Home Sweet Home

   We have been in our house for a little over two years now!  Time has really flown by, although I keep catching myself saying things like "We just moved in our house," or "I haven't had time yet to finish that/fix that/unpack that..."  I think the jig is up at this point!  I thought I would post a few pictures of the exterior of the house to look at our progress in two years, and because my flowers look so pretty right now!

Circa January 2014

   Here's where we started.  To be fair, this picture was taken in early January.  There's a whole lot of nothing growing/blooming/alive in January.  And here's where we are today:

April 2016

   The main difference in the house exterior has been the addition of the flower bed on the left of the garage, which, frustratingly, you wouldn't even have been able to see in the old photo.  It extends about half the depth of the house and curves around the front corner beside the garage.  I transplanted iris tubers that were original to the house from the backyard into this new flower bed last spring.  They were fine in the spring, but nothing bloomed or grew much, probably because of the shock of transplanting.  I cut them down last fall to about six inches tall on the advice of Chris's grandfather, the iris whisperer.  This spring they have tripled in size and have been covered in the most lovely yellow blooms for about a month now!
 
   We have also replaced the exterior lights with some nice big non-brass fixtures, replaced the rotting house number plaque (I blurred the numbers so you can't creep on me), and Chris replaced the vent/portal thingie over the garage with an identical one.  The original one was wooden and had warped with time, leaving a gap that birds were using to start nesting in my attic.  No thank you!  So he ordered a new fiberglass one and got it all painted and installed.

   I've planted several things in the mailbox planters over the past two years, and I continue to struggle with finding the right thing to live here.  It gets a tremendous amount of wind in the spring and fall and is in 100% sunlight all summer long.  I started with violas, which didn't fare too badly, but were too short to be seen, and they kept "jumping out" of the planters and popping up in the yard!  I planted mums in the box in the fall, and that was okay, but not amazing.  So this spring I decided to try petunias.  I planted a larger dark pink plant and two smaller light pink ones on each side.  So far they are doing just fine, and are a nice greeting for our mailman.

   As you approach the house, you pass one of the two main flower beds.  This one, too, has housed several different things over the past two years.  I planted the two little azalea bushes in the back when we moved in, and last summer I planted the pink petunias.  I guess somehow they didn't completely die during our mild winter because they're back and bigger than ever this spring!  No work for me!  I have no idea what kind of tree that is, but it's really lovely in the spring!

   My azaleas haven't gotten a ton bigger than when I planted them (maybe they are slow growers?), and haven't bloomed at all for the past two springs, but it looks like this year we are in for a treat!  Both bushes are absolutely covered in buds and a few flowers.  I can't wait!

   I also have a hosta in the pot on the porch that came back from last year.  That's no small miracle either.  When it "died" last fall, I moved the urn into the garage to protect it from the elements.  A couple of months ago, I noticed that a green leaf had popped up in the pot!  It had gone all fall, winter, and early spring in the garage with no sun and no water, but it's back and more beautiful than it was last year!  The geranium basket was a sweet gift from Chris's mom that I have managed to not kill yet.

   On the other side of the sidewalk is the other main flowerbed.  I've struggled knowing what to plant here too.  It's south facing, full sun all the time.  These poor plants really get baked in the summer.  Nearest to the sidewalk is a crepe myrtle that blooms light pink.  I have mixed feelings about crepe myrtles because as lovely as I think they are, I am not a fan of all the bugs that also enjoy them.  Especially so close to my front door.  But it came with the house, and it really is pretty in the summer, so I put up with it.  At the far end is a nice fat butterfly bush that has purple blooms in the late spring and summer.  Both it and the crepe myrtle grow surprising fast (at least to a novice like me) and require a LOT of trimming to keep them looking tidy, but that means lots of cut flowers for the dining room table!
 
   I planted four tiny phlox plants when we bought the house, all a light pinky-purple.  The two closest to the butterfly bush didn't make it, so I replanted the next year.  They have grown and spread, but nothing like the nearest two!  I tell you, God knew to send indestructible plants to a brown-thumb like me!  They have gone crazy and I have to trim them up so they don't spill out into the yard and get mowed!  They are very early bloomers too.  I often catch a glimpse of tiny purple flowers peeking through ice and snow in February!  Earlier in the spring they had twice as many flowers as they do in these photos from today!  I always deliberate on adding some taller plants at the back of the flower bed, but at the rate the phlox are going, they would choke something else out by next year!

