Another Very Good Gardening Day

It was a very good gardening weekend.

I made a lot of progress in the "spare room window / utility area" ...




I built up the berm around the foundation to help keep the water away from that area - we tend to have water over-run at this spot, the gutters seem insufficient to handle the convergence of water in the corner, and I don't want it puddling up against the foundation. Got the rain barrel painted and set up - I thought I'd gotten beige paint, but turns out I got dark brown. That's okay too, though. I didn't think about painting the PVC pipe until it was all set up, and I'm unsure whether I'm going to do that or not. If I do, it won't be that dark brown. I considered an antique brass or something, make it look all steampunky. I'll have to think on that.

But one of the real surprises this weekend is, I actually got to begin branching out into the rest of the yard - out of the 'dining room garden,' which is the only place I've been working for the past two years. The way things were going, I thought it might be another year or two before I got this far.

This is the next area of interest ... "the lamp post area," and around behind the tree.


Here's the area before ...




... and after. The grass was growing in this area only in sporadic clumps, not a solid lawn - so I had no compunction about getting in there with the trowel and just digging up the clumps, to clear out that space. And I cleaned up my little rose - in the picture above you can barely see it, it's to the left of the lamp post and clematis.


I'm pretty sure this rose is close to 15 years old. My dad got it for me not long after I'd bought the old house, which was in 1994 - so I probably got the rose in 1996 or so. It occasionally dies back almost completely, then rallies. That's what it did this winter - the whole top of it was dead, with just this little bit of new growth at the bottom. So when I was working in this area this weekend, I was able to clean it up, pruning off the dead bits, clearing away the grass that was growing up through the middle of it. Now it should do much better.

Since I can't do the whole yard, or even a very large chunk of it, all at once, I have to work in small sections. I'd decided to focus next on that area behind the tree and in front of the line of shrubs, and around the lamp post. Now that I've got a good start, the next steps are (a) make sure I have soaker hose throughout the area; (b) get the additional rain barrels (one won't be enough to keep this area well-watered later in the season when it doesn't rain much); and (c) choose the plants I want to put here. There's not much more grass growing in that area, anyway, so that's not much of an issue.

The soaker hose that runs along the fence line for the impatiens is long enough to wrap around into this area a bit, and I already have the second soaker hose ready to install. I'm just waiting for Star Supply to get those rain barrels in, or else find an alternate source for them. The area they're going (next to the existing one) is all set up and ready for them.

Finding a good variety of shade plants, and figuring out how to plant under that tree, had been primarily what held me back from doing more out here last year. But today, I found something that's going to help enormously:


I ran onto this book that seemed to be written just for me ... all about creating wonderful landscapes in shady areas, even under established trees, like what I have to deal with in the front yard. The author goes into good detail about what you have to do to plant gardens in and around tree roots without harming the tree, so finally - some good information on how this is done. This has finally encouraged me that I can actually do this, the way I envision it.

There are two problems planting underneath an established tree. One, the new plants tend to not do well, as they have to compete with the tree roots for moisture and nutrients, and a large established tree usually wins. And two, you have to be careful not to damage the tree itself. For example, digging even the smallest plant hole around a tree with shallow roots (like my maples) can be a real challenge, but you can't just haul in a foot of topsoil and dump all over the place, as tree roots - odd as this seems, being underground - have to breathe. If you dump too much on top of the ground, they will 'suffocate' and weaken the tree, if not kill it eventually.

So planting under a tree takes some planning and finesse. But this book explains several ways to solve those problems (which I'll post about when I do the actual work), so ... I'm encouraged. I think it will also help that I'll be doing this in stages, so that any changes I make that the tree has to adjust to will only be around part of its root system, not the whole thing at once.

The book also has hundreds of plants that will do well in this type of environment. That's a bonus, as other plants books I have or have looked at cover plants for all areas, which means that 75% of the plants in the book are for sunny areas, and no use to me, yet anyway. Having a book dedicated to nothing but shade plants is really helpful, and I shouldn't have any problem finding a nice variety to fill out my garden.

