The Impatient Gardener

Does it feel warm in here to you?

2012-01-26T08:11:00.000-06:00

The USDA released an updated plant hardiness zone map Wednesday and for many people it shows what a lot of people have been thinking (but maybe thought they were imagining): it's getting warmer out there.

Maybe less cold is a better way to describe it, since the plant hardiness zone map is based on minimum temperatures.

Much of the country has been experiencing an unusually warm winter so far and Wisconsin has been no exception. And as much as I'm thoroughly enjoying the relative lack of snow (we had none until two weeks ago and we've probably only had a total of 6 inches or so) and the mild temperatures (we only had three days of sub-15-degree temps, which is extremely unusual here), I'm also a little worried. This is just not right.

I know that everyone talks about the winters of their childhood (well, everyone in the northern part of the country does at least) being different. I know I remember massive snow forts and a snow pile that allowed us to walk up to the top of the 6-foot fence on the edge of our yard. We had a lot of snow last year, but nothing along the lines of that. So I definitely do feel that in general, winters here are warmer than they used to be. I also sort of feel like the seasons are shifting (i.e. September used to be the start of autumn but now it really feels like the nicest month of summer and spring doesn't come until May at the earliest) but that's a crazy theory for another time.

Here's what the new USDA plant hardiness map looks like:

You can click here to go to a clickable version of the map that will blow up your state so you can see exactly where you land.

Here's what it used to look like:

If you look closely, a lot of the zones seems to have slipped north and many of us find ourselves in a half (or more) zone warmer.

Here's what Wisconsin's zone map used to look like:

And here's what it looks like now:

There used to be a zone 4 "thumb" that stuck into southeastern Wisconsin, almost all the way to the lake and now that is gone completely. The entire Lake Michigan coastline is now zone 5b.

So what does this mean to gardeners? On a small scale, probably not a lot. Nurseries and plant companies tend to be big zone pushers to begin with: On more than one occasion I've brought a plant home from a nursery only to read up on it some more and find that it is really only zoned to zone 6 (which is nowhere to be found around here, even now) and even though under the old zone map I was more likely to be shopping in a nursery closer to zone 4 than zone 5b, there were far more zone 5 plants than zone 4 plants. I have a few zone pushers in my garden, and most of them have been purchased with the knowledge that they will need a very special spot protected from winter winds and a lot of help from me in the form of protection. Some live, some die, as is the way with plants. I guess I'll know feel a little more comfortable with my zone pushers, but I bet it won't be long before nurseries start routinely stocking zone 6 plants because honestly, they will make it through a lot of winters, but some year we will have a winter like we used to have, and then we'll all be crying about the loss in our gardens.

How will your garden be affected by the zone map change? Will you change your buying habits? Are you excited to have the USDA's "OK" to plant some great things you've wished you could plant all along?

Your homework for the weekend

2012-01-20T14:02:00.001-06:00

I have a homework assignment for you. If you are not watching PBS' "Downton Abbey," then you must change that.

First, you must set your DVR to record it on Sunday night. It's at 8 p.m. CST, but check your listings to make sure you record it at the correct time.

Once you have done that you must go to PBS.org and catch up on what you've missed. Unfortunately it looks like they've removed Season 1 from the website, but you can at least read the synopsis if you don't want to get it from Netflix or iTunes. I watched it on my iPad on the PBS app, so check there if you're sporting the appropriate technology. Season 2 is up on the website, so do watch. It's a lot of hours of stuff to catch up on but trust me, you'll be hooked and nothing else will matter.

After you've watched the two Season 2 episodes, go to My Favorite and My Best and read the hysterical recaps. Well, don't do that if you don't care for a bit of colorful language, but if you don't mind a bit of bawdiness, check out the recaps of the first and second episodes of the season. Be prepared to laugh so hard you cry.

After you've done all that come back here and tell me how grateful you are that I made you do it.

Kitchen dreaming

2012-01-16T08:00:00.000-06:00

It's no secret that I love magazines. Nothing brightens a day more than coming home to a new issue in the mailbox. Interestingly enough, when it comes to shelter magazines, probably 90 percent of what I see in magazines is pretty/intriguing/fantastic/interesting but is not translatable to my life. What makes magazines great is that other 10 percent. The pictures and articles that illustrate what has been lurking in your head. The ones that say, "Look at me!"

The last two moments I had like that have come from Coastal Living magazine. The first was when I had just finished repainting the front door a darker blue and then saw a photo in Coastal Living and had to be talked off the ledge from repainting it immediately.

The second one happened this weekend when I saw pictures from a casual Key West home (you'd think that would be redundant, but it's unbelievable how many Key West homes featured in magazines end up feeling stuffy and overdone). The idea behind the house was "Modern vintage" which, the more I think about it, sort of sums up what I'm feeling my style has been lately. What grabbed me from the get-go was the kitchen.

Although sprucing up the working part of the kitchen isn't something we'll be doing immediately, it is part of the long-range plan. It won't be a total overhaul or anything, because most of what is there is just fine. But I'd consider refacing the cabinets (at the very least they need to be repainted) and replacing the counters. I know the cabinets will be white (I'm just a white cabinet kind of girl, I guess) but I've always envisioned a dark countertop. White on white kitchens are all the rage these days and I feel myself falling for the trend. What I like about this kitchen is how the cabinets are an off-white but the counters are true white. I think it's a really interesting look and not one I've seen before. It's all tied together with the great shell backsplash.

