Feline Friday - 2/19/16

Hey Momma!
I like the pretty violets you bought yourself for Valentine's Day!

I also really like the little suitcase that you carried your hexie projects in for quilt retreat the last 2 weekends.

But I especially like **sitting** on your little suitcase.

I'm really sorry that meant I also sat on your iPhone and deleted your 4 favorite apps which used half your February data plan to reload the apps and your audiobooks, deleting your bookmarks. Oopsies!

Love you Momma!
Lots and Lots!

An InLinkz Link-up

Fall flowers

I went out the front door this morning to capture the yellow leaves left on the maple tree and the pretty blue sky.

As I was standing there, I realized that the pot on the porch steps (that did nothing all summer) has now flowered, despite a hard frost last week.

So then I decided to take a couple other pictures to share. This purple delphinium always blossoms again in the fall - love that!

And I waited for this white phlox to blossom all summer but it waited for fall...not sure if that was becasue it was a transplant or just a fall variety.

By this point I was out of time but I bet the sedum would have been pretty too...

The Art of the Garden

I am not what one would call an overly dedicated gardener. I like to pick flowers for the house or my office but I do not give up my other hobbies for the summer nor do I spend days and days gardening until I can't move, like some people I know. Mostly because it only takes a single afternoon of gardening to not be able to move. I also can't be out in the heat overly long or I'll end up with a migraine.

This past Sunday was the most perfect weather to be working outside. I've had some potted plants on the side porch this summer (inventory changes as things get planted or donated to me) and I finally decided it was time to get the other hosta bed in.

This is what I started with. The corner has been in progress for two summers. There is a yellow wood poppy that is beautiful in the spring/early summer and the sum and substance hosta is supposed to be huge when it's older. There are also columbine and lillies thrown in there with two Solomon's seal. The wall mounted hose reel replaced a wheeled cart this summer that constantly tipped over. Best decision ever! Do you remember the rock under the hose reel? The one I swiped from the edge of a corn field and only got home becuase of the stranger that helped me get it into my little car? Now I need a slightly smaller one to put in front of it so the hose doesn't know the little plants over.

I started by digging up the sod. Let me remind you that I have clay here at CasaGrande and it's been dry. I finally used the hose to dampen the surface enough to loosen it up. Next I placed rocks for what will become a rock wall...I just need more rocks! Then I placed the hosta, sedum and day lilly pots where I wanted them, trying to leave room for everything to grow. I've still got some empty spaces but I've got more plants to add and some to move from other gardens. It still needs mulch but it's already much better than just grass and weeds :)

I finished the afternoon by digging up red potatoes (great crop) and onions (not so great), pulling some weeds and clipping some Glads for the house. Don't ask about my back...or the butt muscles I somehow strained?!?

Design Wall Monday - 8/29/11

Nothing new on my design wall. As you may remember from last week, I was pretty lazy and got nothing done. This weekend I started working on school taxes (my second job) so nothing sewing related was accomplished then either.

Hurricane Irene was pretty much a nothing for us altho I just found out my brother, who works for RG&E, has been shipped out for at least a week to repair power issues from the Storm. I'm not even sure if he's still in NY or another state.



The highlight of the week was...

   "my parents went camping in the Adirondacks and all I got was a rock and some fabric"

LOL - the big rock is for my garden beds (sorry, no photo until it's delivered to my house) and the fabric was for watering mom's plants. Aren't they pretty flowers (see a theme??!!) and stripes? And of course, there must be neutrals!!

Spring Garden Tour

As Cali and I sat on the porch this morning, enjoying the sunshine and dew still shimmering on the lawn, I thought it was the perfect time to take a garden tour. Won't you join me?!

Pansies have to be one of my favorite plants and there is a little pot right there on the porch that I can see every day as I come and go from the house. I want to paint the porch decks purple - what do you think of this shade?

The Bleeding Heart is huge and I noticed lots of buds this morning. To the left is my new purple garden phlox.

The Black Jack and (unknown name) Sedums are coming nicely. When I bought the Black Jack last summer it only had 3 stems - I'm thrilled to see it has at least 4 times as many this year.

The hosta are coming up. Biggie size it to see the dew drops! These are some of my smaller hosta - I don't think I took a photo of the Sum and Substance which will eventually be 4 or 5 feet wide when full grown. It has a much larger/darker stem poking up thru the mulch but it doesn't look like much so far.

