spring has sprung!

While many people took this past Easter weekend to relax, hunt for eggs and go to church, I spent 3-5 hours each day Friday-Sunday in my happy place -- my gardens! It was outdoor spring cleaning weekend and now -- two packed full trash bins, six bags of mulch and two trips to the Garden Center at Home Depot later -- my back yard is all beautified and ready for spring... complete with a robin's nest full of pretty blue eggs tucked away under the garage eaves hidden by vines I almost ripped down (but saw just in the nick of time! Phew... don't need that bad karma!)

You wouldn't know by looking at them now, but I cut all this mess off my three jasmine vines, which exploded a few weeks ago when it rained. They are still super full and provide great privacy for my patio. (And smell awesome when they bloom!)

The rain also made my bougainvillas VERY happy finally... I had to put up new rods and wires to train them up the ugly gray cinderblock wall that I hope one day soon they will completely cover.

                                                                                                                                         

All of my roses are at least budding if not already blooming!

I put fresh mulch down for them and trimmed them a bit.

I also planted one new rose bush here (the pretty pink and white one in the lower left) to replace one that died last year, plus another new one in my corner garden, bringing my total to "way too many rose bushes for a person who is easily scratched" ;)

The corner garden with my new solar powered butterfly and peacock lights, one on each side of the rose bush I planted in memory of my sweet Lucky kitty last October. 

I also planted a new purple teacup rose bush here, which is named the "Barbra Streisand Rose"... after my mom's favorite singer.

Look closely and you can see the cute, handmade ceramic dragonfly and butterfly garden stakes I bought on my February trip to Santa Barbara.

And underneath my hummingbird feeder, the purple ceramic hummingbird that reminded me of my Granny and a ladybug :)

And finally, the repotted corner of the patio that was wiped out when it rained three weeks ago due to a REALLY full gutter directly above it. I had my own personal waterfall happening here!

The good part of that bad news was I put a trash can under the waterfall on Days 2 and 3, which was filled up by the time it stopped raining and used this weekend to water down all the fertilizer I placed under my giant orange tree. (Reduce, Reuse, Recycle! )

  

so simple, yet so not

Check out my new pretty metal flower decorations (purchased for 50% off at Pier One Imports!) that only took me 1 month, 3 different drill bits, help from 2 friends, advice from my mom and 4 wall anchors (2 mangled, 2 not) to hang on the solid cement wall of my patio.

At least it's not all gray and boring anymore :)

Oh no... I just realized the spiders are gonna love those... ugh.

 

get sh*t done sunday - the furniture edition

So this past Sunday, I did two things I've had on my 'to do' list for eons... finally!

When I moved into my house six and a half years ago, I bought a lot of nice, dark stained furniture for my living room (a bookcase, a console for my tv) to match my dark teak wood dining room table. But I had an unstained, giant coffee table from Pier 1 Imports....

Well, I don't anymore!

And as the #2, I decided to also refurbish my childhood desk that my parents kicked out of their house a few years ago that's been collecting dust in my garage.

Step 1: Lug giant table out to really hot garage (why didn't I do this last weekend when it was not 90 degrees outside?). Dust cobwebs and plain-old dust off of old desk that's been shoved in the corner of the garage for 3+ years.

Step 2: Unpack new sander (since I thrashed the old sander while sanding and painting the garage trim and window box shelves two weeks ago) and thrash the new sander while removing old stain, scratches, dents, splinters, etc. from furniture to be stained.

(Note: the "high performance dust collector" on the back of my new Black & Decker Mouse Detail sander does NOT collect the majority of the "dust" created by sanding a giant unstained coffee table and really old, previously stained open-top desk. It collects a little, but there was more on the outside of the "high performance dust collector" contraption than inside it.)

 

Step 3: Vacuum sanded dust particles off of coffee table and desk so there is a smooth, clean surface to paint. 

Step 4: Paint the wood stain onto every visible surface, being sure to drizzle it into the crevices between the wood slats. I used Varathane Wood Stain in the color "Kona." At first, I just put this on the desk, and had an older stain I'd used in my condo on the table (seen below) because I thought the Kona was too dark for the coffee table.....

Step 5: ... But after it dried on the desk (in just an hour -- the label doesn't lie!), I really liked it.. it had a great shine to it like my other furniture. (The older stain didn't have a shine to it.) So I re-stained the coffee table Monday night. 