Up until now, I've envisioned some variation of a subway tile backsplash in our kitchen, but the mosaic in the Key West kitchen is interesting with just a touch of sparkle, but not too fancy. I'm a little bit obsessed with it.

Another trend this kitchen embraces is the whole open shelving concept. I have to admit, it's a super sharp look, but it's just not for me. First of all, it's one more area to "style" and this is something I struggle with. Also, half of our dishes are in the dishwasher most of time, so you either have a half-full shelf or you have to buy more dishes to fill it and then it's overstuffed when they are all clean. And lastly, all of the upper cabinets in my parents' kitchen are open and those dishes get dirty. About once a week my mom washes the top dish on every stack whether it's been used or not. For me, it's not practical. And while I can get behind a bit of form over function in a lot of spaces, for me, form has to follow function in the working part of a kitchen.

It's just a little something for me to obsess over during the depths of winter, before I allow myself to start dreaming in earnest about gardening.

P.S. I realize there's a great deal of irony in the fact that the images I posted are obviously screen shots from my iPad since I'm always extolling the virtues of real, printed magazines. In my defense, I'll just say that Coastal Living hasn't updated its website with the contents of the February issue yet and I couldn't wait to show you this kitchen so I had to view the magazine on my iPad (free for print subscribers) and screenshot the pages.

Pet the nice moss

2012-01-11T11:36:00.000-06:00

Does that sound a little wrong? Because I do.

I couldn't blog about it because it would have ruined the Christmas surprise, I bought three Moss Rocks for Christmas gifts this year. I ordered them well in advance because I wanted to make sure I'd get them in plenty of time. My mom, sister-in-law and I (yes, I buy gifts for myself; and yes, sometimes I wrap them up and put them under the tree) all got "Cobble" size (medium) Moss Rocks for Christmas. I bought them in lichen, toadstool and raindrop (sagey green, off white and turquoise) and decided who should get each color when they arrived.

I have to say, these things are just the cutest little buggers. It's so weird, but everyone's first reaction when they see them is to say "Awwwww." And then the next thing they do is pet them. I'm serious. Your first reaction is to reach out and fluff the little guy's fuzzy head.

I brought mine to work and keep it on my desk so I can pet it throughout the day. I'm a toucher, much to the dismay of everyone I work with. I absolutely must be fiddling or touching or playing with something all the time. I don't even realize I'm doing it, actually. I will pick up someone's stapler while I'm talking with them and start dismantling it in the middle of a conversation. I completely and accidentally invade people's person space by picking up something on their desk. I usually carry a pen with me everywhere I go, which helps because I fiddle with my pen instead of something off some random victim's desk. It's weird. It might even be a little OCD, but who doesn't have a little dose of OCD in them?

Anyway, the Moss Rock seems to help a bit with those tendencies. Plus it's helping me do better at keeping my desk clean, because it looks so much cuter all by itself with its candle friend when it's not covered with a pile of paper.

Just to clarify, Moss Rocks didn't send me anything or ask me to do anything, and frankly has no idea I'm writing this post. I just really love the Moss Rocks I bought. Obviously ... since I've admitted to sort of molesting them. Although I'm wondering if maybe I have a problem with that (see previous offense here). Is there a 12-step program for plant molesters?

How-to: A beautiful pinboard

2012-01-09T08:15:00.000-06:00

I have great news: progress is being made on the office redo (mentioned here, here, here and here). I stopped updating you guys on it because it got downright depressing when I was having so many problems with the counters (sadly mentioned here, here and here).

Rather than wait until it's all finished and show you it all at once, I thought I'd break out a couple of the projects and tell you about them first.

If you recall, the goal was to update my outdated, dingy and totally uninspiring office at work on a shoestring budget. Since I spend more time in this space than any other, I didn't mind putting a little bit of my own money and a lot of my time into fixing up this space. While I was planning the space, I was struggling with what to do in the "backsplash" area, and it was reader Robin from Three Acres & 3,000 Square Feet who suggested a fabric covered bulletin board. What a great idea.

Here's the old office looking like a total junk yard. Which it pretty much was. Below is a mock-up of the vision for it.

Functional and beautiful, not to mention much easier than wallpaper or some kind of fancy paint treatment.

So I made these fabric covered pinboards that might just be the best part of the whole room.

I started with Homasote handipanels because they work great as a pinboard. These are pressed fiberboard used for soundproofing and crafting. I had never heard of them before I started researching this project on the Internet (pretty much no matter how self explanatory a project may be, I start with Google). I was hoping to have these cut in the store because they can be really messy to cut, but the place I bought them from didn't have them. Fortunately they are really easy to cut with any kind of saw including a regular drywall hand saw.

Because I was covering such a long area, I had to use three boards. I also had outlets to contend with, so once I had the boards cut to size, I needed to mark the location for the outlets. Of course you can measure this, but I'm going to be honest here: I'm horrible at measuring. Well, I can measure, but somewhere along the line, things tend to get lost in translation. So I marked the outlets in a way even I can't screw up (this works with drywall too). With the outlet covers removed, I covered the actual outlets with a bit of painter's tape.

Then I grabbed the little lipstick palette I keep in my desk for emergencies, and picked the bright red color that I will never, ever wear, and brushed it on the tape over the actual outlets.

Then I lined the board up and pressed it against the tape so the lipstick would mark the board.

