Spring : a time for new beginnings Part 2
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Kenneth zone 7A - Southern Middle TN
4 years agolast modified: 4 years agoThanks 😍😄 Everyone needs a kiss me kate she started showing out today .
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'Craziest thing you did in the garden this spring...part 2
Comments (18)The craziest or i guess i should say Dumbest thing i did this year was go out in the front garden one kinda cool and overcast day.I planted some new flowers,moved things around etc.I had a sweat shirt on when i started,but got too hot and took it off. Never gave the weather another thought!! Don't know if you all remember i went through chemo at the end of 08 and beginning of 09.My hair has grown back,however not as thick as it used to be.Thought nothing of it.Continued with those gardens,and moved over to the side succulent garden,by that time the sun was in and out,felt nothing,that is until i came in and got in the shower.When i washed my hair my scalp hurt pretty bad,so when i got out,i took my hand mirrow and looked at the back of my head~~~~~~~~~~Yup had a pretty bad sunburn,right thru my hair.Won't make that mistake again!! Kathi...See MoreUPDATE: mnf jan 2010 swap - new beginnings part 2
Comments (151)********************Hey every one,gather around************ I just got my box,Come on, sit,have a glass of refreshment, and i will show you every thing i received, man, what a GREAT BOX, First and formost, i will thank my gift er, A big thank you to Dawn,who is a new kid on the block,and was worried she would be a disappointment,Dawn, you choice of goodies is perfect,just perfect! This was in my box you guys, 1. A very nice letter ya all know i LOVE a hand written note,she told me a little about herself,which i love hearing also. 2.The most wonderful gardening gloves, i am going to want more of these, saved the label,so i know where to order more. 3. A HUGE, tub of Moisture Therapy hand cream. 3.Some nice eye glass cleaner with a little towelette to clean them with, i am always looking to clean my glasses when i am on the computer. 4.A thoughtful Lighthouse Pin, to light my way, so i never get lost,now, how sweet is THAT. 5.A new tube of lipstick.the right color even,:0) 6.A pair of Bathing Gloves,you use these like a wash cloth,lather up and exfoliates your skin,cool. 7.Poppy Seed*RED**I grew poppies last year, really didn't like the ones i choose, and was wanting to try these Red Ones, I can't wait to grow these,Dawn, are these the big red ones? 8.Lavender seeds 9.Curled Chervil;herb;yeaaaaaaaaaaaa,for my new Herb Garden 10.Genovese Basil,another herb,yeaaaaaa Cat Grass, another one i wanted to try, my 2 cats will love this one. 12.Blur Morning Glories, I Love Morning Glories 13.Cleome seeds 14.Nasturtium seeds 15.And Moonflower Thank you so much Dawn, this was a great box,you put a lot of thought into this box,and made this gardener,very happy.(this will only be my 2nd box i sent.)I know how it feels,:0) I know you are all happy for me, can't wait to hear from the rest of you. cAROL...See MoreIKEA Spring Sale 2015 begins 2/27
Comments (42)Not surprising. I am hearing endless reports of people having trouble getting all the stock they need. So thankful I got my KD/installer to buy early - or I very well could have had to delay. Really sorry for those people who are having supply issues. hey I wanted to share this guy's videos - he had some really good tips, for anyone thinking about Sektion in the future... https://youtu.be/ee8ORgNrYAw https://youtu.be/569rakCCvmU...See MoreMarch 2019, Week 2 Let the New Rain and Mud Games Begin....