And while I think it IS darker than my other furniture (because it doesn't have any red to it like the TV console and book shelf's stain does when the light hits it), I am really happy with the re-do. And Lucky is really happy to have his hiding place back from the garage after two days. (Yes, I have newspaper taped to the legs still because I'm paranoid about the new stain staining my cream carpet. Sue me :p) 

As for my former childhood desk, after buying a really cute new knob for the pull-top door and six new drawer pulls at Home Depot, I've decided to try it out in my dining room as a mini-buffet cabinet of sorts. I've put all of my table linens (that were formerly stashed in a cabinet above the fridge) in the drawers, and figure I can open it up and put serving dishes or other assorted overflow items from the table on it when I have people over and we actually eat inside. Yay!

garden update

In I-can't-believe-this-is-happening news: After two previous attempts to grow my favorite food of all time, I actually have strawberries growing and about to turn red. AND the squirrels haven't gotten to them yet! (So shhhhhhh!)

I'm going to assume the squirrels haven't gotten to the strawberries yet because they are preoccupied with the bird seed at the other end of the yard. While my feeder is supposedly squirrel-proof (it's called Squirrel X), they still like hanging out around it as every bird in my neighborhood picks seeds out of it and drops a lot on the ground. In fact, this week, it took those birds all of four days to descend on my yard and turn this...













...into this.

They better learn to eat more slowly. I'm only going to fill that thing up once a week IF they're lucky. (If I can ration my Marks & Spencer Scottish Shortbread cookies, these birds can ration their wildbird seed mix!)

Finally, my new mint plant is getting bigger and is so far bug free. And the rosemary and lavender that I'm propagating is still alive.. the lavender is even budding a bit. Yay! I want that especially to root so I can plant it in a sunny spot, hardly ever water it and watch it get ginormous like the lavendar in my front garden :)

get sh*t done monday

Being as today was a national holiday and all, I had big plans to sit outside on my patio to be lazy and attempt to make a dent in this ginormous magazine pile....

However, I woke up all motivated... and Home Depot was calling my name... for the third time in nine days. So back I went. 

I picked up eggplant / dark purple Behr paint swatches to debate as the potential new color of my soon-to-be-new front door. I'm thinking something less purple than "Exotic Eggplant" and more purple than "Curtain Call." Or a little less lavender than the top one. (This is so stressful!) Thoughts??

I also bought a new can of dark brown wood stain for two projects that have been on my to-do list for years that I am going to get to by the end of June. 

I also bought a pretty wildflower blue can of spray paint for another project that's been on the list since I bought my house. 

I bought more mouse traps for the attic. (These are just for mice... no rats. Pretty please.)

I bought a cool new yard tool I'll be writing about after I use it next weekend. 

I bought chicken manure to fertilize my orange tree that I fear is still in shock after getting trimmed back in January. It had flowered and there are little green wanna-be-big-oranges on it, but a lot were blown off when it was super windy a few weeks ago. And I've yet to see any of them turning orange. Here's hoping the chicken manure (and the massive soaking I gave it... shhh!) make it happy and fruity.

I also bought three more bags of my go-to Scott's brown mulch and finished laying mulch in the big rose garden and neighboring flower garden. Also fed the roses again for spring and tilled the soil around their roots so they stay as hydrated as possible under current watering restrictions. (See, I'm a good citizen. The grass in my backyard is practically dead to prove it.)

Then I got to work on the patio. In my herb garden, I planted a new rosemary plant and thyme I got at Trader Joe's last night 

I also planted a pot of lemon balm, after reading that it repels mosquitoes (who love me). It's that green leafy plant behind the candle, behind the wine on my patio table this lovely evening... :)

Since lavender also repels mosquitoes, I took some cuttings off my giant lavender bush in the front yard and am propagating that (along with some rosemary too) to hopefully keep potted on the back patio after it roots. I was inspired to try "propagating" by this article on Pinterest this morning (That's it! That's what derailed my lazy day...  damn you Pinterest! oh well!)