After the board was marked, I lined the outlet cover up with the lipstick mark and used it as a template to mark the area I'd need to cut.

Once I cut the outlet holes, I stapled two layers of thin batting on each board. For the outlet holes I cut an X and stapled around the hole.

The hardest part of this project by far was lining up the pattern. If I had used a solid fabric I could have knocked a good two hours off, but, of course I didn't. I used a heavy upholstery fabric with a flocked velvet pattern that I picked up on sale from Calico Corners a couple months ago (Sultana Lattice from the Iman collection). I ended up needing two yards, but only because I had to match the pattern. I could have gotten away with a yard and a half if pattern matching wasn't an issue.

Here I was getting a general idea of where I would cut for each piece.

I had to line up the fabric not only so it was straight on each board, but so that the pattern matched up from board to board, giving the illusion of one long board. Mostly this just took some trial and error but it was pretty tedious.

Stapling the fabric to the boards was about as simple as it gets. I just made sure I was keeping equal tension on the fabric as I pulled. The only slightly tricky part was the corners. For those I just pulled the fabric tight across the corner and put in one staple.

Then I cut the excess fabric off and folded it over as neatly as possible and put a few more staples in.

I wanted to velcro the panels to the wall so I wouldn't damage the wall but the batting made that difficult. I took a furring strip we had leftover from something, cut it in pieces and hot glued it to the back where I wanted to attach the velcro. Then I just stuck it to the wall.

You can see where the seams are, but I think I did a pretty good job lining up the pattern.

I'm really happy with how it turned out. Not only is it beautiful and spices up the place a bit, but I have a convenient place to hang notes (although I'm trying hard not to clutter it up). And an added benefit that I wasn't expecting is that it added a bit more soundproofing along that wall.

I spent about $30 for the Homasote boards. The fabric was a bit of splurge at about $45. Certainly this is a project that could be done very inexpensively by keeping the size of the board a bit smaller and by choosing a less expensive fabric (burlap would be very cool).

* Unfortunately it seems that if you go to a direct link to an old post you can't view the comments, but if you look at it on the general blog page you can see them fine. I'm sure this has something to do with adding the new comment form. I'm hoping I can get it fixed but in the meantime, sorry for any inconvenience.

New year, new look

2012-01-05T12:34:00.000-06:00

You might think that since the blog redesign (No. 6, I think) happened around the first of the year, that it was all part of my master plan. Please, think that. I makes me look efficient. Also not at all like the procrastinator that I am.

The sad fact is that I started this months ago and I'm first getting around to getting it up now. But this time, I did the design myself. I've worked with two blog designers in the past, and they both did a nice job. But as I've mentioned before, I have a tough time explaining the vision in my head to other people. I can see it plain as day, but I can't describe it accurately. It's not that I lack the words (ha!), it's just that I don't see the details in my head but I know them when I see them, if that makes any sense. Making this worse, I'm also very particular, especially about issues related to typography. I know my fonts pretty well and I definitely have some I like and some I abhor. Making a designer search for the font living in my head but as yet unidentified by name seemed cruel. So I thought I'd torture myself with it a bit.

I also wanted something a bit more colorful, and I think this design provides that. I'm going to try to make an effort to improve on things more regularly, but the main difference you'll notice as a user is a new comment form. I've never really been happy with the Blogger comment form. It always seems sort of clunky to me and I hate that I can't directly respond to your posts. So I'm using a third party comment form that I hope you'll find easier to use. Please give a try and let me know what you think. I can always go back to the old way if necessary. You don't have to have a blog or an account anywhere to make a comment, just fill in your name and email and you should be good to go.

You can also share posts more easily now. At the bottom of each post there are some small social media buttons, which you can click on to share on various sites. I urge you to use them frequently.

If you ever see something that needs improvement, please let me know.

Oh, and no guarantees on how long this design will be around.

What would your white room look like?

2012-01-04T08:30:00.000-06:00

My godmother is one of those amazingly good women who doesn't deserve what is happening to her, like so many others in this world. She is suffering from pancreatic cancer and it's going to take her life. She's been in a rehabilitation facility for the past several weeks but right before the new year she moved into a hospice facility. You wouldn't think that would be cause for celebration, but for her, it was.

She moved into a room that is empty. Save for a bed, wheelchair and some of the medical necessities she'll need, the room is empty room with white walls. She gets to bring the rest. That may sound depressing, but for a women who lived and cared for her parents until they passed away and then took over a house that was, at least to her, untouchable because it bore the stamp of her parents, it is an opportunity.

"Can you imagine being able to do anything you want in a room, starting from scratch?" she said. And it got me thinking: What would I put in that room?

Of course in this situation, you're probably more interested in WHO is in the room, rather than what is in the room, and certainly I'd want to pack it with a steady stream of good friends, beloved family and of course, my favorite four-leggeds. But beyond that, what would the room look like?

I think I'd start with paint. I'm not actually sure if they allow you to paint, but I think there is no better time to ask forgiveness rather than permission. I would be hard pressed to pick one color and stick with it so I'd probably want to repaint about once a week, but I think I'd stick with bright colors.

Certainly the wonderful Wythe Blue would be among my chosen colors.

Source: houzz.com via Erin on Pinterest

I'd enjoy this fresh green with a fair amount of yellow in it for awhile.

