Good Gardens

November 29, 20112 Comments

Sometimes I get tired of seeing sights like this:

Fruit trees over pruned in late fall

Living in a community that seems to have a lot of do-it-yourself gardeners who don’t care that much often leads to a bunch of boring landscapes and horrible errors. But I wanted to get away from that for a second and show two landscapes recently that are spectacular. I’m too busy wimpy to talk to the actual owners, so just enjoy street pictures. Both front landscape feature an utter lack of front lawn. That’s not what you first notice however (some lack of front lawn yards are pretty scary), but a simple sidenote on the end. The first thing I noticed on both are plant composition.

Landscape 1

They’ve filled this front yard with contemporary style landscape plants. Nothing spectacular about the plant choice, but the overall composition is beautiful. Best part is every inch of space is packed with plants, and none of it is lawn. The only hesitation I have about this is that I hope they picked dwarf cultivars of about all woody material, because if not, this landscape will be pretty overgrown in five years. I took this picture just over a month ago, right when the mums where making a colorful appearance.

Landscape 2

This has a more naturalistic fill, using mainly rocks and ornamental grasses. There’s a little too much Karl Forester, but I still was quite captivated when I passed by this front yard. The grasses combine with the evergreens to create a great look now in late fall. This picture was taken a couple weeks ago, when I was fortunate to catch ornamental grasses at their peak.

I hope this has been a good distraction from pending snow and also presented some better options than lawn for the front yard. Again I want to point out that really what caught my attention wasn’t the lack of lawn in the front yard, it was the presence of a variety a plants and lots of thought behind them.

Stressing

November 28, 20111 Comment

So never move around Christmas time. I have a billion things on my mind and it’s making me a bit bonkers. I’m trying to figure out Christmas, finances, moving, along with all my regular daily tasks and a two year old. Two-year-olds are very sweet, but at the same time I am tired of answering the question, “What that?” There is also a general lack of cooperation in many tasks.

But there is lots of good news. We have found an apartment, hopefully. I’m waiting to sign on it until I can see it, but it looks good. Hotels are reserved. I’ve figured out what I’m getting everyone for Christmas, I just need to finish making a few things. And the finances are working out great, in spite of my worrying. And when I get upset and all stressed Peter does the cutest thing. He’ll grin at me (very cheesily and often through tears) in this specific way, and it means I’m supposed to cheer up and smile back. And it does manage to cheer me up a bit.

And one click shopping is not cool. You have no time to think through the purchase, it’s just suddenly done. Very convenient, but I don’t know if that is such a good thing. (What I did buy doing that, I did actually want. It just surprised me how quick it happened.)

Landscape Bids

November 22, 20111 Comment

I was recently asked to look over a few landscape bids for a friend of mine. The project was mostly a large stretch of lawn. I was a bit taken back by some of the practices that they listed.

Bagged lawn clippings: All that specified how to do lawn care maintenance mentioned that they would bag and take away all the lawn clippings. It was stated like this was a good thing, preferable to other methods. Oh my. Basic good garden techniques: leave the clippings. They basically add the equivalent of a pound of nitrogen a year. As long as you are cutting the lawn regularly and using a good mulching mower they aren’t a mess. Even then, they disintegrate within a couple days. If anyone out there is still bagging, please stop. Your lawn will thank you.

Lawn spray program: This is included a four step fertilizer program, complete with weed killers, pre-emergent, grub killers, etc. Never mind that there isn’t actually any crabgrass or other annual weed problem in the lawn to necessitate a pre-emergent, or any widespread grub or insect problems. As mentioned earlier, bagging clippings would add a pound of nitrogen, meaning one less fertlizer application is necessary. I still thing four step fertilizer programs (as seen advertised by fertilizer companies) is excessive. We’re not talking about a sports turf or heavily used lawn. Most of the lawn is hardly used. Two, maybe three applications a year would be sufficient to maintain a green healthy lawn. And wouldn’t it be great if one of those applications was actually a layer of compost? I also don’t like that the chemicals are going to be poured on, without monitoring for possible weed or insect problems that might be present first.

