May in the Garden

People of the web, it is the last day of May. Which means I did NOT let a whole month slip by WITHOUT POSTING A THING! Whew, that was close!

I have been busy, despite the appearance from the blog, with my new business and I have been sidelined from a lot of my usual Spring outdoor work by a foot injury. Curse you plantar fasciitis. And lastly, Michael built a new computer and upgraded my old one to Windows XP 64 which does not play well with my favorite blog editor, Windows Live Writer. So after an acceptable mourning period, I am using a different program to bring you this post. See I have good excuses for my absence. :)

Even without me, things have been happening in my yard. Flowers have been blooming, bugs have been eating said flowers... etc. I did get out last night and take some lovely pictures of the yard for your enjoyment.

Our front yard is alive with color: purple and pink hydrangeas, pink and fuchsia impatiens, and green! Everywhere is green! Also I got a new wreath... it's pink.. surprise! And I loaded it up with extra sprigs in darker pink so it would have some depth. I love it! And it matches my impatiens so nicely. :)

My mailbox bed has taken off, too, thanks to some nutrient-rich compost we added around the tomato plants. They are growing and flowering!

At the bottom of the driveway, we have our hanging baskets filled with hot pink petunias and white verbena.

And in the backyard, lilies and astilbe are stealing the show this week.

And surprise! Mama bought me a pink hydrangea! And we put it in the corner of the backyard behind the fence... and inside a wire so Miss Riley can't eat it or dig it up at her leisure. :)

Up on the deck, we've got herbs and flowers blooming, too! I painted my spiral plant stand black this year and got these cute colorful planters to go on it. The herbs are chives, parsley, rosemary, and thyme. And a gerbera daisy on top! :)

And on the other side, my deck furniture is looking sad. :( I want to paint it black to match all the other stuff out here. Hopefully I'll have a chance to get around to that sometime soon. We're planning a July 4th cookout, so perhaps that will be the motivation I need to get it done!

Pink is the color of the year (and every year) on the deck. We have pink geranium, pink double impatiens and this cool variegated green vine with pink edges!

The deck is all ready for some outdoor dining! Now where is my handsome grill master?

:)

That brings me to the end of the tour... except for one small thing... The English Garden! I will be back to show you all the updates we've made down there, soon!

As soon as I find a better blog editor that works with XP 64. :( RIP Windows Live Writer.

Later,

English Garden Update!

Last weekend while we were hard at work in the front yard, we were also hard at work in the backyard!  We are super multi-taskers like that.  Plus all that liriope I ripped out gently dug up had to go somewhere… in a wheel barrow… down the muddy side yard… and then get thrown over the fence into the English garden.  :) :)  Hardy stuff, that Liriope. :)

Anyway, we stuck it in a little border around the existing plantings.  We started this process last summer and then ran out of green stuff.  So, we  finally completed the first side and then put in the border on the second side with the remaining plants.  Oh and did I mention that we put in 17 stepping stones, too?  Yeah, we’re not just crazy, we’re Guthrie crazy! :)

My goal in this garden is to cover up as much of the earth in plants, paths and sculpture as possible to reduce the amount of mulch I have to spread.  That is why I decided we needed more pathways… that and they are cute… and functional. :)  I’m sure I will come to regret this decision when I have to spread mulch around said stones, plants and sculpture.  Ahem.

The stepping stones branch off of the main flagstone path and wind their way along the curving liriope border into the woods where they link up with our exterior garden gate.  This is the entry point for the wheelbarrow which comes down through the woods behind the fence.  I’m thinking we need a little wooden bridge over the leaf pile in front of the gate… would that be too much? ;)

The path is very inviting from the woods, too.  Except for that post sticking up on the right.  Where is my chainsaw??

 

And on the far side of the garden, the second row of liriope follows along the hostas and behind the kissing bench.  <--That is the technical name that Papa gave his little bench.  Anyway I think the hostas are too close to the border, so I’m planning to move them back eventually. 

And the liriope continues along behind the bird bath and then meets back up with the other border along the flagstone path.

Eventually there will be a liriope border on the other side of the garden to match.  I have already selected which liriope I’m going to dig up next!  Apparently transplanting liriope is my new hobby… boo.