Source: houzz.com via Erin on Pinterest

I'd want to take a turn with orange but I don't know if I could stand it on an entire wall. Maybe a big, wide stripe of orange (except with gray instead of tan) would work.

Source: houzz.com via Erin on Pinterest

I'd do yellow for awhile too, but I can't stand overly sunny yellows. I like this one with lots of green in it.

Source: houzz.com via Erin on Pinterest

I'd also have huge prints of favorite photos of family and friends made, maybe to be made into wallpaper on one or more of the walls, similar to what the Novogratzes did in a couple rooms. That way my friends and family would always be close even when they weren't with me.

I loved this photo blown up as wallpaper in a room for triplets that the Novogratzes did on an episode last fall.

Source: blog.hgtv.com via Erin on Pinterest

I'd get a good-sized television because you can bet I'd watch whatever the heck I felt like watching. I'd also spring for a couple of great chairs and a comfortable sofa. Why not? And yeah, I'd charge it.

I'd bring in a nice bookcase and surround myself with every book I could possibly think about wanting to read. I'd have a mini fridge stocked with all my favorite drinks and the favorites of my friends, because we'd be having some good parties in there.

Source: marthastewart.com via Lauren on Pinterest

Source: paloma81.blogspot.com via Jessica on Pinterest

I'd also call up a good florist and tell them to sent a new floral arrangement every five days. I'd get a few orchids, some Christmas cacti, a Moss Rock or two and my grandmother's ficus tree. I'd have basil growing in the window and I'd eat it on everything all the time.

Source: tinywhitedaisies.tumblr.com via Erin on Pinterest

Source: designsponge.com via Erin on Pinterest

Source: cityplanter.com via Tiffany on Pinterest

I've not seen my godmother's room yet, but apparently she's thrilled with it. My dad and brother helped move some of the stuff from her house up there over the weekend. I can't wait to see what she's done with it.

So, what would your white room look like?

Technical difficulties

2012-01-03T21:50:00.000-06:00

Well, this wasn't exactly the big splash I had planned for my new blog layout, but I seem to be having some technical difficulties getting it uploaded. So, some of what you see is new and some is old. Hopefully I'll get it up and running soon (I think the problem is Blogger's not mine because I have it running just fine on a test site). In the meantime, thanks for bearing with me.

What a scintillating post to start off the new year.

Happy New Year & some non-resolution resolutions

2011-12-30T10:26:00.001-06:00

I'm not a resolution maker. I don't think there's anything more depressing than setting yourself up for failure, which is what most resolutions do. I am, however, in favor of change for the better so here are a few things I'm hoping to change for the better in 2012.

1. Blog more. I'll never write a post every day. God, that would be a total bore. I don't ever want to write a post just because I have to. I strive to make posts here something that you want to read about. However, there are a lot of blog drafts sitting in a folder in my computer that never make it to all of you, and I'd like to do a better job on getting the worthy posts published.

2. Be a better blogger. This means doing a better job responding to comments and making comments on the hundreds of other blogs I follow.

3. Use my passport more. Because of my job and Mr. Much More Patient's job we have a unique opportunity to do a fair amount of traveling, but I can't tell you the number of times in 2011 that I've opted to stay home. Mostly it's because I'm lazy. It is a lot of work to get organized enough at work to be out of the office for a few days. It's even more work, accompanied by a fair amount of guilt, to leave the dogs for a few days. But the dogs love their sitters and so long as the best dog sitters in the world are available, they'll be just fine without me. Sometimes I opt not to go because I know that my travel partner will be busy working and it doesn't sound like much fun to travel on my own. I need to get over that. I don't have a lot of regrets (it is my most despised feeling), but most of those I do have are travel opportunities that I've passed up.

4. Bring lunch to work. Duh. I'm going broke and gaining weight by eating out all the time. It needs to stop.

And then there are all those typical ones about managing money, being healthier, etc., but why even bother writing those down? They are pretty much a given anyway, aren't they?

Are you a resolution maker? If so, what's yours?

Wishing you all a fun New Year's Eve and a wonderful 2012!

2011 favorites

2011-12-28T08:30:00.000-06:00

I've noticed that a lot of blogs are running posts featuring some of their most popular projects or posts from the past year and who am I to avoid hopping on a bandwagon?

So let's take a look at what you all were digging in 2011.

You really liked Looking back at the reno, a year later, and to be honest, I like it too. Even though it still wasn't that long ago, it's pretty amazing to see that our house went from this:

To this:

This silly little lamp redo, in which I exercised my newfound love/respect for spray paint to save a pretty ugly lamp.

A bit of the house tour of the kitchen, which we really haven't done much work to, was also at the top of the list. And yeah, still no art over the banquette. I just don't do placeholders so I'm still waiting for the right thing to come along.

And from a room that hasn't been changed much (other than putting in that banquette, which I still think is one of the best changes we've made to the house) to a room that didn't exist a year and a half ago: the bathroom.

And I'm happy to note that I might prevent some of you from making some of the same plant mistakes I've made by telling you about some plants I'll (probably) never plant again including the dreaded artemesia 'Oriental Lime Light.'

I hope to bring you lots more interesting posts in 2012 and I so very much appreciate all of you who stop by daily, or just once, to check out the blog.

Traditional tanenbaum

2011-12-23T15:49:00.001-06:00

I'm traditional about very few things in life. I'm a pretty independent woman, so much so that I can sometimes be offputting to gentlemen offering to help with something. I have no problem painting a piece of fine furniture white (or any other color) if I'm going to like it better that way. And we all know my approach to gardening can't be found in any book. But when it comes to Christmas, I'm a traditionalist at heart.

