yes, we'll see how that looks!), potato vines and something else I can't remember the name of right now.One of three hanging baskets, with our neon green permit still stuck in the window. One day soon that will be coming down and we won't have to advertise to the neighbourhood that our house is a disaster inside.

Hopefully I'll be more up-and-at-'em with the blog this week. The past two weeks have been hairy with deadlines and work piled on in ways I haven't ever seen. It seemed for a while there that I was a giant magnet and everyone within the city limits were zipping over with new projects (all which have insanely tight deadlines). Of course, being the designer who doesn't want to disappoint, I put my life on hold and work to get it all done. I think this will be all coming to an end this week (barring the odd press check and runaround or two) and I can't wait to have normal weekends again, and time to cruise through my daily/weekly list of blogs. Now to just get this morning over with...

What's new around here?

Last night, Trevor mentioned to me that the blog used to be more fun to read -- there used to be more little stories and blips of things that we do together. So I'll try to bring a little more of that back again. Maybe we've been lacking in those 'blips' around here lately, we've been on a big house kick (I think the nicer weather has something to do with it) so there's more domestic things going on.

I've been working in the garden, prettying things up. I have a bit of a lawn obsession this year (either that or I've finally figured out how to care for it -- not difficult seeing as our lawn is about the size of a postage stamp) and I'm loving the wild-looking tulips that have come up in the yard. The lilacs are going to bloom next and are going to smell fantastic. And then the peonies will pop out in their white and deep fushia blooms. The best part is that this year I get to see it all happen (thanks to working at home), and on those warm summer days when most of my clients are on holiday I can take an afternoon here and there to putter around the yard (although I know my enthusiasm for watering things will wear out by about mid-July, lol!).I think this is a parrot tulip. I could be wrong, though!This is half of the tulip action in the front yard, with some really pretty pink and green star-shaped tulips.A box I had started over the winter with pansies and dianthus from the year before...crazy what some fertilizer can do!
And on the reno front, our renewed enthusiasm for finishing things around here has us (or Trevor I should say) almost finished the tub surround in the basement bathroom, and we're on to the floor tiles soon (which will then mean a disaster in the master bathroom as we're pillaging from there to supply the basement bathroom with a toilet and vanity so we can put the 'good stuff' in the master). It will make for a messy house, but it can't really get much worse than when we first started on things last summer (disaster!). There are many (MANY) things that we still need to do to the house: finishing the laundry room, laminate on the stairs to the basement, finishing strips, painting moulding and doors, installing moulding (crown and floor in the rest of the house), painting the main floor a different colour (with new drapes, yay!), cleaning gutters, cleaning vinyl siding, painting the exterior trim, replacing the outdoor carpet on the front steps, finishing electrical work on the garage, finishing the gate/back fence panel... Lots to do.

I'm sure there will be many interesting posts coming up this summer, so the entertainment value of this blog might go up a notch or two. I'll still be posting lots of things that inspire me (of course, as an artsy fartsy person I eat it up!). There should be a nice combination of artsy inspiration and dysfunction (reno meltdowns, losing our minds and just general chaos) to keep everyone going. ;)

DIY Weekend

It was busy around here this weekend. We're officially back on the reno bandwagon and getting this house up to snuff. Our 'go-go-go!' attitude hasn't subsided yet and we were tackling the rest of the bathroom tiling (okay, Trevor was, I was quality control):
I was in charge of outdoor improvements:
And prettying up my office (yes, I busted out the sewing machine, and only forgot a few things...but not bad so far no?):

Seedlings

These are sitting on my kitchen table at the moment. I've got every seed that I've planted popping open and getting big (making me wonder if I really needed to start them indoors 6 weeks early...). The pumpkins were the first to grow, followed closely by the sweet peas. The tomatoes, watermelon and yellow pepper took a little longer, but they're here!The pumpkins.Sweet peas.
I still have to plant the zucchini and beans outside once the chance of frost passes (mid-May around here). It's going to be a jam-packed garden around here this year!

Future project: Front porch containers

It's usually around this time of year that I start to get an itchy green thumb. The leaves are starting to pop out and things are starting to grow, and it sets my head in overdrive thinking of all the new plants I want to try in the garden this year. So far I've had my heart set on growing something like this (as seen in Fine Gardening):It's a really nice mix of textures and colour using Canna lilies, ornamental cabbage and kale and some creeping Jenny. I want to put two of these on the front porch, and I've been eyeing up Ikea pots (Mynta) that could work:

I'm trying to decide if the terracotta or white is better to use. hmmmm...

As seen on the weekend

The weekend was busy. Trevor took Friday away from work (I'll say 'away' because he worked, but at home) and we toured our LAST three high schools for their cafeteria signage updates/improvements. I can't quite put into words how happy we'll be once these schools are done, it's been an ongoing project for almost 3 years now, and we've already completed 8 schools (although it feels like more...). It's a lot of hands-on labour and custom pieces. Nothing is ever the same between schools and we've dealt with all sorts of layout curveballs, which constantly wears our brains down! But, it was nice to have my 'co-worker' back with me again and spend the day working like we used to.