Comments (59)Jennifer, It is crazy what the wind can do! I hate our windy March weather and always look forward to the calmer weather of April. Let's hope that we get calmer weather in April this year. Jen, There's a dog like that in every crowd, isn't there! I am laughing so hard, and I bet the doggy parents were too. We have had an occasional mud-loving dog too. Larry, I've lost my light shelf in the garage before, so it can be done. Luckily it was just behind and underneath a lot of junk and I dug it out. I hope you can find yours and don't have to build a new one. Nancy, I find zone 7 a bit harder than zone 8 even though we only moved 80 miles north....it is the way the cold nights just keep coming back after a relatively long period of warmer nights. I can look at our temperatures for this week and feel like I could put tomato plants in the ground by the end of the week, and it might work, but then April could arrive and bring back cold nights like it did last year. That's the hardest part for me....the huge inconsistencies in the weather. Then, there's those years we warm up really early and I love, love, love that because I can plant earlier with relative peace of mind, but.....a warm February and warm March usually mean a hot summer, so are they really a good sign after all? Oh, and microclimate is everything. They said we'd be 37 last night, then dropped it to 36....and, because our microclimate doesn't take orders from the NWS, our overnight low was 31 here at the house and 29 at our Mesonet station. So, I've learned I cannot trust the forecast either. It is maddening. I cannot even imagine the adjustments you'd had to make going from zone 3 to zone 7! My tomato plants had 4 hours of sunlight and very light wind yesterday and looked pretty darn happy by the time I brought them inside. So, today we're going to put them out for 5 hours after the chilly air warms up a bit. I keep putting off potting them up again even though I have all the supplies on hand and can do it. I really must do it tomorrow. I must. I'd start potting up today but Tim and I have a day of outdoor chores planned. On the other hand, this week is Spring Break and I'll have both the girls here with me, so I might be too busy playing with baby dolls with the little one and doing crafts and baking with the older one. I am trying to make the most of the time we have together here while they are staying with us because their new house is almost finished and they won't be here much longer. Unless, that is, my son has another day like yesterday.....you can skip the rest if you aren't interested in house mysteries because it isn't gardening-related. Their house is almost done, but you know, once you start poking around in an old house, there is no telling what you'll discover. Their house was redone in the 2005-06 time frame, and I'm not sure what all that involved but suspect it did involved total modernization that include putting up new drywall everywhere, which wouldn't have been easy in a house with 11' ceilings. I know it included a kitchen remodel with a sincere attempt to keep the old charm (successfully too) and new double-paned custom windows in the old Victorian style (very tall windows---about 7'-8' tall and thinner than modern day windows), and this probably also is when the central HVAC system was installed. However, there remains a huge attic fan that I cannot even describe (I'll try to on some boring rainy day) that likely dates back to the early days. While most of the house somewhat makes sense, the closet in the master bedroom has been a odd looking thing all along that I had believed was not always a closet. It does have drywall but had carpet whereas the rest of the house had hardwood except for tile in the kitchen and bathrooms. It also has an oddly-placed strip of border type wallpaper at about chair-rail height but nothing but painted drywall above and below, and the stupid border was a MLB one. In a closet. A closet with a mini-closet built in at the north end. So, with questions about the weird closet (honestly, big enough to have been nursery or a toddler's bedroom) in his mind, Chris went exploring. He pulled up the carpet intending to buy and lay hardwood if he could find a close match to the color of their existing flooring. Instead, he found the home's original hardwood from 1932, albeit covered in what looks like a gray paint. It sands off easily though, so he's going to restore the closet floors. I'm guessing that closet is maybe 5' wide and 12 to 14' long. Intrigued by the hardwood, he began peeling off the wallpaper border, but only drywall was beneath it. So, he then tore out the wall that separated the mini closet at the end of the big closet (after calling Tim and I to consult on whether it was load-bearing----which it was not). Anyhow, eventually he was sending us photos of shiplap walls, with tons of nails---some of which look handmade and likely date back to 1932. He found a beadboard ceiling--you know, the old original beadboard that was put up one skinny board at a time. After he kept sending us photos, we dropped the projects we were working on outdoors, carried in the tomato plants, and drove up there to see the stuff he was uncovering because by then we were just too curious about how it all looked in person. So, once we got there, it got really interesting. To get to the shiplap he had to remove very thick drywall that looks like it is 5/8" thick, and beneath that he found three separate layers of wallpaper---one obviously from the 1960s, one from around the late 1940s or early 1950s and one from the 1930s. There were layers of cheesecloth between each wallpaper layer, and the bottom wallpaper layer wasn't glued down...it was nailed down! My word! I never heard of that before. Would they have wallpapered a closet back then and didn't they have wallpaper paste? The other bedrooms have tiny closets more typical of that time frame, so we think that my original belief from the very first time we saw the house that the closet originally was a dressing room