The Clematis are making gains. While I planted them 2 summers ago, I am still watching them to learn how best to trim them back each year. The tags for both called for "moderate" trimming which doesn't fit into the usual garden magazine nomenclature. One seems to only sprout new growth from the bottom of the old plant (= I can trim a lot) and the other sprouts from the very bottom and the very top (= I don't think I should trim much of anything).

More pansies around the pear tree. Any one know where I can get a (plastic) partridge for my Xmas decorations?

I am 99% sure this is my Delphinium - doesn't that lime green just shout spring? I just bought 2 more Delphinium and need to decide where to plant them. Part of the decision making process is remembering where I (last minute) planted some things last year and some changes I want to make to this particular bed. I am hoping for a tall cutting garden so some things will have to be moved out.

And last but not least on today's tour is the ever elusive and positively rare Hershey's day lily!

(Yesterday was trash day and I noticed several candy wrappers in the yard today - I'm downwind)

How's your garden coming this spring?

Chocolate Garden

This IS quilt related - can you guess how before you get to the end of this post???

Last night, after dinner at the Hole in the Wall, my friend Jacquie, co-owner extraordinaire, showed me pictures of their latest honey harvest and asked if it had been me who told her of my wish for a chocolate garden. It was!

I think the wish started when the spring catalogs had plants that were either chocolate colored or flavored. Then I found the Chocolate Flower Farm which further cemented my wish. Since I can't decide where to plant my chocolate flower garden yet, I've just begun collecting plants that I can later move to the new bed. Most chocolate plants seem to be brown or dark maroon in color but some are black or dark purple. There are chocolate annuals, perrenials and vegetables (oh wait, I think they are fruit since they have seeds).

My most obvious and official start to the chocolate gardent, is this Chocolate Mint. It has the traditional 4-sided stem like mint altho it's a chocolate color. The green leaf tastes minty with something else but not really a chocolate taste. Hey, it's the name that's important, huh?!

LEFT: This sedum also fits the color bill altho it seems to grow a little wilder and spindlier than my green sedum that is in the back left of this picture.
RIGHT: I have this coral bells (I think it's called licorice). It started the summer a much darker color (dark chocolate?) that has now faded to this lighter (milky chocolate?) color.

Then, there is this cactus. Or is it a succulant? From the top it looks like a hens-n-chick but from the side you can see it's on a stem. I bought the smallest (translate to cheapest) this nursery had but the largest specimen they had available was on a 6-8 inch stem and the "flower" was maybe 10 inches across. I am not sure if I want this plant inside or outside yet but I couldn't pass up such an interesting plant.

 This morning I picked 3 Black Beauty peppers from my garden. They start out green but turn this dark eggplanty purple color. Can't wait to see what color they are inside.

These are off topic but look - my hens-n-chicks had a rooster! I actually have 4 different plants that did this so maybe it's the hot weather we've been having.

Does anyone else have chocolate flowers they can suggest? I'm talking everyday plants that fill the color or name or speciality plants that fit.  TIA.

So... did you guess the quilt relation to this post? My quilt guild's annual "picnic" was held at the Hole in the Wall with a very yummy menu, quilt mystery to solve and our usual show-n-tell.

First fresh salad of the season

yumm-o!
Picked a ton of fresh lettuce from the garden last night and whipped up a batch of hot bacon dressing to make a wilted lettuce salad. I forgot to boil some eggs so I added cheese and orange flavored craisins instead. The salad was so good I had a second, which is what you see here. Based on weather and available cooking time, I'll probably have one a day until the lettuce gives up the ghost.

Wazzit Wednesday

Do you recognize this cactus? The picture doesn't show the plant very well, altho it is in the background, but this was the last picture on my memory card. The plant has lethal little spikes and is probably 4 feet wide and 3 feet tall. The leaves are flat but there are also triangular sections of "stem." These blossoms are probably as big as your hand and dribble a sticky liquid onto the table cloth. We have no idea what it's called and would appreciate any insight. There are probably 6 blossoms on it right now as it seems to love the heat of late and the west facing window. I can take more pictures if that would help you figure out what it is. Anybody have any ideas?

Design Wall Monday - 6/14/10

Well, there's been a few things on the design "wall" around here...

What do you think of my new blogger template? This template has a wider layout which means better photo layouts from now on but older posts no longer look as good as when I first wrote/arranged them...oh well.

I worked on creating a new flower garden by the front porch this weekend . There was already a white hydrangea, white azalea and pink bleeding heart there but I wanted to fill in the crazy outline of my house (used to be a parsonage so it's cross shaped with lots of crazy little corners to mow) with pretty flowers. I envisioned a cottage/english style garden with tall flowers for cutting. Not sure if the plants I picked will fill in that way but I'm happy with it so far. I ran out of mulch and I was wilting in the sun and muggy weather so this is half a garden...who knows when I will get inspired for the other half. Check out just some of the rocks I dug out of the garden. We think they may have been from the original foundation since most are flat. When the whole garden is done, I'll build a little rock wall around it with these and "farmer's" rocks.