On Saturday, I went commando on the garden (yes I was wearing undies, it was more my state of mind). I was up early and in the garden before 9am using my new cordless battery-run trimmer and getting the upper hand on some overgrown hedge cedars. I only had one battery charged (there was more enthusiasm, not so much planning) so it ran out halfway through the second giant cedar in the front yard. I also got to bust out my LAWNMOWER. Happy days it was. It runs like a little turbine (this nice 'whoooshing' noise) and cuts like a dream. Plus it's so easy to use.

Through all the gardening madness I saw our little frog friend perched on the side of the fence (glad the fence is painted black or it might have been mowed up frog). I took a picture of him (or her):And where was Trevor during all of this? He was in the basement working on the bathroom, prepping for tiling. He came out at one point and made a good point, 'Strange how we spent all of last summer cooped up in the basement, and on the first really sunny day of spring and I'm back in the basement.' True, true. But it's for a good cause right? I can't really say anything about that because I was outside soaking up some of the nice 23C weather that we had (which was only one day *boo*).

But here's some of his fabulous handiwork in the bathroom:I officially love subway tile. Trevor, not so much. I think I heard him mumble something about 'bigger tiles' for our next bathroom. lol

Oh no...

I went to check on the seeds I had planted and I am sad to report that the time I took meticulously writing the plant names on the pots has been wasted. The seeds were planted in peat pots and watered. I haven't noticed until today (when I went to check on them) that I can no longer see what I wrote on each pot. The pots have absorbed water and become darker (not a big help when I wrote on them in BROWN INK).
Oy.
I've taken off the little greenhouse lids to see if they can air out enough...but seeing that I wrote the names in water-soluble ink, things may not ever be legible. I have a feeling I may be have mystery plants...

Persimmons

If only I could grow these in my back yard. Somehow I don't think they are native to BC. lol

Look what's new in the neighbourhood!

After suffering for five LONG years with an ancient corded electric mower (which did a better job of chewing and spitting up grass rather than cutting it...) we FINALLY have a new and improved lawn mower! (Hurrah! Cue the heavens opening up and casting a beam of light down on me!)

No longer will our neighbours be entertained with me tripping up on the cord, dancing around with my foot kicking the cord, or near misses (and inevitable electrocution of myself) with mowing the cord.

And here she is (I say 'she' because it's just such a pretty lawn mower, it reminds me of a frog!):
It's a Neuton mower (Trevor is dying to add an 'r' in there and call it the 'Neutron' mower, as in the dance, lol). No more cord, just a compact little battery that you pop in for a quiet mow. The battery has to be charged for 12 hours, and on my watch that means I can go outside and start chopping grass down at 11:30pm. (And I'm tempted...lol!)

Things to grow

I went to Home Depot yesterday (surprise, surprise) and picked up some seeds to start indoors. We're trying out some veggies from scratch this year (last year we bought ones that were started at a nursery). We tried some broccoli, tomatoes and some zucchini last year; the tomatoes worked well, the broccoli and zucchini did not. I am hell-bent on getting the zucchini to work this time (I'm tired of hearing that they grow so fast and so easily), so I'm putting it in the garden instead of a container and hoping for more luck with that. I'm also going gung-ho and trying out some pumpkins and watermelons in the garden (along the edge, we'll see how that plan goes). The rest are going in the containers.

As seen in the garden

Looks what's coming in the mail soon!

Jamie Oliver's new book! Hurrah! It's a must have on my kitchen bookshelf because in this one he's got tips on growing your own veggies and recipes. Good timing number one, because it's almost spring, and number two, because we've recently decided to steer away from the mega-processed meats, especially those animals who are treated very poorly with horrible living conditions (mass market meat). We visited a butcher in town (Heritage Meats) that only carry organic, non-medicated, free run animals that have had good lives. Plus they prepare everything there, which is even better!

We cooked up some steaks last night from there and they were FAB. Amazing flavour, texture and quality. Add in some corn on the cob and some baked organic russet potatoes (which were insanely good...they had a hint of sweetness, which is something I don't equate with a potato).

Too add to all of that, we're going to have a few more vegetarian meals (going to try out some Yves Veggie products), to offset the cost of the better quality meats. It's a good balance, and who needs to eat meat at every meal anyways?

Now to start preparing the veggie garden for the spring. Time to find some seeds!

Kermit's back

There's a little frog that likes to hang out around the side of our house (it's nice and wet around there), and I hadn't heard any croaking most of the winter...until today! Looks like he (or she!) is back for a little croaky singing this afternoon. Makes me feel like my office is in the bayoooooouuuuu. LOL