or a nursery probably is accurate, and the tiny closet within the closet was the original closet. In the north wall of that tiny closet, a large section of shiplap didn't match the other shiplap exactly and had been pieced in to fill what probably was an exterior window back in the day. So.....now that they have found the hidden history of that room buried there in the closet, they want to take down the rest of the drywall in the closet, stain it a walnut color, refinish the floors, turn 1/3 of it into a nice, neat closet for them with built-in shelving and clothing racks (they are minimalists and don't hang on to huge amounts of clothing that they don't wear....) and then turn the other half of the closet into a nice little office type nook with a desk and space for a computer and all that. I think this project will only take a week or so extra, but you know I'm laughing....because now they're already talking about 'someday' doing something in the other rooms, maybe exposing the beadboard ceilings or something. Oh, and the closet always had very old, very nice trim around the interior of the closet door, but it was flush with the drywall....so now we know why....they added the drywall and cut it to fit around the old, existing trim around the door. We had puzzled over why there was trim around the door on the interior of the closet. This is like being a house detective--figuring out what was done and when and how and why. That sort of project to uncover more of their home's hidden history will have to wait though because they don't intend to do it before they move in. The longer they work on the house, the more they fall in love with with its history. They had intended to remove and replace an old side door that leads out to the driveway at the back of the house, but when they discovered it was the original front door with the original hardware and huge, thick locks, they decided to keep it. It also has one of those old crystal doorknobs. (A neighboring home still has this exact same door as the front door, so they're guessing it was moved from the front to the side during an earlier remodeling.) Anyhow, another big project like this closet, squeezed in between their work days, gives us at least another week with them here in our house with us so we aren't complaining. I suspect that our house will be much too quiet once they move into theirs, and I think they'll love the little bit of history they've exposed in their oversized closet. See, this is why we are so far behind on everything at our house right now....because we drop our projects to go help with theirs, or just to go see what they're doing. I do know that the employee in the paint department at Lowe's knows Jana by sight now, knows just what colors of paint she keeps buying more of, and was totally thrown for a loop when Jana bought a new color yesterday....lol. While we were there, I did study the yard, which seems mostly dirt and weeds at this point. They wanted to know if they have enough sunshine to grow bermuda grass there, and I think they do, so we discussed the timing of planting it, seed vs. sod, etc. They have liriope on either side of their front walkway, a couple of sweetgum trees in the front yard, and maybe one in the back (but lots of shade from trees on adjacent properties), and one rose bush, so the yard does need some work and some shrubs planted and such. The ten year old spent much of her day raking up tons of autumn leaves, and I intend to go up there today and bring home those leaves for my compost pile if Tim and I finish up all our outdoor projects on time to do so today. Now, I need to go start the new week's garden talk..... Dawn...See More
rosecanadian
4 years agolast modified: 4 years ago
Vaporvac Z6-OhioRiverValley
4 years ago
sara_ann-z6bok
4 years agoKiss Me Kate is gorgeous, Kenneth!
Carol, thank you!
I took these pictures this evening, blooms are slowly beginning to open, not much new except Julia Child.This is JULIA CHILD
MME ERNEST CALVAT
DUBLIN BAY fully open
ORCHID ROMANCE
Kenneth zone 7A - Southern Middle TN
4 years agoSara gorgeous i envy anyone that can grow julia that rose wont grow for me i got it as standard and praying i have killed 2 idk what i do wrong ;( ... i brought the arragement in and added more i love fresh flowers they motivate me to clean to tie in the look.
rosecanadian
4 years ago
noseometer...(7A, SZ10, Albuquerque)
4 years ago
Kristine LeGault 8a pnw
4 years agoKenneth zone 7A - Southern Middle TN
4 years agoThanks everyone some of the beautys blooming ..
Madame Anisette
& Kiss me late just keeps getting more gorgeous by day.
Both of these climber are enjoying 3rd season fruits .
rosecanadian
4 years agosara_ann-z6bok
4 years agolast modified: 4 years agoThank you Kenneth, Carol and Kristine! I’m fond of my JC, it’s a pretty good rose for me, at least it’s healthy, but mine seems to stay pretty compact, not the huge, gorgeous, full of blooms bush like Diane’s. I guess it’s not good to do a comparison when a rose does way better in another area, but I can’t keep from admiring Diane’s roses! Kenneth, your picture of Madame Anisette is lovely, I got that one and a Kiss Me Kate both,
Kristine, my season usually lasts thru the end of October, and sometimes into November, depending on the weather.
I love Orchid Romance, it’s had some pretty blooms so far.
My SOUVENIR DE LA MALMAISON beginning to bloom.
rosecanadian
4 years ago
Sheryl May 8a
4 years agoRosecanadian, Gracie is half Bernese mountain dog. Her daddy is German Shepherd and St Bernard. She is a beauty with a very sweet personality. She is 8 months old.
We are enjoying gorgeous weather here but the only thing blooming in my garden is myrtle and the lilacs should me open in another day or two. when they bloom I can smell them from the porch swing and it is heaven!
sara_ann-z6bok
4 years agoI love your dog pictures Sheryl!
Carol, here is the open bloom of Quietness, I think it will be the first of many, so hopefully there will be some better ones, but on second thought, I kind of like this one!
