The To Do List for Inside

In April, my office looked like this:

My desk:

OK.  It was a mess, but i could run a small corporation without getting up except to file. 

Mitchell's desk:

There's nothing I can say.  Mitchell never met a horizontal surface that he didn't love.

As a double office it has served us well - first, just a place for each of us to settle to surf the Web, or pay bills, or write letters (ok, email).  You know, just stuff, 

Then my job changed and for the past 7 years, I have worked from home and it became the "corporate office" for my employer.  I added more filing cabinets and filled the closet and every other available space with office supplies and records. 

In May, it all changed.  My replacement at work took the furniture, and we started cleaning out Mitchell's desk and hutch in order to downsize. 

For a couple of months i used a folding table.

The carpeting was replaced with wood flooring to match the rest of the house, and i found a nice pale green paint for the walls (and the filing cabinet when now lives in the closet).

Early morning painting produced a great result.

Then new flooring.

Today, we have a music room with space for Mitchell's harp and keyboard, along with a smaller desk, a futon for extra company or just a place to relax and watch a different TV show.  Suddenly the house is so much bigger!

Where my desk used to be is now glass shelving and storage for supplies, plus room for the harp and the keyboard.

A futon instead of a big desk and hutch.  I need pictures!

And a new desk at the window.  I can see the cutting garden, too!

It's amazing what a bit of paint, new floor and new furniture will do for a girl.  Now, i just need to figure out what to put on the walls.

The Pond is Gone - part 2

When I put in the pond, I also created a seating area so that one could actually sit and look at the fish.  With the pond gone and a new sitting area to replace it, the "old" sitting area needed to go, too. 

The crabapple tree was behind the glider in the summer of 2009, but died a couple of years later. 

This was actually very easy and took minimal effort.   With the tree gone, the glider was sitting in full sun all day and we never used it.  While its view of the pond was wonderful, it just wasn't a pleasant place to be. 

Granted, this was taken in early March before anything started coming up, but you can see that it was a pretty barren place to be!

The barrel held oregano - like the area's largest single clump - that i have used extensively in cooking, so I wanted to maintain that, but not necessarily in such a huge clump.  And, the barrel was rotting away.  

Another blue pot to the rescue. 

This one contains a new rosemary, along with new oregano and just for fun two stevia plants.

All done and planted with Romas and Brandywine tomatoes. 

So a little soil clean up, and an afternoon of Mitchell's time making a raised bed, and voila!  A new bed for Roma tomatoes for this summer's red sauce.  I can hardly wait.

Almost Heaven!

And, finally I promised you the view if you are sitting on the glider now.  Breakfast out here is becoming a habit!

Ding, Dong the Pond is Gone!

You remember the pond ... that cool oasis that I dug in 2007 so that Mitchell would have a nice place to recuperate from knee replacement surgery.  The place he could not get to because he was not allowed to walk on grass for three months.  That place. 

Pond - July 2009

When it was first created, there was a crabapple tree nearby that provided shade for a glider so that one had a place to sit and enjoy the fish and the water lilies. 

Over time, blight killed the tree leaving the glider in hot sun all day.  The pond did not really get enough light to sustain the water lilies. 

And, a neighborhood blue heron and I developed a co-dependent relationship:  he would eat the fish and I would buy more ... he would eat the fish and I would .... well, you get the picture. 

Last fall I decided to end my enabling and force Mr. Heron to go elsewhere to dine, so I stopped buying fish. By spring the pond looked pretty bad and I decided that its time had come - and gone.  

Full of winter debris and no breakfast for Mr. Heron.

So, in April I pumped out the water [a great fertilizer for the perennials] and dug up the liner to put in the annual neighborhood clean up.  [We live in a great county.  So far this month they have provided free pick up of yard waste and anything else one might want to sit at the curb, including appliances, and a free electronics recycling day.  They will do it again in the fall.]

See the stones stacked against the fence in the background?

It took me one whole weekend to move all those stones and pull out the liner.  (I paid for 1,000 pounds of stone in 2007.  I moved them twice that year, and twice again this year.  Old math says that is two tons!  No wonder my poor body was exhausted when I finished.]  

Half filled - another weekend to do this. 

Next I re-filled the hole.  The ground in our area is heavy clay.  When I dug the hole originally, I piled it all against the back fence behind the compost pile.  So .... i just put it back.  Since it's so thick and heavy it will make a fine base for the "patio" to come. 

When it was nearly full, I started leveling the area and got some paver base and some paver sand from Big Blue Box.  Also, a nifty plastic edging that i buried, but which gave me a square to work with. 

You can see the black edging when I started.  This is all dirt, watered in well and waiting for paver base.

And then the fun began.  I took the stones that were once the surround for the pond.  [You saw them last piled against the fence.]  I turned them into a [mostly] flat pad to hold the glider and a pair of tables. 