I love looking at themed trees and decorations and I'm always impressed by people who change their tree decorations every year, but for me, it's not my Christmas tree until it is just so. And that just so is exactly the same every year. I like to put on white and red lights (Go Badgers!). I like to hang simple glass balls in a variety of colors as a "background" to other ornaments. I like my favorite ornaments to be displayed front and center and the ugly ones that I feel bad leaving in the basement in the back of the tree (I love looking at the backs of people's Christmas trees ... it's very telling). And I love to finish off my tree with hundreds of glass icicles, so that it's absolutely dripping with them by the time I'm finished (like I did with a big ol' tree in 2009).

But this year I had to scale back a bit. Mr. Much More Patient has been out of town since before Thanksgiving (and I'm very happy to be picking him up at the airport tomorrow afternoon) so that meant I was on my own for whatever Christmas decorations I wanted to do. And that meant that traipsing into the far reaches of the Christmas tree farm to cut down a tree then drag it a mile back to the parking lot was not in the cards (by the way, I think I might be over that tradition). We didn't put up a tree last year because we were still at the tail end of the renovation and I was tempted to skip it again this year, but two years in a row without a tree is an alarming trend. So I went for small, but not short. Basically I found the cheapest 8-foot tree in the lot (it was "untrimmed" and "kind of a wild one" so it was marked way down which was great because I love a more natural looking tree). Then I cut off the bottom 3 feet of branches and stuck it in an urn I found on clearance at a local nursery. I jammed it full of beach stones for stability and filled it with water.

And then my living room flooded. Whoops. Probably should have checked if the thing was waterproof or not first.

Plan B. Insert a five-gallon bucket into the urn. Build an old-fashioned X-stand (using an old 2x4, chop saw and drill, all by myself I might add), screw that onto the tree, stick the tree in the bucket, and then fashion an elaborate web to add stability by drilling holes in the bucket and stringing line between them and around the tree.

But that left the bucket partly exposed, so I fashioned a cute little urn scarf out of burlap. I love that little scarf.

Then I proceeded to decorate as usual, although I left a lot of ornaments off due to space constraints.

I also got lots of my wrapping finished early this year so I'm able to enjoy the pretty presents under the tree.

A bit of tidying up, a few boxes of cookies to pack up for neighbors and we're all set to celebrate. I hope you have a wonderful Christmas if you celebrate and if not, have a great weekend!

Here's a quick shot of how the Christmas card turned out. Enjoy.

By the way, if you haven't already done it already, remember to make your tree trunk ornament!

Crazy Christmas shopping pictures

2011-12-20T15:00:00.000-06:00

It's amazing where you can find interesting displays this time of year. I snapped this picture in the gift second of the grocery store this weekend. I just love the feel of this tables cape. I tend to prefer more color around the holidays, but this is so casual and sleek at the same time. And yep, I bought those linen placemats.

On a different shopping trip earlier this holiday season I snapped a picture in Pottery Barn. Turns out it has kind of a similar color scheme. I really love those candlesticks on the coffee table, but the real reason I took this picture is because I thought that couch was the most ridiculous thing I'd ever seen. Seriously there is no where to sit on that couch, there are so many throw pillows. Maybe that was the intention so they didn't get weary loungers, but still. That's just silly.

And at a trip to one of my favorite nurseries I snapped these pictures.

I don't care what percent off that tree is. That thing is U.G.L.Y.

Traditionally colored poinsettia with Euphorbia Diamond Frost? Maybe.

Creepy purple poinsettia with Diamond Frost? Not a chance.

Part of me sort of loves this way over-the-top garland just dripping with ornaments.

I thought this fountain was pretty funky cool. The price ($1,500) was certainly not, but I think in front of the right house this could be pretty fantastic.

A tale of two mantles

2011-12-20T08:00:00.000-06:00

I did my mantle twice this year. No sooner had I gotten the wreath up than I found out that the newspaper that had featured the house in the home and garden section was interested in doing a special Christmas cover shoot at our house. They were looking for a big fireplace in front which a local group of high schoolers who put on a madigral dinner every year could pose in sort of a celebratory, raucous party scene. They knew I had a bit fireplace.

I had no problem with that. The problem came in when it came to setting a renaissance-type scene. I'm not sure any style could be more opposed to my usual M.O. and frankly I was flummoxed on what to do. And I didn't have a lot of time in which to do it.

I threw a whole bunch of greens on the mantle for starters. I didn't wire them or anything. I literally just stuck them up there. I mostly used the branches I cut off the tree, but I also filled in with cedar and white pine (like I did with the wreath). Then I filled in some lemon leaves (which are NOT lemon leaves. I've seen them called salal tips, but I will have to find the botanical name) to get a different texture in there. After that I threw (again, literally) some oranges and apples on top and borrowed some candlesticks from my mother-in-law (the dear woman let me take them right off her completed mantle). Because the starfish in the wreath would not at all work I just covered them with lemon leaves to obscure them.

To complete the over-the-top look (which is what I associate with that renaissance feel), I added some fresh Casablanca lilies at my good friend's suggestion.