Kenneth zone 7A - Southern Middle TN
4 years agoGood morning yall from the rose trials lol - Madame Anisette has really showed out in her 3rd year shes everything ;) have a great day ;) Beautiful Souvenir i need space to get that one too uggh
Sheryl May 8a
4 years ago
titian1 10b Sydney
4 years agorosecanadian
4 years agoflowersaremusic z5 Eastern WA
4 years agolast modified: 4 years ago
Lala Idaho Zone 7a
4 years ago
mark_roeder 4B NE Iowa
4 years agolast modified: 4 years agoLilyfinch Our leaf buds are starting to open. I am pruning out the dead stuff and cleaning things up in the rose beds. Not much to pictorialize in the garden. I took a few moments last weekend to shoot this:
The above was with full extension on the lens at 320 mm.This nest has been here 11-years. The eagles who started it chose wisely for those eagles who enjoy small fish. There is a stream down below, and a landowner added a pond for them last year. We were standing at a safe distance as you can see from this shot with the lens at 25mm:
This is a better view if you are so inclined to view it: https://www.flickr.com/photos/82428620@N00/49794682077/in/dateposted-public/
titian1 10b Sydney
4 years ago
cyndita (west coast zone 9)
4 years agoflowers - I'm having the same problems on my phone, but my laptop & the app are still working okay. Houzz clearly attempted to once again make some updates...
I'm not caught up, but hope everyone is doing okay, and either enjoying the spring flowers, or the lead up to the spring flowers!
It's hard to tell the size in the picture, but here's a gigantic Evelyn bloom from a bare root in a peat pot I got at Regan's earlier this year (tag said Canadian grown). I got busy with work & haven't re-potted it yet - maybe adding rose food on top of whatever slow-release fertilizer they put in the potting mix was too much....
DDinSB (Z10b Coastal CA)
4 years agolast modified: 4 years agoOh my, Cyndita! Wowza! That is a lovely rose. I'm not caught up, either. Quick update: We had the crazy hair-dryer winds on Thursday night -- gusts up to 81 MPH! Took out several huge trees in the neighborhood, power outages. Wreaked some havoc in our yard, but thankfully no trees down. Did lose power and Internet for a while. Next day -- thought roses would be trashed. But here are photos from yesterday and today! (poppies, on the other hand look like they went through a vitamix):
Blooms Rescued from garden -- including Munstead Wood, Yves Piaget, Olivia Rose Austin, Madam Anisette, Poet's Wife, Alstroemeria, Chantilly Peach Snapdagons...
Boscobel is stealing the show right now, and very fragrant!
Moondance is looking so peaceful...DDinSB (Z10b Coastal CA)
4 years agolast modified: 4 years ago
Marmalade Skies is just glowing
Desdemona is very new yet, and the wind bowed her down a bit...
Brand new rose starting to peek out -- Scentuous -- looks promising!
DDinSB (Z10b Coastal CA)
4 years agolast modified: 4 years ago
Carding Mill is suddenly looking rather pink after the hot, hot scirroco winds...
New Rose - Moonlight in Paris. Soooo lovely.
Moonlight in Paris
DDinSB (Z10b Coastal CA)
4 years ago
White Licorice, James L. Austin, LIfe of the Party (Huntington's 100th) and Queen of Sweden in background.
James L. Austin
View of back -- Carding Mill (looking rather pink after the heat and wind), Yves Piaget, Love Song, Poet's Wife - far back bright color is Dee-Lish.
DDinSB (Z10b Coastal CA)
4 years agoflowersaremusic z5 Eastern WA
4 years agotitian1 10b Sydney
4 years agocyndita (west coast zone 9)
4 years ago
Dillybeansown (6b in the Ozarks)
4 years agoQuick personal update. :) Thank you so much to everyone for the prayers and well wishes! Baby Lucy finally made her joyful arrival in the early hours of this morning!
She’s precious and chubby and snuggly. We love her so much already. <3jc_7a_MiddleTN
4 years ago
Stephanie, 9b inland SoCal
4 years agosara_ann-z6bok
4 years agoLilyfinch z9a Murrieta Ca
4 years ago
Diane Brakefield
4 years agoflowersaremusic z5 Eastern WA
4 years agoVaporvac Z6-OhioRiverValley
4 years agotitian1 10b Sydney
4 years ago
ingrid_vc so. CA zone 9
4 years agoKristine LeGault 8a pnw
4 years ago
monarda_gw
4 years agoDDinSB (Z10b Coastal CA)
4 years agorosecanadian
4 years agomjkjrobinson
4 years agocyndita (west coast zone 9)
4 years agoDillybeansown (6b in the Ozarks)
3 years ago
Lilyfinch z9a Murrieta CaOriginal Author