Lol...Oh the temptations!!

You can do it!

Wishing you LOTS of strength :D

Have you seen the movie « Bird Box »? Maybe going blindfolded whenever you’re outside would help! :-)

Have not seen that movie. I am an awful thriller watcher. I am that woman who gets up and goes to the bathroom 10 times in a movie, always at he approach to a scary point when the creepy music begins. I drive my family NUTS. The older I get, the worse this tendency gets. I can handle murder in books better.

Maybe some blinders like horses wear. Only Forward, you beast of burden!!!!! Sliding water saws, not garden pruners. I will have to desert my garden friends for those on the other side of the GW wall and rub shoulders in the OTHER part of HOUZZ. . LOL. NO , NO not that.

ha... good read. What does "building my house" mean? complete build? rehab?

It was kinda like that when my boy was first born. I suppose the kid is more important then a few beds getting weedy right? He's turning out pretty good so far... so it's working it's way out.

This is my main garden skill, Mara. Being naturally myopic anyway, it is easy-peasy to squint, short-sightedly. Timing is a bit of a bummer though: we have just done 2 bathrooms for £££ so racing to catch up. I find that spending energy does seem to stimulate more effort (and conversely, idling and lolling on a sofa is exhausting..once fully in blob mode, .getting up to make a cup of tea is like a massive chore). Plus, it is a known fact that most productive work is done in the first 2 hours and after that, there tends to be more aimless faffing...so having another diversion (the garden) is a reasonable tactic.

@ nevermore. Half way between Rehab of a 1000 sq' shop that was built 20 years ago and a new build. Plumbing , electrical, gas plumbing, interior walls AC Heat all needed to be brought in. I hired some and doing the finish out painting, tile floors, wood floor, cabinets , hanging doors , Built a 16' sling door out onto the deck. I have my little shop under this structure. An indeprendantr movie was filmed in it years ago. It was my overflow shop for large projects. The structure is industrial in feeling so I am going for a modern feel. The thing is definitely "out of the box" in design.. I have been camping out in the completed shop office of my husbands. Kitchen in an alcove (unheated) of large woodshed. I can seemingly put up with pain for a long time.

We started with this:

Midway

Where we are at now....my Garden is growing behind my back

Now the floors, what I am working on

now. I found those asphalt tiles at Habitat 20 years ago. Not enough of them so they will be wasted on the laundry room.

I got given the kitchen tiles

pray for me. I will actually have a bedroom again. It has been a long time that we have been camping out. It cost a lot of money to be "civilized" We are using lots of used and free stuff.

Camp, I love that word FAFF faffing. Faffed.

NHBabs, You are much more organized than me. I just lost 15 minutes yanking Blue bonnets around my cactus. They are taking over and they kill cactus. I was passing by looking for Murphy's oil soap to clean my paint brushes.

Wow wow wow! Oh I love it Mara. I know it's hard to pass by the outside to go inside, but I'll be praying for you ... ;-)

Mara, the timer is precisely because I am so bad at organizing . ..

Lots of things get neglected over here during gardening season. We’d be eating a lot more sandwiches if winters were shorter! Lol!

Be careful, all work and no play....

Maybe give yourself an hour before dusk? You're probably too tired to really get much done but at least you'll be forced to quit once it gets dark and you won't end up wondering where the last five hours went and why your paint brushes are still dirty.

It looks great so far. I love the light in that space.

NHBabs, I would loose the timer. I don't keep my phone anywhere near me.

I'm still stuck on your first sentences... Something about "it's spring" or some other nonsense

HEY , up there , I am in Texas. I have harvested tomatoes in March before. It will be 80 tomorrow but it was 22 less than a week ago. WE do yo yo weather really well in the spring. It was 80 right before it was 22. You guys in the north central US are really getting hit bad with this cold snap

Wow Mara! Its looking just great! Taking a line from the movie 'Agony and Ecstasy'----"When will you make a finish?" That "yellow" is growing on me. You say green, I say yellow. I really like what you've done and the over all look, it got that industrial feeling with a touch of whimsical that I like so much.

Maybe you could put in a vegetable garden and give yourself some breaks outdoors just for sanity's sake. Doctor says "its healthy" to do that. A day off here and there would be nice at least during spring and besides, not only will you miss gardening, you'll miss the vegetables. It'll probably be just your luck we have a wetter than normal summer. You guys should have done this in the middle of the drought, it would have been less tempting to get outside.

We've had a colder than normal late winter which is dragging out unusually late. On the up side, we might actually have peaches and other tree fruits in Oklahoma this year since the up and down has been more down than up keeping the buds from opening too soon and getting nipped which is the norm. We never got more than a dusting of snow all winter and no ice to speak of (thankfully). Its been kind of dry but we are getting some rain this week which is good because last year I had dismal results with my direct sown seeds because it was so dry. I've sowed quite a lot this winter.

Ambitious Mara. Loving the colours (have been a little obsessed with 'grellow' (grey and yellow) for a few years...and always love that bright fresh green.

Crap day here - horizontal rain, freezing and dull...so making pies and cakes - lemon meringue, pear and almond frangipane, carrot cake ( do I care about calories - nope ).

I have a vegetable garden going that was planted last fall. I put in some more seeds "accidentally" a couple of weeks ago. They better grow with neglect. The onslaught of cardboard that arrives with every mail has been layered on the paths between the beds. Soon the cardboard will be as tall as the beds.. It takes a lot of cardboard to build a house. It has been cooler than normal down here too but except for that last blast, not too cold. My frost cloth that was wrapped around my sugar snaps blew open in the 40MPH winds when the front blew in and my peas are a bit blighted. I hoe they recover because they were making lots and lots of peas.. SEE, I am not doing a good job unseeing stuff. They do say we will have a year with some rain which makes it doubly hard not to garden. Last year long range forecasters were saying bad drought so I did not plant anything in the spring.