The group was supposed to bring props with them; lutes, flutes, goblets, etc. Unfortunately they didn't, so the photographers (two of them: one to take the shot and a second to help set it up) had to get creative with posing. I had NOTHING in the house that would work, although they did end up using the single goblet I borrowed from a neighbor mid photo-shoot.

Here's the photographer standing on a ladder in the doorway to the living room.

Here's the side few (the chair isn't visible from the front-on angle the photographer was shooting from).

The kids were troopers. They were in those heavy costumes and our fire puts out some serious heat. Even with the windows open it was hot in front of that fireplace (hot enough that I fried one side of those poinsettias in front of it). After they were finished I went back to a more traditional (for me) look. Gone were the candlesticks, fruit and flowers, and in came the stockings, glass bead garland and starfish. It really could benefit from some candles, but I was ready to be done decorating that mantle!

The furniture and mobile are back too.

I'll post a photo of the newspaper cover when it comes out later in the week.

Decking the outside

2011-12-16T08:00:00.000-06:00

I had so much fun decorating the outside this year, partly because it's fun to deck out the "new house" and partly because it's been downright nice (for December) to be outside this year. If it weren't for not wanting to totally break the bank, I would have just kept on decorating. It's no secret that I love Deborah Silver's container designs, but I draw so much inspiration from her amazing holiday creations.

One of the things I did that's new this year, is mix in obviously faux materials with natural materials. I had seen Deborah do it and it intrigued me, so I added the sparkly balls to the window box. Another little tip I learned from reading Deborah's blog is to wire the dogwood twigs together before putting them in the pot to keep them in nicer bundles. I also added faux eucalyptus to the containers as it was easier to find (and less expensive than the real stuff). The greens and the dogwood were all gathered from our property or my parents' property (OK, maybe the field across the road from my parents, but close).

I always fill the big container by the front door, too and that got a similar greens/dogwood/eucalyptus treatment.

I put in some C9 LEDs as well so it glows at night.

For the first time, I also filled the container I leave in the garden as well. It's not lit but I love looking out the kitchen window at it.

But I had the most fun decorating the pergola. As I've mentioned before, given the orientation of the deck, the pergola doesn't really do much in the way of shading. It's purely aesthetic and I'd be lying if I didn't say that that decorating it for Christmas was on my mind when we (and by we I mean me since Mr. Much More Patient still doesn't understand what the purpose of the pergola is) decided to have it built as part of the deck project.

I had intended to pull the fake fruit off these Costco wreaths and put on ornaments instead, but I kind of liked the natural look more. I hung a wreath on two sides of the pergola and stuck some nice, big red bows on them. The garland is also lit and I just love how it all looks at night. I always cut my garland and rewire it so that it's facing the right direction. I can't stand garland running against the grain on the vertical.

I'm thrilled with how it turned out. If we were having a big party I might have swagged garland all along the deck railing and added small wreaths at the bottom of the stairs. Lately I'm finding it much more fun to decorate outside than inside. Not sure why, but I'm sure the nice weather has something to do with it.

Sprucing up a wreath

2011-12-12T12:24:00.001-06:00

The trip to an area Dick's Sporting Goods store was not without it's usual frustrations. As usual, it was impossible to find an employee to help and I was getting more frustrated by the fact that I had left my purse in the car so I was juggling my wallet and a flyer full of coupons somewhat unsuccessfully. But I had to stick it out because for me, Christmas decorating starts at the sporting good store.

And I had some decorating to do this weekend.

My parents always hang a huge wreath over their fireplace (in fact there is a rather adorable photo of me as an 11-month old baby with my brother gazing at our stockings in front of that fireplace with the wreath hanging over it) so when we bought a house with a huge stone fireplace, I knew I would hang a wreath there. But there is some engineering involved in this, especially since you don't want to put any sort of hanger in the masonry.

We have a wood beam sort of built into the exterior wall, so several years ago we put an eye screw in the top of it on either side of the fireplace. Then I string fishing line between the two screws and hang the wreath on the line. I've tweaked this system over the years but I might have perfected it this year. In the past I've used 60-pound monofilament fishing line, but since the hardware store had no high-test line, I had to run to the sporting goods store. And there I found that fishing line has changed. Now there is braided line that feels more like string than plastic. There are two problems with monofilament line: it is very hard to tie knots in and it stretches a lot. But the new line is super low stretch and since it feels like string, there's no problem tying knots in it.

The arrows point to the beams built into the wall where we put eye screws and then run fishing line between them to hang the wreath.

Which is why I spent a good 20 minutes (without help from an employee, thank you very much) in the fishing line aisle. The 80-pound braided fishing line I got wasn't cheap, at all, but I got 300 yards which should last me about 10 years if I don't lose it.

With the string strung, it was back to the wreath. There are some beautifully decorated wreaths out there and I always strive to make one, but I'm always a little hesitant to go too far out of my comfort zone so I end up doing something a lot like what I've done in the past. But I'm OK with that. The holidays are one of those times when I'm OK with the same time over and over again for the sake of tradition.

I start with a 36-inch wreath that is pretty basic. You know the one: red bow, white pinecones, lots of balsam.

Then I strip it down (I spread out a bed sheet to keep the mess under control). I save the bow for something else (often at the end of the driveway or outside somewhere).

The next step is to lay out all the extras I'll be adding to get a feel for where they go. I don't attach them at this point, just get a feel for what is going where. When I took off the pinecones, one area had a bit of a hole in it so I decided to put the ribbon there.