So, lots of progress for so early in the year. I think this will be a good year for the garden.

Ahhh ... The Magic Of Dirt

Today was good. I've been having a rather rough time lately, but today helped. The weather was decent, and I spent almost the entire day playing in the dirt. Though I'm now exhausted and in a lot of pain, it's a better pain than I'm used to ... and I realized I didn't think about anything disturbing all day. There's much to be said for the magic of dirt.

While I still haven't managed to branch out from my initial limited area of focus - the 'dining room garden' as I call it, as it's the area right outside the dining room door - at least I did make major progress in that area.

This section, known as the "spare room window garden" - because it's underneath the spare room window - is undergoing transformation.


I planned, last year, to plant it up and even have a little fountain of some type. But I've since scrapped that idea. First, I plan to add two more rain barrels over here (if Star Supply ever gets any more of these white barrels in, which they claim they will, some day ...) and that's going to take up a lot of room, and also detract from the gardeny prettiness of the area anyway (though I do plan to paint them beige and try to make it look somewhat decent). Also, with the addition of the garden hose thingy and a wish to expand the area available for the table and chairs by adding some patio blocks alongside the sidewalk, I just decided to turn this into more of a utility area.

Oh, yeah - the garden hose thingy - been wanting one of these forever.


Love it. The connector hose (the yellow one) is a little long, but it happened to be laying around with the proper ends already on it, so I didn't want to re-do it to change the length. I'm not 100% sure where this hose holder will ultimately be, after that shrub is relocated, so for now I'm just letting it hang out here till I sort it all out. Then I'll adjust the feeder hose.

Last year I had planted two hostas, a bleeding heart, and a fern over there. I moved the two hostas today, but haven't moved the bleeding heart yet as I'm not sure where it's going. I think I killed the fern ... it's under the awning and so got no natural rainwater at all, which means I'd have had to have been watering it this spring, but the rain barrel was disconnected for winter and not hooked back up, and I basically just forgot to water it with the hose. So ... no fern. :(

But, I'll give it a few more weeks, as I remember a fern I had once before, at the old house, never began to come up until like June. So just in case, I'll keep an eye on it.

Meanwhile, I still have work to do in this area, but didn't get to it today because I was busy with the rest of this.

This is the 'dining room window' area, which is coming along nicely. Though I can never get a decent picture of it, it looks much better in person ...


The azaleas always look scraggly, which may be because they kind of still are. They're only a year or two old, so still establishing themselves. After they bloom this year, I plan to prune them up a little bit, as I've read that doing so will make them fuller and bushier, instead of spindly and leggy like they are now.

I added the two hostas I moved from the 'spare room window garden' behind them, and also a new fern which I just got today (to replace the one I :( killed ... though if it does survive, I have other places to move it to). As I mentioned, in person, it looks really cool - even though it's all "just green," the different shades and textures make for a really awesome look.


Right now it looks a little odd because the hostas and fern, which are behind the azaleas, are smaller than the azaleas. But I'm going to wait and see how this plays out, because (a) I have no intention of moving those azaleas, and (b) hostas can get huge (I had a couple monstrous ones at the old house) and that fern - a Japanese Painted Fern - is supposed to also get quite large - though I find it hard to believe, the plant tag said, I think, something like 24" to 36". Wow. So if they do as I believe they will, and if I keep the azaleas pruned, then it should all work out okay, size-wise.

I also spent a lot of time fixing up the soaker hose today. I had it all laid out and staked down from the last (only) warm weekend we had this spring, but ended up completely taking it up and starting over. Then I went to put my splitter / valve in. As I mentioned before, the hostas and fern are totally under the awning and so will get no natural rain, and will need watered regularly using the rain barrel. However, everything from there forward will get rain. I couldn't just open up the rain barrel and water the whole bed when the rest of it had had plenty of rain, or I'd flood out the front. So I cut the soaker hose and intended to put in a connector valve, so I can close off the bottom half and, when I need to, only water the hostas and fern. But I had the wrong size connectors, so ... another trip to Home Despot tomorrow. Oh damn. ;o)

Then, the coup de grace.