   I am definitely an inexperienced gardener, and I'm learning new things all the time, but I love how pretty everything is right now.  I feel so much pride and pleasure while enjoying the plants and flowers, and I don't even mind doing yard work.  I think the biggest thing I have learned in two years is to choose the right plants.  Even a master gardener can't make a sun-loving flower bloom in the shade, or a delicate flower thrive in the Oklahoma sun.  It's taken me a while to figure out what kinds of things like what kinds of conditions, and to figure out how much time I can realistically devote to my yard.  I know that things that need constant fussing with or multiple waterings a day just aren't a great choice for me.

   Thanks for letting me show off my flowers!  I hope it brought a little springtime to your day.  Feel free to share yours as well!

A River Runs Through It

   We've had some crazy weather the past few weeks.  Crazy like a foot of rain in the past week.  And a few tornadoes.  Tornadoes close enough that the houses on the other side of the "crick" from my garden don't have roofs (rooves?) anymore.  Like I said, crazy.  I wasn't sure what to expect when it finally dried up enough that I could get out in the garden.  Here's what I found:

   Not as bad as I figured!  The ridiculous rain has made several little rivers through the garden, but the majority of it (including the fence, somehow) is still standing!  We did lose a big branch off the cherry tree that was full of cherries, and an entire peach tree was uprooted.  Grandpa decided to leave the peach tree where it is because it still has one big root in the ground, so maybe it will hang on?  Nothing to lose by trying!  On that note, does anyone know if you can pick cherries prematurely and ripen them off the tree?  They're pink, but not bright red yet and that branch is loaded!

Broken cherry tree

Broken peach tree

   By and large, the rest of the garden seems to be intact.  My potatoes and onions are going crazy!  A few of the onions are looking a little wilty, and some of them had to be reburied because the earth washed out around them, but nothing major.  The saddest looking things are some of my tomato plants.  I don't know if they're waterlogged or what, but I have 3-4 that look pretty pathetic.

Go potatoes and onions!

We got a little more dirt on these sad onions.

Sad tomato plant

   My grandma thought that the tomatoes could use some fertilizer, so I got on the magic internet and looked for non-chemical fertilizers I could make.  I've been saving egg shells because I read that tomatoes need extra calcium in the dirt.  So I powdered those and mixed with with epsom salts and crushed up aspirins (supposedly a root motivator?) and we fed the plants this evening.  

Gram supervising us newbies

   After everything was fed, we started our first veggie harvest!  Not a ton today, but I got a bag full of arugula and an armload of green onions!  Gram says that when the onions start to flower they get tough, so we pulled all the onions with blooms on them, plus a few because I have a toddler.

Showing off her first onion!

I felt like Miss America with my "bouquet"

   We weren't out there long today, but it was nice to check on everything and get a little dirt on my hands again.  (I have been out there since my last post, but I didn't figure you'd want to watch my plants grow millimeter by millimeter so I didn't post.)  Anyone have any miracle tomato-life-savers?  Know how to ripen cherries off the tree?  Know how to hold off the rain so we can dry out a little?

Irish Potatoes!

   Top o' the mornin' to ya!  Too much?  Okay...Happy St. Patrick's Day!  I personally don't do much celebrating for St. Pat's, other than wearing a green shirt to avoid being pinched by rude people.  I am fairly certain that being a generic white mutt, I probably have some Irish in me somewhere, but it's never been a *thing* in my family to celebrate St. Patrick's Day.  There is, however, one thing that my great-grandfather, and therefore my grandparents, insisted on.  You must plant your potatoes on St. Patrick's Day.  Lesson #2 learned.

Me and my Daddy-o

   So this morning, we headed out to the farm to get some potatoes in the ground before it starts raining tonight.  It's Spring Break here, so my mom and sis are out of school this week and my dad took vacation to hang out with us.  Somehow I talked them into coming with me to plant potatoes.  (C'mon guys, it'll be fun...)

   The seed potatoes had been cut and drying for a day or two, so they were ready to go in the ground. Dad did the hard part of raking up the soil into a little mound for me.  That way you don't have to dig so far to get your potatoes when they're ready.  

  My sister and I went behind him making holes and popping spuds in the earth.  After that, we covered them up and smoothed over the top of the mounds, and gave them a little drink.

   The potatoes were much quicker to plant than the onions.  Partially because there were much fewer of them, and partially because I had help.  We ended up with two rows of potatoes, and Grandpa says each plant will likely yield 8 or so small potatoes.  Not bad!

Two finished rows of potatoes!

My Seester and I

   It was fun to get in the dirt with my dad and sister.  Even though I finally live close, I never get to see them as much as I want.  Grandpa didn't get too involved today.  He showed me what to do, but then he went to fix a fence with a couple of youngin's.  I think they were looking to make a buck, and he needed some help, so he put them to work!  The farm was hoppin' today!  Abby Kate played in the house with my mom and grandma again today.  We had planned for her to stay down in the garden with us, but it ended up being much colder and windier than I thought.  She was perfectly happy to have tea parties and read books inside!

