My Weekend Excursion

I went home to SC this past weekend to see my baby brother graduate high school. He's the last of the three of us, and is nine years younger than me. He was pretty excited (as he should be), and is looking forward to college in the fall.

Because my parents are getting ready to move (hopefully for the last time) to the farm that belonged to my grandparents, they have been faced with the task of combining two (large) houses worth of stuff into one. Thus, one of my tasks while I was at home was to go through my room, figure out what I really wanted to keep, and separate the rest to be given away to friends, donated, trashed, etc.

Truth be told, I really didn't have all that much left at my parents house. I haven't really lived in their house since high school (two moves ago for them), and I moved almost all of my books, clothes, personal items, furniture to Nashville when I graduated college. That being said, I was surprised at how much stuff I still had there.

Among the odds and ends, a few things I found:

• my notes from AP calculus....taken my senior year in high school
• lots of dolls (maybe that makes me weird, but I have an aunt who used to send me dolls, and I loved playing with them when I was a kid)
• love letters from my high school boyfriend
• all the cards I got for my high school graduation
• every solo/ensemble adjudication sheet, music award, recital program and school award I ever got
• a few evening gowns, a foxtail cape (that was my grandmothers), various other formalwear

Now, remember how I said I hadn't really lived in my parents house since high school? We moved two weeks after I graduated, and I guess I never had a chance to go through my stuff. Then, it all got moved again when my parents moved after my freshman year in college.

In the end, I brought home a desk (for the music room, particularly needed since I will be full time in grad school in the fall), all the dresses and formal coats, a few books, sewing patterns, some art that I had stashed away there and a few other odds and ends. I left three small boxes of stuff that I can get next time I go to visit.

Maybe I'm weird, but this task didn't draw up strong emotions for me. I guess I've moved so many times that I don't have any strong attachment to the house itself, and since I have my own home now, it seems right to me that my stuff should be in it.

Have you completely cleaned out your room at your parents house? Was it really emotional, or did it just feel like a task that needed to be done?

Introducing....A Blank Slate (Part II)

Man is it hot here! I don't know what the weather is like where you are, but we've been breaking records left and right here in Nashville - and since we haven't had rain in over a month now, things are looking pretty brown and crunchy outside. I've been out early in the mornings watering before it gets so hot that any water will evaporate before it can do any good.

But enough about the weather. Here is my new back yard!

The previous owner graded the lawn to run into the creek on the other side of the fence so the house, and in doing so, created this retaining wall that makes a nice patio space. We're planning to use something like cobblestones to eventually pave in this space. You can see (kind of) where someone had dumped a bunch of gravel to try to create a patio space, but the weeds have taken over since it was last taken care of.

You can see where all my plants were pretty unceremoniously dumped when we were hurriedly moving everything in. I've spread them out a little since then.

Here, you can see I was in a hurry to get at least some of my vegetables in the ground. The retaining wall has a pretty handy built in bed, so I've been gradually planting the veggies I started back in February, adding mushroom compost to the soil as I go to give things a little boost.

I do have to figure out what to do with the two scraggly rose bushes in the retaining wall. Any suggestions??

We do have a pretty awesome deck....

...That's built right up to this gigantic hackberry tree. It will probably eventually come down. You can't tell from the picture, but it (and one other tree back here) hangs over the house, and the other tree is even closer to the house than this one!

We also have (actually, that's a had now...I'll do a post on it soon) a gigormous fire pit. Seriously, this thing is like 7 feet in diameter. The previous owners could have roasted pigs in this baby.

The only problem is that the border is just random rocks piled up in a circle, and if you so much as tap them, the go rolling away (maybe a bit of a safety hazard if there's actually a fire going).

Just beyond the firepit, we'll put a toolshed and a compost bin.

And here is where (I think) I'm going to put some raised beds.

So there you have it....my new backyard!

Introducing.....a Blank Slate (Part I)

Whew! We are all moved in, and though we are still unpacking, I thought I'd share my blank slate of a yard with you all. I'm going to split this post into two in the interest of not writing the longest blog post EVER, so without further ado, I present to you my front yard.

First (and yes, I know this isn't technically the front yard), here's what our garage looks like....well....kind of. Right now, we'll call it Mt. Box ok?

Before you get too scared, here is a wider shot....no....we did not have boxes piled five feet high through our entire garage (just part of it).