I like a very full wreath and I like them to be a bit wild and shaggy, with lots of texture. But wreaths like that are very expensive. So I bought a pretty basic wreath made mostly of balsam and a little bit of white pine and then bought extra greens to add to it. It's really easy to add greens to a wreath. I just stick them in between the stems and if need be, throw on a wrap of floral wire (I'd be lost without floral wire for holiday decorating). With the greens added, I attach all ornaments, which also helps to keep some of the greens in place. It's not like this wreath is hanging on a door that will be swinging back and forth. It goes up on the fireplace and stays there until it comes down.

With all the ornaments added, I double checked the greens and filled in a few spots and then added the bow. I usually just do the red bow but I felt like it was a little small in scale (and I was out of ribbon) so I added a stiffer white jute ribbon (which has a little fleck of gold running through it).

Here's where my next little secret comes in. I use a carbiner to hang it. You know, the things that are really for rock climbing but now people use them on their keyring? I found a nice small one that was actually called an S-biner, with opening clips on each side and this is a wonderful little gadget, at least for hanging wreaths. I clip one side on the wire frame of the wreath and then just slip the other side over the pre-strung fishing line. This allows me to slide it side to side to get it centered properly.

And there you go. One wreath finished. Now … onto that tree. Bet Dick's doesn't have anything to help with that.

Christmas inspiration everywhere

2011-12-09T13:27:00.001-06:00

It is so hard to blog when you're never home during daylight hours. These short days are such a bummer, especially because I'm not able to snap a few pictures when I get home.

Anyway, I have been working on a bit of Christmas decorating and have a bit more planned for the weekend (I didn't not get a lot of the outdoor decorating done last weekend like I planned because it poured all day Saturday). Whatever isn't done by the end of the weekend isn't getting done. Sometimes you just have to call it a day, you know?

So in the absence of photos from my own house, I thought I'd share a few inspirational holiday photos that I've been looking at lately. I think when you see what I've done at home you'll see that I was heavily influenced by some of these.

How's your decorating going?

Source: coastalliving.com via Erin on Pinterest

Source: houseandhome.com via Erin on Pinterest

Source: everythingfab.com via Erin on Pinterest

Source: thevisualvamp.blogspot.com via Erin on Pinterest

Source: deborahsilver.com via Erin on Pinterest

Source: habituallychic.blogspot.com via Erin on Pinterest

Source: countryliving.com via Erin on Pinterest

Source: houseandhome.com via Erin on Pinterest

Source: bhg.com via Erin on Pinterest

Source: deborahsilver.com via Erin on Pinterest

Source: theinspiredroom.net via Erin on Pinterest

Source: deborahsilver.com via Erin on Pinterest

What's a Christmas card without snow? A challenge.

2011-12-06T08:09:00.000-06:00

When my oldest dog Hudson was a puppy we took his picture in the yard with a Santa hat on and put it on a holiday card. Our friends and family couldn't get over how cute he was. By the next year we had added another dog to the family and the two appeared in the card that year. And people loved that too. And then the next year, starting in about October, people started asking me, "What are the dogs going to be doing in the Christmas card this year?" And so, a tradition was born.

Some years the photo shoots are more successful than others and I'll be honest, I'm running out of ideas. The good news is that at ages 7 and 8 the dogs know the drill and tolerate the photo shoots with a minimum of stink eye shot in my direction.

I've been holding out on taking the photo this year because I've been waiting for snow. Looking back at the old photos, the only one that doesn't have snow in the background is the original photo from 2004 (not shown in that collection: I can't find it!). We've still not had snow (I'm not complaining) but it does make the photos kind of challenging, especially when you have limited photography skills.

Because of my limitations as a photographer I'm a big believer in taking lots of pictures (thank goodness for digital; that theory got expensive back in the film days) and hoping something works out. I'm still working on choosing a photo and working some Photoshop magic but I thought I'd show you a few outtakes.

Obviously I'm holding the treat (cheddar cheese comes highly recommended) in my left hand whilst balancing on a chair in the middle of the lawn. The green grass doesn't do much to help the Christmas feeling.

Hudson: "First you put a damn wreath around me and now you're making weird noises with that clicky thing in your hand"

Rita: "Cheese? Cheese? Cheese? Can we have more cheese?"

Get it off, get it off, get it off.

You can tell their hearts really aren't in it, cheese or not. Oh, and how nice that I managed to get the neighbor's boat in the background. Good job, Erin.

Hudson: "Oh please make this be over, woman."

Rita: "I'm so outta here."

And because it wasn't bad enough to get the neighbor's boat in the background I managed to get our kayak squarely in the photo. Again, great job, Erin. Photographer of the year. Call me for your crappy family photo shoot needs.

Christmas craft day

2011-12-02T11:50:00.001-06:00

You might have noticed that I'm a bit of a procrastinator. It is truly one of my least appealing traits (that and that I'm the antithesis of punctual). I think it's the journalist in me. Almost every journalist I know is a huge procrastinator. I think it might be something related to endorphins and deadlines.

Most years I am running around like a mad women the day before Christmas Eve, buying the last of the presents, and then I stay up until the wee hours wrapping gifts.

I am trying my very hardest not to do that this year. I have a good start on my Christmas shopping and I'm hoping to finish it up (online, mostly) over the next week or so. I am also going to get my outside decorations (which will be a bigger deal than the inside decorations given that Mr. Much More Patient is gone until Christmas Eve so I won't have a tall helper) done this weekend if Mother Nature cooperates.