Those were my two main problems. I wish all companies would include more detail on their bids. Saying that the lawn will be maintained doesn’t give me much confidence that the company will actually be there no less than once a week making it look great. It was also interesting to see the bidding price. Anywhere from $8,000 to $1,500. The lowest was underbid, I’m wondering how they stay in business charging so little.

If you are thinking of doing landscaping, seriously consider looking into buying this software. It makes the whole bidding process a lot more manageable, and includes information on sustainable practices.

Big News

November 20, 20111 Comment

So this past week we had our twenty week ultrasound. The baby is healthy and normal and we found out that it was a BOY. It is ultimately what I wanted so I’ve very happy. Peter gets a new brother! He moves around quite a bit and I already feel big and uncomfortable at times. I still have four months, including a cross-country move!

Peter is very cute and seems to understand perfectly well that there is a “baby in mommy’s tummy.” He says that a lot, sometimes very randomly. We’ve been going to toddler gym at the local rec center where they do exercises and other activities. He loves that and will either want to go to toddler gym, nursery, or Grandma Claire’s about every day. We’ll do each about one a week plus story time. That kid loves to read. He’ll read with me for over a half hour. But according to him, he still likes Sesame Street better.

It also snowed and stuck for the first time. It was fun going out and playing with Peter. He wanted to dig in the snow and got out his trowel to do so. Here’s a bunch of random pictures from the last few weeks:

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Purse from Pants

November 16, 2011Leave a comment

So now that gardening season is over, I’ve enjoyed starting some new craft projects. I only have a large diaper bag and wanted a smaller purse that I could take to smaller outings. I cannot bring myself to spend money on this sort of thing, so I made one. I created it out of the bottom of a pair of worn out pants, an unwanted t-shirt, and fabric scrap so it cost me nothing.

To make it, I cut off the bottom of the pants to the length I wanted. Then I cut out a flap on the front so it folder over like a messenger bag.

I then sewed up the bottom and hemmed the unfinished sides. The handle was created from a similar project I did earlier, making a headband out of a t-shirt. There’s a good tutorial here for that. I sewed it on the inside of the bag. I then created a rolled flower for the front flap using this tutorial, and glued it on. The front flap is held down with Velcro I had. This is what it first looked like after all that:

Major problems. I didn’t have thread that matched and hated the results. So I unpicked the seams I hated and also rounded the corners a bit and re-sewed it all with matching thread. (Oh, and my machine which is a little bit broken was given me angst. I went to my mom’s and used hers. So much better.) Here’s the finished purse.

I love the results and have used it a few times already. Next time I would probably make the front flap fold down a little further, but otherwise it’s great.

Fall Snow Walk

November 8, 2011

It snowed yesterday, big white flakes that didn’t stick. In honor of the snow we dug out the boots and mittens and took a walk. (The boots were completely unnecessary. But little toddler loves them and we are moving to Georgia in January so they might not get much use this year.) At first, toddler was a bit weary about the snow…

He soon realized the beauty of it though.

I had been eyeing the rose bushes to the side of the house. They seem to have no idea that winter is very shortly coming, and continues to push up new flower buds.

The leaves are just starting to come off the trees, which I think is extremely late this year. They are still lots of fun to jump in.

Asters and mums are out and very lovely. Not my favorite plants, except in late fall when everything else is fading away.

The winter side of things is starting to become noticeable too, like these berries on a cotoneaster.

Even the juniper is already starting to have a purple hint to it.

I’ve been trying to work on my photography and liked how the pictures turned out on this walk. Hope you enjoyed them too.