I bought a flat of Impatiens today, and actually got them planted. Well, most of them. And yeah, this looks like nothing right now ... but I know that these will take off and fill this area entirely by mid-summer.

Tomorrow (or the next time I get to work out here) I'm going to be placing another soaker hose along here, which will eventually get connected to the other rain barrel (the white one). So these Impatiens will be getting supplemental water from the rain barrel, which means I know they'll do astoundingly well.

This has been the bane of my existence for many years, I'd buy flowers but be unprepared to plant them when I bought them, and often just leave them to end up dying in their flats (exactly what I did last year). I hate when I do that. This year, that's not happening, because I had all the planting beds ready (for a change) when I got them, and I didn't buy too many at once - just the ones I knew I could actually get to today (or soon).

Okay, I didn't actually get them all planted, only because I'm now crippled with pain from the day's work and had to stop. But if it doesn't rain all day tomorrow, I'll be back to it and finish up then. The ones that are left are going in front of the azaleas. I'd like to add a little more variety to the garden, instead of all impatiens for annuals, but I haven't consulted my gardening books yet this year, and am unsure what other annuals (or small-sized perennials) I can plant in front of the azaleas, where it is mostly shady all day long. Last year I tried some violas, but they did lousy ... in part because I think they need more sun, and in part because I didn't have the soaker hose hooked up and so didn't get them watered enough. So for now, at least I know Impatiens will work.

I'm learning, slowly - pay attention to the growing environment and work with it. You can't plant things that need 8 hours of sun in a spot that's deep shade all day. Duh. And while I have no issue with annuals - largely because they're wonderful in that they often bloom all season - eventually I'd like to have the garden be primarily perennials, and native perennials at that. Still working on that.

So that was my day ... and I'm very pleased, and looking forward to working out there more in the coming weeks.

Soon I hope to begin branching out to past the fence, behind the tree, and the area around the lamp post. I want to plant more native perennials out there, and add a bird bath. Baby steps ... but I'm on my way to that NWF Certified Wildlife Habitat which is half the goal of all this landscaping - the other half being just because I've always wanted to do this, have really nice gardens and landscaping - and finally have a place where it will actually look like something. (but inviting the local critters to hang out and be comfy in my yard is a huge, huge bonus!)

Something I Ran Onto Today

After an initial interest, I quickly grew sick to death of Charlie Sheen. But this ... this is funny.

Venturing Into Making Things

It's been awhile since I had any interest in making anything. But something's come up. Greg's hosting a non-SCA event in a few weekends (it's a get-together for friends in our pirate group, but not an 'official' SCA event). There are going to be some friendly competitions, and he wanted splashy award medallions for the champions in each competition. We were going to try casting them in pewter, but then the idea came up to try making them out of clay.

Here's a picture of 4 of them, one done (but a prototype), the others in process.


I'm experimenting with a variety of techniques on these. I cut out the disk shape, then impressed the celtic knot motif by pressing a metal pendant I have into the clay. (It doesn't show up well in these pictures, it's the ring in the center). The pendant also has a center design, but I didn't want that on these pieces, so after impressing it in the clay, I smoothed out the center section again. Then I brushed gold mica powder over the celtic knotwork.

Then Greg looked up a Gaelic translation of certain phrases having to do with each award (I can't now remember the translation) and I painted those on each medallion (after these pictures were taken ... obviously). I didn't have a paint brush small enough for the fine work, so I used the end of a larger sized tapestry needle.

On the back I used another technique. Using my ink jet printer and some T-shirt iron-on transfer paper, I printed the name of the event and the date. Then I cut out the iron-on transfer into a circle the size of the medallion, placed it on a tile (just glazed wall tiles I use for baking some clay pieces), and coated it with Translucent Liquid Sculpey. Then I baked it for 30 minutes . When cool, the paper peels off and leaves just a thin translucent rubbery piece with the print on it, almost like a decal. Then I glued that to the back of the medallion. I forgot to take a picture of that, but I will next time ... it's a very cool technique. You can use it for pictures too.