The yellow-green is backed against a slightly warm grey on the other side of the room. and it looks really good. My husband and I have fought over the tint of white. He wanted that Eastery green white and I would like a slightly neutral greyed white (Like gypsum board white). So far, he is winning the battle I sponged a very white almond to temper the blue in the green one the white and that helped the clash with the yellow green.

You would be proud of me. The Natve American seed company sent their seed catalogue yesterday and I THREW IT IN THE TRASH CAN. Off to build a tiled counter for a utility sink today. The birds are twittering in mass out my window.

My dentist has an office done in the industrial look. Old cement floors that were once tiled (you can see where the tiles were) and which now look distressed, stained dark and polished, bright modern art, steel furniture that is made from found objects and rough sanded etc. The color scheme is a similar yellow with sage green that is muted. Its a knock-out combination. Around the building which is also industrial looking are yellow hesperaloe's which go very nicely with it.

Its nice out today. I'm headed outside. I've been stuck inside working on panels prepping them for embossed gilding for days and I need a break. I've got a lot of old Gregg salvia that have gotten leggy and huge. I'm going to trim them back hard to shorten them, make them fuller hopefully giving them some shape. They look awful, growing into each other like a tangled mess--- rank and sprawling with old wood and no new growth at the base. I'm hoping they put out new growth from the bases and don't croak.

Nah - you can be brutal with s.greggii (unlike my anisodontea which has just carked it). None of that 'don't cut into old wood' nonsense - have at 'em. Tex. (have just been at 'Nachtvlinder - my darkest purple).

Yep, Mara - consumer temptations are coming thick and fast through the post - some of them are huge (David Austin roses...which I have NEVER ordered from) while some of them are bloody persistent. There are a particular couple of catalogues which pop through the letterbox almost monthly...which I will never buy from cos they are just glossy, life-stylee, wannabee, spendy rubbish - the most egregious offender is the awful Sarah Raven - the greediest woman on the planet and a sort of Martha Stewart-alike pose and preen machine - gah. Not to mention the mad photo-shopping...

Tell us how you really feel, Camps. ;>)

Ah, soz, NHBabs - getting my bitch on. Sarcasm is my second (first!) language. Recently, I have heard a couple of people stating that 'gardeners are such nice people'. To be fair, it wasn't actually addressed to me, but I still had to strangle a disbelieving snort.

Tex attacked those G. Salvia's and got them well disciplined and law abiding. I've got some new ones where stems had rooted, I cut the umbilical branches and those will be handy when I take out the too-big-grass-that-you-can't-walk-by-in-summer-because-it-blocks-the-path to create a continuous row along the east side fence. Gregg S. is one of those cheap plants you can use in all kinds of neglected or difficult situations. They even bloom in shade and maintain a decent form.

I didn't know gardeners were supposed to be nice, I thought we were supposed to be hard-bitten Salt of the Earth types who are pragmatic and blunt. Personally, I think 'nice' is overrated and downright boring when nice is all you get.

I'll add a bit of sarcasm:

Mara, you are going to have to come up with a more impressive "sacrificial" act than throwing away a Native American Seed catalog---come on! That is not an act of discipline or sacrifice. The hard part is yet to come. Temptations are passing by a nursery or seeing a great plant sale with either great prices or fabulously tempting plants or just looking outside on a perfect day, seeing the horrendous mess crying out for cleaning and not succumbing to weakness.

I passed by three of the best nurseries in Austin driving for tile supplies. the hard part is walking to my shop.... past the cactus garden the is now a blue Bonnet garden.

I'd have a hard time doing laundry in a room with those tiles. I'd just stand there and look at them, too much in love to start the first load.

Mara, ignore the house, you don't need a roof right now. Just go play in the garden!

The roof was appreciated in all this rain that we just had. Yesterday, we did have our first day of sunshine in a long time. It is a sea of mud out there. Cold sweater&sock weather in May in Texas is somewhat unheard of but that is what we are having. I can feel the humidity just waiting to strike and the mosquito larvae wiggling, growing, waiting for warmth to swarm us and suck our blood. They are coming. No doubt about it.

Acts of failure at Unseeing the garden : Going to a plants swap in San Antonio, and the digging and planting that has followed that huge slip.. pulling weeds. I still have not been to a nursery this spring. I almost did yesterday because I clipped some cuttings of Salvia regla and Ageratina havanense that I need to get cuttings of going and I am out of rooting hormone. A trip to a nursery is in the works. I will try to ONLY get rooting hormone.(hahahaha). The workers dug through a bank of ones in a new bed that I made in the WRONG place. There was a whole bunch of digging around the septic tank to bring in the new pipes. So unseeing is slipping.

My husband and I are now Building kitchen cabinets, finishing the completed bathroom cabinet, now cutting tiles for bathtub alcove. The bathroom cabinet got a jackson pollack faux paint job. I had fun.

We went to start on the deck for the horsebox...but a bird had spotted a birdbox I was repairing...and colonised it. despite lying on the floor, next to my chair...exactly where we were about to lay out the raised deck. Needless to say, we spent the last 2 days idling, watching the many babies in the wood at this time of year. Deck postponed till fledging.

Mara, thanks for the update. Will be watching for photos; of everything, but especially of that Jackson Pollack paint job.

Camp, those birds must trust you ... a lot -- a trust well placed I might add.