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! )

  

words of wisdom

Audrey Hepburn was a wise, wise woman...

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 :)

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)

a new, succulent view

I'm not a big Pinterest person. I just don't get the obsession some people have with looking at photo after photo after photo taken by strangers and then sharing those strangers' photos with others. But I have been on there three or four times in the year since I first created an account and have some boards, mostly filled with images of cool ideas for my house and garden. 

One of those ideas was this cute wall garden I "pinned" to my "loveliness" board of pretty garden stuff about a year ago. 

I originally thought I might use this idea to decorate the gray stucco walls of my back patio. But then, at some point a few months ago, someone mentioned (sarcastically) what a lovely view I had outside of the window above my kitchen sink. (The view is of the half cinderblock, half wood wall giving my neighbors and I some privacy from each other.) 

That side of my house is a barren wasteland... the ground is a cemented-in a brick path allowing access to the one working electrical plug I have outside, and my tankless water heater mounted on the side of the house. To improve the kitchen window view, I first thought maybe I could grow jasmine or bougainvillea out of a big pot and have it crawl up and cover the wall. But both of those plants love sun and need lots of water... and watering in the barren wasteland will be a chore. 

Then I remembered that cute wall garden and realized there are some plants that don't need a lot of water :) 

Via the blog of the photo's original "pinner," I found out you can buy latches to hold terra cotta pots on a wall, so I ordered some from Vat 19, "Purveyors of Curiously Awesome Products." Then I wandered into the Burbank DoIt Center to kill time while friends were shopping in second-hand stores nearby and found cute green and blue painted pots on sale to use with my latches. 

These things sat in my garage for about a month until yesterday when I finally had time to go to Home Depot, where I bought six small catci and succulents. I put them all together and now this is the view from my kitchen window!

I'm hoping these plants will be able to survive mostly on rain and early morning mist because, like I said, getting water to that barren wasteland will be a pain. And sadly, my "brilliant" idea of watering them by squirting water out the kitchen window from the faucet's hose isn't going to work. Couldn't make the angles and squirting distance mesh at the same time. I did make a faboo mess all over the window sill and counter though. Live and learn ;) 

finally finishing the backyard to-do's

"Finally" is the word of the day today. I'm "finally" catching up on a bunch of blog posts I've been meaning to write for weeks. And they are mostly about things I'm "finally" getting around to doing after recovering from the end of my sabbatical and adjusting to only two days of free time again.

Since I have a house with big backyard, I always have something "to do" back there. Here's the stuff that's finally happening this week!

I am finally -- after 4.5 years of having paint chips rain down on my patio (because I'm 99.9999% sure the previous owners just threw whatever paint they had up there to make it pretty so the house would sell) -- having the paint on my verdana stripped and redone. My friend Lisa's handy hubby Vince (who does all sorts of remodel/construction/home improvement stuff) worked (and sweated in the 90-100 degree SFV heat this past week) to strip and repaint the main structure (with exterior paint this time. Woot!). And now he's painting new boards to put across the top to create more shade. This shows the two spacing options he gave me for the new boards... single width (left) or double width (right):

Seven of seven people surveyed yesterday chose the single width spacing for more shade, which means Vince needs to paint more boards this week. (Sorry Vince.) But it's looking super awesome and I can't wait to spend the summer out there under the new shade... when it's not 115 degrees outside.

Also in the finally department, my gardener brought me little pieces of bermuda sod (which is really hard to find since most people buying sod get marathon sod, which is green year-round) to fill in the dead spaces in the very back of my bermuda grass-filled backyard (aka: the area previously occupied by the "pony shed"). When it was placed, it looked like this:

But after watering it by hand every single night for the last two weeks, it's starting to blend in with its surrounding grass (since bermuda grass grows outward, not just upward and is good at spreading) and now looks like this in some spots. Others still need some more time/water to meld.









In the veggie/herb garden department, I "finally" have numerous peppers popping out of my jalapeno and habanero plants because, unlike my basil and sad sage, they LOVE the heat!

The jalapenos will make their debut on top of a taco dip on the 4th of July -- because what's more American than taco dip with jalapenos on top? ;)














And "finally," I "finally" gave in and bought the bright blue Adirondack chairs I've been looking at for two summers at Le Target and wanting to place in the shade of my giant orange tree. Here they are in their new home:

hot & spicy

Exciting discovery outside tonight -- My Serrano chile pepper plant is sprouting peppers! I'm almost ready to start my summer guacamole-fest with two parts home-grown ingredients (peppers and cilantro).

getting things done: day 4

Today I started off with indoor to-do's because I had a lunch with a friend and I actually got four things accomplished on my list (which is now up to 21 items):
-- Made a hair appointment for next week
-- Made a doctor's appointment for my annual checkup... at the end of friggin' May (I need a new doctor; the availability the last few years is insane and the service hasn't been all that awesome to make up for it.)
-- Officially signed up for my LA Kings playoff ticket activation... and renewed my full season seats for next year. This means I really need the "sabbatical" to end before July when they start charging me. (Although if the Kings blow it in the playoffs -- no whammies, no jinxes -- then my lockout credit will cover me for a while.) And before people start chastising me for spending that crazy cash, please note two things:
1) There's a waiting list for Kings season tickets. And as a long-suffering season ticket holder, I'm not giving up my seats to some bandwagon fan who just discovered that hockey existed 10 months ago! However, I will let them buy 75% of my tickets off the fan ticket exchange site once I choose the 10-15 games I actually want to go to ;)
2) I'm doing the 10-installments payment plan, so after my lockout credit is gone, I will have manageable payments.