I outlined the weapons with small rolls of clay (produced by way of an extruder, as I'd never be able to roll them that thin, evenly). On the one that's done, I placed a sliver of silver clay under the sword blade. I did the same on the music notes (but with beige clay) but not with the throwing axe or arrow.

This was to act as background for another technique I'm experimenting with: resin. I saw this in a magazine and have been wanting to try it, using tinted resin to create a sort of enameled look.

After looking at what was available at the local store (not much), I chose Easy Cast.


It comes with two bottles which you have to mix together in equal portions ... but it comes with no measuring cups. So I improvised.

I bought a package of 50 disposable 'shot glasses' at the local liquor store for a few bucks. Then I used a syringe I had on hand (for measuring and dispensing some liquid medicine Tyler was on a few months ago) to place a certain amount of water into one of the cups, and marked a line where the water came to with a Sharpie. I then added the same amount of water again, and marked the second line. Then I had two equal measurement marks for pouring in the resin mixes.


For the medallion with the sword, I mixed up the resin and tinted it purple. I forgot to take a close-up picture of that. It's not quite the 'enameled' look I was going for, though, but it still looks interesting.

I'll be using the tinted resin in the other pieces, in the point of the arrow, the handle and axe head of the axe, and the (beige-backed) music notes. Not all purple, I'll experiment with different colors. The resin didn't come with tint, but the store separately sold a package of three resin dyes, yellow, blue and red. With those I can mix a few different tints.

The Easy Cast worked well. It was incredibly easy to mix, and to tint. When I was first done mixing, it was full of tiny bubbles - something I heard can be a problem in resin casting. But I filled in the outlined sword blade with it, and noticed far fewer bubbles once it was in place. And the few that were there disappeared over the next 15 or 20 minutes as it began to set. I also noticed that what was left in the mixing cup initially was fully of miniature bubbles, but as it set, they too disappeared. The instructions say that it is designed to "de-bubble itself" (they used a more 'formal' term, I can't remember it) as it sets up, and apparently it's true.

I mentioned the finished medallion is only a prototype ... it was initially my experimental piece, but as it was turning out well, I'd hoped to just use it as a final piece. But tonight I noticed a typo in the printed words on the back. It doesn't quite match the others in size anyway, and now that I've got the techniques done, it won't take long to make one more.

To finish the others, I need to print the backing piece (after correcting the typo) and attach that; create the frame and hanging loop and attach that; and then just enamel the center piece, coat the rest with glaze (to protect the paint), and ... that's about it.

I have some other projects I'd like to try using the resin technique for, after these medallions are finished.

A Tease Of Spring

Yesterday it was 80 degrees here ... a welcome hint of spring. I spent several hours outside doing garden work.

Last year I felt like I hadn't gotten anything done, as the areas I worked on really didn't look like much throughout the summer. But yesterday, when I began cleaning those areas up and getting them ready to plant, I was able to see just how much I did get accomplished last year in prepping these areas for future use, because it's all starting to come together exactly as I hoped. This year I didn't have to do a ton of work to ready them - just rake out some dead leaves, and lay out some soaker hose. So when the plants are available, I'm ready to go get them and plant.

I did have to fix the one (store-bought) rain barrel but that was because it was bought late last year and never really fixed then. I bought the one decorative rain barrel because it was in a more visible location, and I wanted that one to look nice. But it's a bad design, where the hose running from the barrel to the downspout has to be exactly level to work. When I set it up last year I didn't get it exactly level, so what happened was that the water would run in to the barrel, but it wouldn't drain back into the downspout when it was full; so the first time it got full, it overflowed around the lid, flooding the flower bed. I unhooked it and never used it the rest of the year.

Yesterday I finally leveled it completely, so now it ought to work fine throughout the season. I also laid out the soaker hose in that bed, staking it down with little tent stake like things that actually came with our Christmas yard decorations to hold them in place.