And finally, we have 19 more stepping stones to lay.  The stepping stone path will branch off and meander around the tree circle and meet back with the flagstone path.  And there will be a few on the other side, too.  Plus more plants… you can never have enough of those until all mulchable areas are covered!

And here is a before and after comparison for all you folks who like those as much as me…

 

Please note that my snowball bush (viburnum) has finally bloomed after three years!  Oh Happy Day!  I’m hoping next year my little cherry tree catches on and blooms for the first time, too.  Fingers crossed.

Thanks for coming along for the English Garden tour.  If you missed the English Garden story, you can check it out the first installment here and some colorful updates here.  Hopefully I will be back soon to show you the completed stepping stone path.  Stay tuned!

Nature’s Springification

Today I bring you the springification of my yard, courtesy of mother nature (and my own green thumb/muscles).  All kinds of things are blooming and the grass is growing!  So we spruced things up a bit with some fresh pine needles and a few new plants.

Here is what I’m talking about:

 

The grass we planted last fall even survived and it is all green in the side yard for once!  I never blog about the grass I have planted in case it does not survive… which it usually does not. :(  We have major reseeding plans for this fall so hopefully next year’s lawn will be even nicer. :)  I won’t even show you the backyard because it makes me want to cry.

I added a couple of dianthus/carnations (plant doesn’t know what it is?) around the mailbox.  Last year I planted annual dahlias and they of course went away, so this year I opted for perennials that I know will come back year after year.

The cutest flower bed ever is sporting dianthus now, too…

And the fairy cove steps are in full hosta mode, even though the leafy green stuff I had planted on the risers did not survive.  I think it was a weed anyway. :)  Maybe this year I’ll get some moss transplanted on the steps to fill in the dirt.  Some grass beside would also be nice. :)

Speaking of hostas, I decided I was over the liriope border on the front wooded flower bed.  Seen here:

It’s always a mess in the early Spring when I forget to cut off the dead foliage from the previous season.  And it’s too close to the lawn so grass keeps creeping into the plants and causing me angst!  So I figured the best thing to do was to move the liriope and put something else here instead.  My pick was hostas since Mama had a surplus of those this week. :)  I hate digging and moving plants, especially when there are over twenty of them, but at least the job was made easier by lovely cool Spring temps.  If you have to move plants I recommend doing it in April when it’s 70 degrees out. :)

We put the liriope in the English garden which I will show you soon.  And in it’s place went lovely patriot stripe hostas…

We put the hostas a bit back from the edge just a bit so there would be a nice border of mulch in front.  Eventually I hope to edge the bed with rocks like all the other front beds to keep the pine needles in and to make mowing more challenging.  :) 

I love this view… looks like we live in the woods :)

While we were sprucing up the planting beds, Papa pressure washed our deck and porch!  Spring is rough on our porch/front walk because of all the rain.  Rainwater washes dirt and junk down the hill which collects in front of the porch.  As there is no french drain or anything, the water and sediment has no place to go.  :(  So we get a giant puddle that morphs into a muddy walk which dries into caked-on dirt.  I have seen it where the water was a couple inches deep and the pine needles were sort of floating.  Nice.

What a mess, and not terribly inviting.  So this past weekend we decided to implement a first step in the drainage problem.  That was to dig a trench of sorts around the walk on the flower bed side so that the ground was lower there.  Our hope is that water will flow into the ditch we have created (and covered with pine needles).  If we get a torrential downpour I imagine the trench system will not contain all the water but it should help with the dirt collecting on our walk during light rains.  Anyway, we dug it out and then washed the front walk.  So much nicer… see?

I can’t tell you how wonderful it is not to have that pile of dirt in the front door. It hasn’t rained since our upgrades, so I’ll keep you posted on the success of this method.  We hope to someday install a proper drain in the concrete.  But for now, it’s looking pretty good!  I love how the pine needles stay in the beds now instead of falling out on the walkway.

For all you observant folks… yes I added wire trellises to the planters on the porch.  I originally intended to get trellises in the winter to spruce up the planters when nothing was growing in them.  Sort of sculptural and I didn’t have to water them. :)  Well, I didn’t get around to it until Spring, so here they are, sprucing up the flower pots despite the fact that none of these plants are climbers and they don’t require trellising.  (<—Apparently that is a word?) 

