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)

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 1

I decided late last week, after talking about how bored I've been in 2013 and learning that I have at least "a couple of weeks" more on my "sabbatical," that this is the week I am going to start accomplishing things again, at the one-big-task-per-day-rate that I was accomplishing things at back in September and October before I went to Italy and learned to love siestas.

So this morning, I set the alarm for no reason other than I made myself, and got up and out of the house to run errands and start tackling tasks on my new 18 item to-do list. The first three items on the list involve my backyard and today I accomplished 1.5 of them.

1) Finish weeding, cleaning and mulching final two gardens.
-- I finished one of the two gardens today, after going to Home Depot for more mulch.

2) Replant herb garden.
-- DONE! I had just two herbs that survived the winter: my sage and peppermint. So at Home Depot I restocked on sweet basil (for pizza and italian food), sweet mint (for mojitos) and cilantro (for guacamole). I also decided to attempt growing chili peppers this year: jalepeno and serrano (both for guacamole... my neighbors have an avocado tree :)

Cilantro, Sage and Sweet Basil

Sweet Mint

Peppermint

Jalepeno and Serrano Chili Pepper Plants. Should see peppers in about two months.

And tomorrow, Food Forward is coming to harvest ALL my kumquats and oranges to donate to local food pantries and organizations serving those in need. (So I don't have to worry about them falling all over my yard and rose garden and ending up in my green recycling bin.) This is a hold-over from my February to-do list, when I started the process with Food Forward. Even though it's taken a while, it's remarkably easy -- just sign up online, they contact you and send a "scout" to see your trees, then schedule the date for volunteers to come harvest. And then you get a tax deduction for the donation!

Here's the "before" shot of the kumquat tree... the "after will look much less orange :)