Arugula babies!

   I did get surprised by this bit of green on this St. Patrick's Day.  My arugula seeds have sprouted already!  Not even a whole week in the dirt and they're already popping up!  When they're a tiny bit bigger I'll transfer them to some big feed tubs out in the garden.  They're pretty cold-hardy, so they'll do fine.  Very exciting!

   I'm not sure what comes next in the garden.  I think I'm in a bit of a holding pattern at the moment, waiting until the frost danger is over, and waiting for my little seeds to grow.  I'm looking forward to getting them in the ground and seeing what grows!  What's growing in your garden?

Spring Has Sprung!

   I am officially declaring the end of winter!  (Hear me, Mother Nature?  No funny business.)  The past week has been gorgeous, even the rainy day seemed to promise changes and new life.  Sigh.  I love it.  I love the end of the bleak grey cold.  I love the end of darkness.  I love the end of a stuffy stale house.  I love the end of trying to come up with ways to entertain my toddler indoors...(only partially kidding about that last one).

   My new undertaking this season is a garden.  Not just a few bedding plants in the front yard--I'm talking grow your own food, mud up to your knees, need a tractor to till it up garden.  No, we did not move to the country, although that is my heart's desire.  My grandparents, however, already live out of town a ways, and have had a massive (half an acre?) garden that has fed the family, neighbors, church members, and anyone else who needed produce for the past fifteen years.  After last year, Grandpa declared that he was done gardening, said it was too hard on his knees and he just wasn't feeling up to it anymore--well, maybe a couple of tomato plants because, you know, the ones you get at the store aren't fit to eat.... He kindly offered his well-tended garden to me, said he'd plow it up if I wanted to plant anything.

Our blank canvas!  Love that red dirt!

   I have a not-so-secret desire to be Ma Ingalls and a dream of having a little land with a clothesline and chickens and a garden, so I jumped at the chance to learn from the master and see if I kill outdoor plants as quickly as I kill indoor ones. So Grandpa got out the tractor and tilled up the earth, and I bought some seeds.  He informed me that the first thing to go in the ground was onions, but we'd be planting sets and sprouts, not seeds.  Lesson #1 learned.  When it quit snowing and the ground dried out last week, we set to work.

Grandpa gettin' work done

   Grandpa had said he'd pick up the onions to plant when he was at the store next.  It never occurred to me that he never asked how many I wanted to plant.  When I got to the greenhouse where they were being stored, I saw this:

Baby onions!

   That, my friends, combined with the sets he had for me, is THOUSANDS of onions.  Did I mention that green onions are grandpa's favorite thing out of the garden?  Apparently they are.  So we got to work, poking holes and planting tiny little wisps of onions.  It wasn't too hard, and I enjoyed spending the time in the red dirt that I missed so much when we lived out of state.  The weather couldn't have been better, and it was a rare chance to spend some one-on-one time with Grandpa.

Putting in the elbow grease!

   I was tired at the end of the day, but it was so satisfying to look back at the work we had accomplished.  I'm sure I'm romanticizing things, but I kept thinking about all of the generations of pioneers who had come before me, who had worked this red dirt and survived by the sweat of their own brows and the strength of their own hands.  It felt right to be learning something so ingrained in the state I grew up in, sort of reverent for everyone who made it what it is.  But like I said, ask me in September how I feel about gardening and I may have changed my tune...

Look closely--can you see my babies out there?

  I also started some seeds for some other things I'd like to try growing this year.  I'm considering this my experimental garden year, learning how things grow and what does and doesn't like the weather and soil here.  I started carrots, spinach and arugula, green beans, zucchini, and corn.  I have seeds for a few other things, but it's a bit early for them, and I plan to buy young plants for tomatoes and strawberries when the frost danger passes.

Seed babies growing in the greenhouse!

   I snapped a few pictures while I was there because everything felt so alive.  Spring was whispering everywhere, from the bluebird that visited the garden to the blooms on the fruit trees.  Every time I took a picture I thanked God for making all things new!

Our colorful visitor

   Before we left, Abby Kate, who had been napping and playing with my grandma, convinced Grandpa that she needed a ride in the Mule.  It's one of her favorite things to do at their house, and there isn't much that she can't convince Grandpa of, so they loaded up and went for a ride.  I love that they get to know each other, and that she loves them the way I do.  I hope she keeps these sweet memories forever!

Waving at Mama!

   I'll attempt to keep things updated as to what my kill count is--I'm not sure these poor plants know what they're getting into!  In the meantime, I have several flowerbeds full of weeds that are mocking me... Time to get a little more dirt under my nails!