Evenings

November 7, 20111 Comment

Lately, I’ve been trying to avoid aimlessly watching TV at night as a family. This has required us to get pretty creative in how we do use our time, but I’m enjoying spending better time with my family. Some of the things we’ve done include:

Building a toy city

Making sock puppets

Going on walks (which it’s getting cold and dark to do this much more)

There’s also dancing, reading, and playing games. (Hide and seek or tag for Peter. Sometimes Joe and I will break out the chess set. I might actually beat him one day). We also were able to go to my brother’s basketball game, and visit some family and play bored games.

What do you do for fun in the evenings that keeps you away from the TV?

Baby Coming!

November 3, 20111 Comment

I’m 19 weeks pregnant. And I’m just a little bummed because I do not get to find out what I am having for another two weeks. I want a boy to be friends with Peter and ’cause I like boys. And I want a girl so I can dress her up all cute (but not frilly!) and maybe ever make adorable girl dresses. And then I would have one of each. Hand-me-downs are a non-issue too. Peter’s got the boy stuff covered, and two baby girl cousins make up for the girl stuff. I’m good either way. (Note here: it is already a girl in my mind. But this “motherly intuition” could be completely wrong.)

What do you think?

And pregnancy has been amazing. I did sleep a lot the first trimester, but I wasn’t sick. And I have been moody, but not too bad. (Sorry to my dear Grandma who gets to deal with all my moods!) I’m also bigger than I was last time. Oh well. I have maternity clothes from not only my pregnancy, but some from both my sisters as well. It’s awesome to start wearing some shirts I adored from last time, or admired on my sisters. Oh and I accidentally made myself a belly band while attempting this skirt. I cut the waist band too small for a skirt, but the tighter fit works well for a belly band. I should have made one last pregnancy too: I’m liking it a lot.

Baby is moving, finally. I have been feeling strange things in my tummy for quite a while but it was never definitely baby movements until about a week ago. It’s the best part of pregnancy.

See? I have a belly.

Fall Pruning

November 2, 2011

I went to a neighborhood clean-up a few weeks ago and set to work cleaning up the yard of my 96 year-old neighbor. It was actually quite a pretty yard–she still goes out and gardens, although lately the weeds have gotten away from her. I set to work weeding and cutting back perennials and doing other fall task. Then I started freaking out because people were pruning horribly wrong.

There’s some basic pruning rules that were being ignored. I’m not going to try to overly explain them here, but they include cutting back to a bud or branch angle. This is apparently not common knowledge, but it should be. It is included in about every book or instruction on pruning, but maybe it also needs to be attached to every set of loppers sold at the store. I went over and tried to show people how to do this a bit, and also cleaned up some cuts.

But the main mistake was that people were pruning in the fall. In our climate, fall is simply not a good time to prune. With winter coming, a fall pruning can make a lot of shrubs and trees less able to deal with the pending cold. Don’t add it to the list of fall clean-up tasks. The only pruning I would do is very gentle pruning of things like shrubs that are attacking all people who attempt to greet your front door. Mostly, just let it wait until later winter to early spring, or whenever is appropriate for the shrub. (That might require a bit of research. It’s better than killing or mutilating your plant.)

This is a lilac. I attempted to clean it up a bit, but it’s horrid. A shrub should never look like this and especially not in the fall. A good pruning right after it blooms should help it out more, but for now the damage is done.

Halloween

November 1, 2011Leave a comment

Peter is finally old enough to celebrate Halloween. I haven’t enjoyed Halloween since I dressed up in spandex as a super hero my freshman year in college. Really it’s been since my childhood. But now I have a little kiddo to dress up and take trick or treating and it’s much more fun. Peter was Peter Pan. Easy costume, and after watching the movie and getting the hat he was pretty excited about dressing up like Peter Pan too. We went to two ward parties for Halloween, carved and painted a pumpkin (that was also Peter’s first experience with paints), and took a ride on the Nightmare Express. (That was the best free Halloween activity I’ve been to. You go ride a model train, but they decorate it awesome.)