In other flower news, the ranunculuses (ranunculi?) that I planted on the porch are flourishing!  They have several new buds and apparently they like it here.  We’ll see how long they can keep that up before I have to transplant them to my full sun flower bed. :)

That brings me to the end of the front yard tour.  Stay tuned for the back yard and English garden updates! :)  Now I have to go outside and bring in all my tender annuals and cover the peonies since it is supposed to freeze tonight!  Brrr!  Spring please come back soon!

Springification Part Deux

I am back with more springifications happening around La Maison de Horvath.  :)  (Apparently it’s write in French day.)

While I was visiting my parents the other day I spied this darling little footed bowl laying in a mess outside.  I immediately imagined it filled with my cutie little bird's nest!  After I cleaned off the dirt (and it still looked dirty ha!) I put my little nest and some green sprigs inside.  Perfect fit.  Then I added six tiny eggs that I got at a craft store.  Now my Mama bird has a happy little perch for her nest.  Except Mama bird is too fat and might squish the baby birds.  oops. :)

Love.  Just in time for Easter. :)

I also swiped this bouquet from my Mama’s garden.  Her forsythia is prettier than mine, so I had to steal some.  And she has geraniums blooming in her greenhouse and tulips in the yard!  The cool vase is an old milk jug (or something) that she got an estate sell in a bunch of mason jars.  I told her that people actually collect stuff like that…  And so she gave it to me.  Score! :) 

Since taking this photo, the forsythia blooms fell off and green leaves popped out to give a second life to my arrangement.  Hooray for neglecting your flowers. :)  I added fresh tulips and some pink azalea, too.

The front porch also got a spruce since it’s planting weather and there is no excuse for urns filled with dirt.  Not very springlike.  So I added a bucket of pink dianthus, some creeping trailing plant of unknown identity, and a pink ranunculus.  My first time with ranunculus, so let’s hope I don’t kill it… on the porch, in the dark.  Sounds like good odds, right? ;) 

Since I am nothing if not dedicated to symmetry, I repeated the scheme in the second urn with a darker pink ranunculus.  They are looking so pretty! :)  Hooray Spring.

I’m hoping to find some time this weekend to photograph all the beautiful blooms in my yard.  Stay tuned for an update!

Happy April!

Springification

Spring is here! Hooray!  And to celebrate I’ve got a Spring mantel reveal for you.  The weather has been so nice here lately that I’ve been outside spray painting thrift store treasures.  And mulching the flower beds, blowing leaves and planting bulbs.  But inside, it was starting to feel like Spring had not sprung.  :(  So, I whipped my mantel into shape to showcase some of Spring’s hues.  

I started with a thrift store candleholder-turned-vase filled with dogwood and forsythia.  It’s the one on the left with the cutout design.  I think it was meant to hold a tealight, but I envisioned it as a vase for faux floral.  (Wouldn’t hold water for the real stuff).  Plus it’s architecturally interesting enough to stand alone as sculpture.  I think I deleted my before picture of the vase, but it was a dingy off-white before I hit it with some gloss white spray paint. 

The other side features a white ceramic vase from Michael’s.  I love it.  I stuffed it full of waxy green stems from a tree/bush in my English garden.  Just the other day I was saying how I might like to get rid of said bush/tree because it is weird looking.  But after stealing it’s leaves for my vase, I think maybe I should keep it.  It does have nice foliage. :)  In the center of the mantel is a tray of wheatgrass stuffed with daisies to bring in some color.

The left side is joined by a bird with matching cutouts (from Michael’s) and my silvery candleholders.

While the right side is sporting a white ceramic bird (stolen from upstairs) and my mercury glass votives.

Across the room, I added a pitcher of Spring blooms and a tiny bird’s nest along with a couple of photos.

The tiny bird’s nest I found in our driveway and I’ve been storing it (out of Bandit’s reach) until Spring.  I’m still looking for some tiny eggs to fill it.

How is Spring shaping up at your house?  Hope you are enjoying the warmer temperatures… I know I am!