Finally, while at Home Depot, I walked past these cute white-washed planter crates from The Hip Gardener and decided to see if Mexican Heather will survive on my newly-painted window ledges in front of my house (ie: in direct sunlight most of the day). The planters are super-cute.. you can write on one side of them -- the side I have facing the house because I haven't decided what to write yet. (Maybe my house address?? What do you think?) I put terracotta pots inside them to hold the heather, and weighted them down with river rock pebbles so they don't blow away. I think I might need a third one.. we'll see :)

get sh*t done sunday - the sequel

This weekend continued more of what I started and/or discovered last weekend... but I got it done in half the time :)

First, after trimming the out-of-control rosemary and lavender bushes last weekend, this morning I sanded down the chipped paint on the planter ledges (that I've yet to put planters on) in front of my two front windows and repainted those in the same exterior Behr paint I used for the garage trim.

Then I dumped and spread out four bags of Scott's Earthgro Color Advantage brown mulch in the front garden and in two of the four gardens in the back yard. I need to go back for at least two more bags to recover the main rose garden.

I also planted a big pink Hydrangea I broke down and spent way too much money on at Home Depot yesterday. It better not die like the last one did. I'm hoping this new spot along the back wall will provide a better mix of morning sun and afternoon shade. I also planted it right in front of a sprinkler, just to be safe ;)

Then in this weekend's outdoor critter update, Part 1, I decided to be nice and give free food to the three families of birds that have nested in one of my trees, my jasmine vine and under the eaves of my house in a mud nest. This is my supposedly-squirrel resistant feeder... last year they learned how to pry the top off, so this year it's tied shut with wire ties. We'll see how long it takes them to figure that out...

And in critter update, Part 2, I decided to see if I can deal with whatever is under my house on my own before paying people. First, I closed up the grate on my patio that I'd discovered something had pushed open during the winter. Second, I bought a plastic pre-baited rat/mouse trap and put it the crawlspace under the house. (I've decided that it's something small because I heard something in the wall behind my bar Thursday. Eek!) In a week, my dad gets to come and pull the trap out from under the house and let me know if there is something in it or not. If not, then I'll call for an inspection. 

Although... I had a somewhat more pleasant thought as I drove home tonight and the neighbor's one-eyed cat (who has taken up a second residence on my back patio) ran across my driveway. Maybe poor Susy (who lives outside because the neighbor's now-ex wife was allergic) got cold this winter and she's the one who pushed the grate in. And maybe she actually caught and ate the mice under there. Or maybe there were no mice and I was just having a psychosomatic hearing episode. 

Either way, here's hoping I don't hear anything else in the walls ever and that grate stays put. 

get sh*t done sunday

Today I slept in until 10:30. It was awesome. Then I got up, threw on an old t-shirt and went outside to work on projects. I came back inside at 8:30pm. I rocked my home improvement to-do list! Therefore, today shall be deemed "Get Sh*t Done Sunday." Here's what I got done:






1) Sanded and painted my garage door trim that's been peeling since at least Thanksgiving when I put up my Christmas lights. Every time I pull up to the garage in daylight hours I see it and think, "I really need to repaint that." Today I did, and my across-the-street neighbor Juan, who does paint and drywall for a living, complimented my work and informed me it's been at least 7-8 years since it was last painted... and noted that he paints his trim every two years. I guess that's a helpful hint. ;)

2) Cleaned out my front gardens, cut back a ton of out-of-control rosemary and lavender, planted some new baby cactus' in the garden and on the porch, sprayed for bugs, fixed my wayward sprinkler that was watering the driveway, and fertilized the front and back lawns. Oh, and I cleaned about four years of smog and soot off my white mailbox using this awesome Earth Brite cleaner my mom found on HSN in the middle of the night (which I borrowed a while ago and haven't given back yet. Oops!). It cleans EVERYTHING. Next weekend I'm going to use it to clean my white fence that also has four years of smog and soot on it. :)

3) It's been four months since I trimmed and fed all my back gardens and planted spring flowers. Some of those flowers have died, and weeds have grown. So I went and got some new "full sun" flowers that do better with less water. I also trimmed the roses again. Next weekend, I will lay mulch. I ran out of daylight today :(

4) The vine on my trellis was also out-of-control, growing up into the rain gutter and over the fence, and a lot of the under-growth was dead and spider-infested. So I cut it all back ... and discovered a hornets nest under the eaves of the house in the process. The hornets are now dead. The vine is cut back and bug spray abounds. I also discovered that one of the grates on my patio that's supposed to keep creatures out from under my house is missing. So I now will be calling an exterminator to make sure the opossum I saw last summer isn't living under there and to repair the grate. Ugh.