I've also worked a little on this UFO. I had two of the traingles done and had enough of the light green to make another two. The QN pattern I was working from called for 3 large solid and 3 large pieced triangles made into a 6 sided table topper. Think I should made the table topper that doesn't fit any table I own with 1 traingle for the orphan box, make these 4 into a table runner or Mom thinks this should be the back of her tablerunner (which I don't agree with cuz the colors are off)??? The pattern is easy with a specialty ruler I came across in Florida so I might have to make more. The original pattern was in batiks...

Wordless walk in my garden

 

Castile Bicentennial Playground

2008 was the Town of Castile Bicentennial Celebration, of which my mother was chair as the Town Clerk. Luckily there was money left over after a year of festivities so with more donations and dad as a playground committee of one, they were able to purchase a new playground for the Village Park. With installation costs we are looking at a $20,000 investment in the Town and oohs and ahhs from the little ones makes it all worth it!

We installed the playground with (mostly) volunteer efforts last Thursday and Friday and I took both days off to help - the entire family was there. What was to have been a three day project was completed in less than two thanks to the many volunteers who labored in the gorgeous weather.

(the village DPW studies the blueprints after the auger cut the electic lines, cutting all power to the park)

Ty came to the park after am pre-school so he got to be first down the big slide.

Ry kept saying "open?" since he has to wait until the playground is officially opened Monday. In the meantime, he built a stick farm in the horseshoe pit. Good improvise, little man!

Saturday was spent watching Ty's t-ball game (they won!) and Sunday was spent outdoors getting the rest of the veggies planted and mowing and mulching and...and...and... in the yard before grilling sausages. 4 days of perfect hi-70s weather made it hard to come back to work today.

Oh BTW - did you hear about the 1936 wheat penny dug up in my veggie garden or the deer that ran thru my (village) yard?

What a difference a month makes...

April 14, 2010

May 14, 2010

First Garden Harvest of the Year

Yup - you read that right - I harvested my veggie garden this morning and look what I got! ;)
There's a few rogue onions I found but the rest are plants that I bought or were given with no place to plant them before the fall frost. Ignoring the green pot in the back (last year's leftovers), from the left:

• big round pot is a turk's cap lily which has yet to sprout
• larger square pot is a yellow wood poppy
• 2 small square pots are mini green eyes hosta and small rasberry sorbet hosta
• 2 small round pots are hostas from Michele
• large round pot kinda in the back is my giant Sum & Substance hosta - this baby will eventually be up to 31 inches high and 70 inches wide and I can't wait!
• root bound iris' from Paul's fish ponds

I think most of these will go on the side of the house when I get the sod pulled up and create a garden bed. In the meantime, the tractor guy will be coming soon to till the veggie garden. It's been warm out but not enough to plant veggies yet...

I love when the trees are this lime green color in the spring:

Spring has Sprang

Yeah, it was 88 degrees last weekend but this weekend it snowed! All the poor little plants that are begininng to blossom had to hunker down Friday night for about an inch of snow. It seems that everything did ok but we shall see...

Here's the pear tree in my front yard and my bleeding hearts.

Indian Summer...

...has finally arrived in Western NY. You're right, it has snowed twice already and the roads had to be sanded last week but Saturday and Sunday it was in the 60s and today's high is 69. Made good use of the weather yesterday - raked leaves (again), trimmed the shrubs, bedded the garden for the winter, pulled the brussel sprouts that didn't really do anything and trimmed the day lillies (again). Dad helped me with that so I helped him with his leaves. After 7 hours of labor (in a shortsleeve tshirt !!! ) I was done and went to bed at 9pm.

The Christmas Bazaar was Saturday. I did ok, thanks to a large purchase by a friend. Now I just need some place to sell my left overs. The two other Bazaars I had thought of have been replaced with other fundraisers. There is always the internet, Mary never got anything to the Cider Mill - maybe I could sell something there, Wendy has a family relative that could sell things...

Next project...1 month until the Wyoming County Clerk's Association has their first ever Christmas party at my house. I'm sure it will be fun but "we" need to construct/upolster an ottoman, finish remodel of foyer, create Xmas decorations and the dreaded "cleaning." How does one wash the new laminate floor? Can't use a mop and bucket...