Actually, at the bottom of that picture, you can see my first little indoor project happening (shelf painting!), but we'll talk more about that later.

Here's the front of the house from the end of the driveway. Not terribly exciting (yet), but we're getting there. The gigantic hackberry tree next to the driveway is going to come down probably this winter. Hackberries spit a sap that ruins the paint on cars, so one hanging over the driveway is really not ideal, especially since the garage is not going to stay a garage.

Not really sure what these little trees/bushes are off to the left of the driveway, but I am going to have to trim them back so they don't invade the driveway as well as getting the vines off of them.

Now this, I am pretty excited about. We have a lovely hibiscus bush in the front yard. You can see the end of the pretty purple blooms (it was covered in them a few weeks earlier).

There is all kinds of ivy growing up the trees in the front and back yards. We actually tackled getting it all off of the trees last weekend. The vines look great, but they bore into the trees and can kill them.

You can actually see the little tendrils the vines send out to attach themselves to the tree. No good!!

Moving on....I now present you with the ugliest lollipop ever.....

This guy has already been removed as well (I'll get some after pictures soon!). There are/were a couple problems with this: it blocks one entire window in the living room (not cool), it was growing up into the power line to the house (really not cool), and since it is so big and rotund, it also blocks the view of the path to the front door from the driveway (REALLY not cool, and a safety hazard, especially for when the hubs deploys again).

To the side of the front door, there is this wonderfully fragrant gardenia....

....and a not-so-wonderfully scraggly rose bush.....

....and that's it for what's in front of the house. Fortunately, my wonderful voice teacher and his wife have been saving some bushes they dug out of their front yard for us, so we will hopefully have something to put here soon!

Lastly, here is my awesome red front door! The porch needs to be power washed and repainted, but we've all got to start somewhere, right?

Whew! Hopefully I didn't totally bore you with all that. I am making my to-do list as I go along. What have you guys been up to? Did everyone have a great 4th?

Quick Update

I've been a little bit absent from the blog lately and with good reason....I've been packing my home preparing to move into our first house that's officially ours!! Closing is tomorrow and we will be spending the rest of the week moving. Don't worry....there will be plenty of gardening (and probably a fair amount of home improvement...especially during the winter) at the new place. More to come. Stay tuned!

Blooms Day

Still on a role with cheesy blog post titles....I think the heat is starting to go to my head.

There are lots of blooms in my garden right now.

I've only gotten one bloom from the ranunculus tubers I started in my tiny greenhouse back in February. *sigh* It is lovely, though I was definitely hoping for more of a show!

The nasturtiums are really going to town. As many blooms as there are on this one, there are that many more buds ready to pop open!

The hydrangea is kind of a showoff. It blooms green and then turns pink, looking something like a disco ball in the process.

You can see there are many more blooms coming on this one!

Truthfully, I thought violas were not heat tolerant. It has been in the mid-high 80's though, and if anything, they are blooming even more vigorous than they did when it was still cool outside.

The ivy geranium has been giving wave after wave of these pretty clusters of white and pink blooms

The hosta hasn't bloomed yet, but I am hoping for more lovely purple flowers this year! Any suggestions yet on how to move this lovely?

The iris I dug up from my student's yard have finished their blooming, but this lily (also from my student's yard) is just getting started. There are several more buds on this one that have yet to open. Isn't the orange and yellow happy looking?

What kind of show are you getting in your garden? Any ideas on how to pack up and move my garden??

News, News, News

I hinted a few weeks ago here that I had some pending news to share. Well, it took a little longer than I expected, but here it is....

WE'RE BUYING A HOUSE!!!!!

Just in case you couldn't tell, I'm a little bit excited about it. The property is still in Inglewood, so we're not going far, but now I have to figure out how and what to move from the garden. I have purposely put off transplanting my started seeds into the ground, but what about stuff from the flower bed?

I am considering digging up the still tiny boxwoods and putting them into containers to put by the front door.

As for all the bulbs planted in this bed, should I dig them up? Just get new ones? The same neighbors that gave me these offered to let me dig up more from their overcrowded beds.

What about the daffodils that bloomed for the first time this spring? Should I dig those up and take them with me? Is it worth it?

I definitely want to take this hosta with me. I think it needs to be divided, but I'm not sure that would be a good idea while it's in the middle of it's growth cycle. Any thoughts on this?

Have you undertaken a garden move before? Did you take everything with you, or did you decide that some things would be too much trouble to move? HELP!!!