5) While all that was going on outside, I also did a load each of laundry and dishes. Now I'm going to sleep. Hopefully, I'll be able to move tomorrow....

a rosy spring

It's definitely spring in my rose garden!

Back in January, when I was pruning and feeding my 25-ish rose bushes, I also laid some fresh soil around each of them for the first time in about 5 years. And can I just say, Miracle Gro does not lie! Their rose soil is amazing! I mixed the Bayer rose food I give them every six months in the fresh soil and it seems like my plants started leafing within a week and buds started to grow shortly thereafter. 

I have one giant red rose bush that always shoots up to around 5-6 feet tall. But this spring, there is another rose bush on the other end of the garden that's giving it a run for its height supremacy. (It hasn't bloomed yet, and I can't remember what color it is, but I'm hoping for pink :)

Overall, everything seems bigger and healthier and the flowers are budding like crazy! Even my little annuals that are in the garden near the roses are thriving vs. dying, which is a miracle considering how hot it's been and how few days I'm allowed to run the sprinklers these days.

I love my garden! It's my happy place :)

garden surprises

I've lived in my house almost six years and for the first time in those six years, the vine on my patio trellis has bloomed with these GORGEOUS red and purple flowers. Love! 

things that make me smile: new pets (sort of)

For the last few weeks I've been awoken multiple mornings by loud, incessant chirping. Every spring, birds build a nest in the tree near my patio, but every time I went out to look for the cause of the incessant chirping, it was empty.

I was totally perplexed... until yesterday, when I finally decided to go cut back my totally overgrown jasmine vines wrapping around and now growing over the top of my patio's pergola posts.

I started cutting away with my pruning shears from the top down and then stopped in my tracks. Some crazy birds built a nest IN the jasmine vines! Now the jasmine has been there for years and some vines have thickened into tiny branches, but it's still not something strong enough I'd trust my kids to. But I guess when you've got the protective personalities of this Mama and Papa bird, maybe the camouflage outranked weight requirements.

Here's a shot of the two very loud babies in the nest today, who were smart enough to basically bury themselves in the bottom of the nest when I was pruning and first saw them yesterday:

And here's a close up shot of the bigger of the two, snapped literally 10 seconds before Mama and Papa bird coordinated a dive-bomb attack towards my head from my roof where they were keeping a watchful eye on the nest. (I told you they were protective!).

I just took a dish of bird seed out there to make peace (I hope...). Based on a quick google search based on how the adults and babies look, and then reading about defensive parental nature, I've decided these are a family of Northern Mockingbirds. If there are any trained bird watchers out there who know for sure, let me know :)

pretty pain

I moved my mini cactus garden this spring and I think it now gets a lot more sun, which is the only reason I can come up with for why, for the first time ever, it sprouted NINE cactus flowers at once last week. I saw the little buds forming a while ago, but never thought they would all flower at once. So pretty... purple turning to pretty in pink :)

Here's the stems and buds the night before opening:

And then here are the eight cactus flowers that opened the next morning... one over there on the right was a late bloomer ;) 

happy spring!

Other than remembering to prune and feed my roses back in January, I've totally neglected my gardens the last few months and as a result, all my herbs and many of my potted plants died :( 

So today I got up bright and early (for a Sunday) at 8:30 and spent four hours pruning, re-planting and laying down mulch to pretty-up my backyard. Yay! I cleaned up the rose garden (where the kumquats have begun to fall), planted a bunch of annuals and updated my herb and pepper garden with things I will actually use for cooking. Now all that's left to do is clean the patio furniture and the grill (ick!).

My first fully blooming rose bush of the season!

Rosemary for seasoning (and keeping mosquitos away), Basil for pizza and Cilantro for guacamole :)

Jalepenos for guac and a Bell Pepper because I'm
curious to see if it will actually grow to size...
Oh, and a lavender plant because I don't have enough
bees in the front yard swarming around my giant
lavender plant there :p

Spearmint for mojitos :)

My shelves of impatiens that were wiped out
when someone got too busy to go out and
water them this winter. Oops

New gerber daisies (my faves!) and geraniums
galore because they are hearty (ie: can survive
a week when I forget to water them)

happy 1st day of fall!

(Shhh! Don't tell my rose garden ;)