Then once I got home from lunch, I accomplished one more full item -- uncovering, cleaning and setting up the patio furniture and grill. Yay!




Then I went back to the bane of my existence, the back of the house by the shed.

I finally got done raking up the leaves, sprayed the walls (and the cracks in them) with massive amounts of bug spray, dropped bug killer pellets all over the ground and behind the shed, and sprayed the entire area with Round Up to kill the grassy weeds' roots. Tomorrow, I will lay the weed blocker and start the fun part -- putting down the stepping stones, decorative rocks and rubber mulch ground cover.

These two photos may look like ugly, empty patches of dirt to you. But they are three days of hard labor to me. There were anywhere from 1-5 inches of leaves + grassy weeds covering these two sides of the shed, not to mention the massive brick pile, most of which is now far away from these areas in the leafy danger zone.

The evil leaves filled up the black can and black bag to the left, and the green bin and 2/3 of the black bin on the right. My gardener is gonna be SOL tomorrow when it comes to disposing of my mowed grass... oh well. Just as long as he doesn't dump them in my recycling bin.

And now, because I made you look at dirt and trash cans so I can feel a sense of accomplishment, here's a pretty picture of my first blooming red rose of the season that opened up overnight. This isn't even from the soon-to-be 6+-feet-tall plant that grows the ginormous red roses, but this one is pretty close to ginormous. Happy to see my pruning and feeding three months ago is paying off :)

getting things done: day 3

I hate leaves. Realizing that factoid is my only complete accomplishment today. Because leaves, lots and lots of leaves, are preventing me from accomplishing anything else this week.

Today, as part of my continuing attempt to check item #3 (clean up back corner and side of yard near the shed, which I started yesterday) off my to-do list, I spent three hours raking and shoveling leaves into my just-empited green bin. I filled it up to the brim and there is still a giant pile of leaves left. So I've now gone to Home Depot to buy a "back up" trash can that I will be filling with leaves tomorrow and holding till next Wednesday when the green bin gets emptied again. (Special note: I bought other stuff at Home Depot too, and spent exactly $100.00... on the dot. Who does that?)

I also relocated what's left of a big brick pile so it's now out of reach of the evil falling leaves. Hopefully, this will make next spring's leaf-a-palooza easier to clean up.

In the middle of my leaf-induced delirium, I also decided to create more work for myself by psuedo landscaping this hidden area of the yard that only I and like four other people ever see. I have a ton of stepping stones that were part of the brick pile. So now I'm going to lay down black weed blocker fabric, arrange stepping stones to the shed and paved side of the house on top of it, then add pretty gravel/rocks around them because my smart mom says it will be really easy to use a leaf blower to get the leaves off of rocks. This new plan should take me at least two more days... if I'm lucky. Ugh.

I was also thinking, as I shoveled scoop after scoop of leaves into the green bin, that if I had a composting bin, I'd have some awesome free fertilizer in a few months. Does anyone out there compost? Is it worth doing? What composting bins are good for starters? Leave a comment below if you have any advice. Thanks!

getting things done: day 2

I spent a lot of time outside today, and have a packed-to-the-brim green bin out by the curb to prove it.


First off, welcoming the Food Forward volunteer to my backyard to harvest all my ripe citrus. He tackled the giant orange tree, pulling down 2.5 boxes (or what he estimated to be 100 pounds) of oranges.

While he was climbing up in and around my orange tree, I spent 2.5 hours picking the evil kumquats. Most of them -- except for those at the very tip top of the tree -- are now gone, off to a food pantry that will use them wisely. Yet they're so small, they didn't even fill one fruit box, which was kind of disappointing. The last four summers have made it seem like I could've filled 20 boxes with all the kumquats that fall off that tree.

Here's the less-orange "after" shot of the tree, also now missing a lot of dead branches that were on it. While I was climbing up in it, I realized I haven't even thought about trimming that tree once since I moved in. It really needed it.

Once the harvesting was done, I took a lunch break while waiting for the sun to move to the other side of the house / the backyard to get shady. Then I finished item #1 on the to-do list and started #3:

1) Finish weeding, cleaning and mulching final two gardens

-- DONE! And I have one bag of mulch left to throw into the rose garden once the gardeners use the leaf blowers a few weeks in a  row and half of that mulch is blown into the yard.

3) Clean up back corner and side of house near the shed

-- Half done. I raked up the thousands and thousands of leaves that have fallen off my neighbor's tree into my yard, cut off the branches of said tree that are hanging over the wall in my yard and left them in piles to go into the green bin tomorrow after it gets emptied. Tomorrow, I need to migrate the brick pile to the side of the house out of the path of falling leaves, spray Round Up to kill the grass and weeds growing crazy back there, put weed blocker cloth down as a back-up to the Round Up, and arrange stepping stones to the shed and paved side of the house. Once that's done, I'm pulling the patio furniture out of the shed / its winter home, and putting up the umbrellas so I can enjoy all my hard yard work :)