The section in the back (behind the scraggly looking azaleas) is still not staked because I don't know exactly what I'm planting back there yet, so I needed to leave it until stuff's planted. Then I can loop the hose around the base of the plants and stake it down. I may mulch as well, which will help bury / cover up the soaker hose, though it doesn't really matter - once the plants get thick and lush they will mostly hide it.

I have to split that hose in two at one point and put an on/off valve in it. In this flower bed, the stuff from the azaleas forward will get rain when it does rain. But I plan to plant things behind the azaleas, and those things will be completely under the awning, and never get any rain. So they will need watered more often, even if we're getting good rain they will need watered. But I can't just turn on the soaker hose and water the whole bed if there's been plenty of rain or I'll wash out the front. So I'm going to divide the hose and put an on/off valve in at the awning line. Then I can shut off the bottom half of the hose and only water the back of the bed when necessary, or open the valve and water the whole bed if we haven't had enough rain.

My other project is a little more involved. I want two more rain barrels for the other area. I had one last year, and we used it, but it would get used up too fast - one good deep watering of that flower bed and it would be empty. Then if it didn't rain for awhile, it wasn't getting refilled. Of course, it was taking so much water because that planting bed is entirely under the awning, so got no rain at all, and needed more frequent deep watering. I'm thinking about doing away with that this year, but more on that in a minute.

But the rain barrel did work so well that during even one good rain it would fill up completely, long before it stopped raining, letting the rest of the precious rainwater go down the drain - so I knew that adding two more, they would also be easily filled during any good rains, giving me 3 times as much backup water before worrying about it raining again.

But I've been to the place where we got this one several times, and they are out of these barrels, and don't know when they'll get them in. I'd like two of these because they're only $15 a piece (whereas I paid about $100 for the 'fancy' one).

One big thing I accomplished yesterday was removing a shrub that was right in front of last year's rain barrel. It was really seriously in the way for adding any more rain barrels over there, but I had balked about taking it out last year because I thought I was going to have to kill it - that's how I had to get the others out that I removed, cutting off all their branches first to leave just the stump, then digging and dragging that out of the ground. I really hated to kill any more shrubs. In a brief burst of energy yesterday, I tackled that shrub, and managed to dig it out. So I moved it around to the side of the house. Greg had to help me replant it, as I couldn't get the hole dug out quite deep enough. But that's a huge relief, not having that shrub in the way. Later this spring I'll remove the other one, and that whole area will finally be ready to finish.


The plans for that corner are to add two more rain barrels, but there's some work that needs done there first. We get a lot of rain overrunning from the roof in that corner, and I want to grade that corner better, piling up dirt higher against the foundation and sloping it away from the house. Once I do that, I have to figure out a way to get three rain barrels into that corner, level ... some kind of little leveled platforms stuck into the grade mound, I'm thinking. Those 3 barrels are going to take up a huge portion of that corner, and with the difficulty keeping that area watered since it's under the awning, I'm thinking about not trying to turn this into such a flower bed after all, and use it as more of a utility area. I already have a few things planted there from last year (some of which are starting to come up) - a fern, a bleeding heart, and a couple hostas - which I may be moving them somewhere else.

Anyway - it was good to be out in the gardens yesterday. I'm extremely bummed that after today the temperature's supposed to drop again for some time. I'm really ready for it to get warm and stay warm.

Sigh.

There's no good segue from that last post, but I guess I have to do something, to keep posting here.

It's been rough. I've been mostly keeping it to myself, outwardly managing what appears to be a normal existence. Mostly I've been doing a whole lot of distracting myself. But more on that another time.

Today is supposed to be the warmest day of the year so far, in the high 70s. I'm waiting for it, as it was cold when I woke up, and I've been chilled ever since. We're supposed to clean out the garage today. Yay. But it needs done.

Well, that's enough for now.

R.I.P. Tyler

Tyler

11.20.94 ~ 3.27.11

The best dog in the world, paws down. And most
people who knew you already agree.

Tyler, you took a large piece of my soul
with you today, but that's okay -
it's yours, you can keep it.