It was fun figuring out what stone would fit in next ... until I got to the middle.  Then it got very difficult! And, the tan sand below is another paver sand that I poured on top.  I watered it in several times and swept it until all the little nooks and crannies were filled and level. 

Everything is set and ready for the glider. 

Next, I re-set some large pavers between the sidewalk and the new pad - again, they were left over from the previous sitting area.   

A place for an early morning cup of tea, or an adult drink in the afternoon.

And, finally I replanted perennials around the back (day lilies and lavender) and groundcover in the front.  Voila! a new sitting area.  This time it faces east and is shaded by the shed in the afternoons.  The view is straight down the main garden, but thru the middle of it.

Next time ... What happened to the old seating area?  and, i'll show you the view.

A Nicer Welcome

Altho we have three entrances - a "formal" front door, a side door and a back door, 90% of our guests come and go thru the side door, which opens directly onto the driveway.  

We use that entrance almost exclusively. 

Before

 Over the years the railings had gotten loose and some of the decking had warped, so it was time to repair or replace it.  

We decided to go with a composite product instead of treated wood in the hope that it would last longer and not wear as fast this time. 

During

Once it was done, we needed a nice big pot of something by the steps.  We've kept a pot of mint there for years, so i just got another big blue pot and added some additional varieties of mint.

Done!

If it's Spring, it Must be Project Season

Even tho cold still has us in its firm grip, it truly is spring now and we are promised warmer weather next week.  It should be in the upper 60's already, but we are promised lower 60's for the next 10 days.  That's a start.  Inevitably, then, it's time for the project list for spring. 

With my "sneaking away from work" time curtailed because I am already training my replacement, I will have less time to work in the garden until June.  But I still have one large project planned and two smaller ones.   First the smaller ones:

Clean up the bed of hellebores:  We have just let the hellebores spread unimpeded for the past 15 years.  There are hundreds of volunteers each year.  So far I don't have any weird colors from the cross pollination, so i am very happy with the situation.  Originally i had heuchera and tiarella in this bed, as well as the monkey grass, but the former have disappeared.  This year, I plan to dig out all of the money grass and clear the way for the hellebores to take over the whole bed.  Not so much a project, as a recognition of "che sera, sera".

Improve the cutting bed:  I've never really had the time that I should spend on the cutting garden, and it may be June before I really get to this, but I want to expand and improve this bed.  I'm going to make it a little wider and put some pavers down so I can step across it more easily.  Soon i will have a source of stones to put around the entire bed as an edging - to better define the bed and to keep some of the grass out.

And, the big project:  I'm going to pull out the pond - also known as "the local heron's feeding grounds"; move the sitting area to the future former pond area; and put in a raised tomato bed where the glider is now. Whew!  This will take several weekends.

First, I need to drain the pond, but it has been way too cold and wet to do it yet.  Normally, I would have done it this weekend, but with soggy ground, I don't dare pump 75 gallons of water into the garden.  If it stays dry all week I can do it next weekend.  The water is full of "fish nutrients"  [wink, wink!] so even if i had another way to dispose of the water, i would want to use it to water and feed the perennials.  

With the glider here and facing east (right) one can look down the length of the main bed.  From May to fall it's full of flowers, birds, butterflies and bees.  It will be a great place for a glass of wine now and then.

Then, obviously, i will need to fill in the hole.  I have most of the clay that came out of it still in a mound behind the compost piles, and will use some of that in the bottom of the hole, but at least the top 12 - 15 inches will be the good "webb dirt" that I have made over the last couple of years.  That creates an additional sub-project ... getting rid of the ground hog.  

As far as I know, he [or she] is still ensconced under the good dirt that is left in the compost.  Am calling the county agent on Monday to see if s/he has any suggestions.  At this point, i am thinking of running water down the hole and making him move ... or swim.  Am a little concerned about this approach.  Anyone got a suggestion, or even better, actual knowledge about how to encourage a ground hog to move on?

Assuming I can free up that dirt, i'll fill the hole and then move the pavers from the right side of the walkway over to the the left side and make a new sitting area.  There is actually more natural shade on the left (now that the crabapple tree is gone) so it will be a more comfortable place and more likely to be used.  Then I'll put a 4 x 4 raised bed in for additional tomatoes this year.  Already have the corner braces, so only need to make quick run to the lumber store and many bags of compost to do the bed.  Hope to have it done by the first of May.

I plan to put a new fence along the shed and have ordered some lavender that is supposed to do well in our humid summer climate to plant along the fence along with some daylilies that I can move from over-grown clumps.  I think it will look pretty by next year. 

All those stones that are currently around the pond will someday be around the cutting garden.  As i recall it's more than 1,000 pounds of rock, so will take me several days - and many, many trips in the garden cart, to move!

So, what projects do you have planned for this spring and summer?