But I actually kicked off my Christmas "to do" list last weekend when my best girlfriends and I did our annual Christmas craft day. This started as a bit of a joke because none of us are crafters. At all. But we wanted to get together to hang out somewhere other than a bar without having to add further trauma to our Christmas season budgets. The way it works is that I scour the web for interesting looking crafting projects and then send a list to my friend Jilian who chooses the project we'll do. I gather all the supplies, everyone brings a little food and drink, and we hang out at my house being silly and attempting to make a little something.

Last year we made beaded snowflake ornaments that were really cute although labor intensive.

My friend Jilian showing off a previous year's craft: beaded snowflake ornaments.

This year we made pipe cleaner figures based on an idea from Martha Stewart. They looked cute and we figured that pipe cleaners were probably pretty forgiving for us novice crafters.

We made skiing Santas, skating snowmen and reindeer (and a few random things later on).
Now of course you knew that ours wouldn't look like Martha's, and I should add that our efforts were hindered by the fact that Martha must have special super fluffy pipe cleaners made specially for her because ours looked a little anemic compared to hers.

Here's how mine turned out next to Martha's version. See if you can identify which is Martha's and which is mine.

Did you guess that the ones on the right were mine? You did? You are a bunch of super sleuths!

Here's what the whole menagerie of figures we all made looked like.

The black blobbish looking thing in the front is a very accurate pipe cleaner depiction of my friend Julie's dog.

OK, so I know that Martha Stewart Living won't be calling us anytime to demonstrate crafting techniques (which, frankly, in our case involve the consumption of frozen pizza, taco dip and a fair amount of alcohol), but if you haven't figured it out yet, it's not really about the crafts. The four us have been friends for decades. Julie and I were in the hospital together when we were born and became good friends by age 4. Dede and I played soccer together in 6th grade and I met Jilian in 7th grade when I switched schools. By high school the four of us were besties. Three of us live close together and Jilian lives in another state so we make it a point to hang when she's home. So yeah, it's not about Martha. It's about this:

A few things that should be pointed out about this picture: 1. We took an intermission from crafting to go to the bar and watch the Wisconsin Badgers game. 2. Julie's hair looks crazy because we started putting pipe cleaners in it. And she let us. And then she went out in public with them in her hair. See why I like these girls?

Fleeting color

2011-11-30T07:30:00.000-06:00

I was downloading some photos from the weekend Tuesday night and realized there were a few I'd taken just a couple weeks ago that I've not posted. One of the amazing things about living up north, where the seasons mean business, is how quickly things change. Although we've not had any snow yet (which is pretty surprising), it's been plenty cold and the color is gone from the yard. Even the grass is taking a decided turn for brown.

But I had to share a couple of these from just a couple weeks ago.
I don't think you could ask for anything more from a tree beyond what Acer japonicum 'Acontifolium' gave me this fall.

And Hakonechloa 'All Gold' has grown into a beautiful, bushy little mound that turned even brighter yellow this fall and got great seed heads on it. This is one plant I love to leave standing all year because it adds great interest even in winter.

Sigh, I miss it already.

Happy Cyber Monday!

2011-11-28T10:00:00.000-06:00

I'm a champion online shopper. In fact it's the main way I buy things now. Last year, I bought what I could locally from small merchants but everything else was purchased online. And it being Cyber Monday (really, they couldn't think of a better name than that?) there are a lot of great deals out there. So here's a quick round up of some of the deals I found. I'll add to this later if I find others. And a lot of these deals last beyond today so if you can't get to them today, don't give up hope.

First off, if you haven't already, sign up for Ebates and then go to stores through Ebates and you get a percentage back (depending on the store). I've gotten $275 back since I started using Ebates about a year and a half ago. And every little bit helps. In order to get the cash back you have to sign up and then follow the link to the store from Ebates. Many stores are offering "double" cash back for Cyber Monday through the website.

You can sign up for Ebates here (in the interest of full disclosure, that's a referral link that should give me a small referral credit if you sign up through it) or here (just a straight link—no referral credit for me).

Just about every website (other than Pottery Barn, what gives?) has some kind of deal today, but here are some noteworthy ones. I'll update this later in the day if I find more great deals later in the day. Happy shopping!

The Container Store: Use OHJOY for free shipping through Dec. 4 (Plus 4% cash back through Ebates)

Athleta: Use HUGECYBER for 30% everything plus free shipping over $50 (Plus 2% cash back through Ebates)

Banana Republic: Use HUGECYBER for 30% everything plus free shipping over $50 (Plus 2% cash back through Ebates)

Gap: Use HUGECYBER for 30% everything plus free shipping over $50 (Plus 7% cash back through Ebates)

Old Navy: Use HUGECYBER for 30% everything plus free shipping over $50 (Plus 7% cash back through Ebates)

* Athleta, Banana Republic, Gap and Old Navy all share a common checkout, so if you buy from either Gap or Old Navy plus one of the other two, make sure you go to the site from Ebates through the Gap or Old Navy links and you should get 7% back on your Athleta and BR stuff too.

The Tile Shop: 20% off mosaic and accent tile and in-floor heat (no code needed)

Z Gallerie: 10% off furniture (GIVE10), 15% off furniture sets (GIVE15), 20% off everything else (GIVE20)

Lands End Canvas: use DRUMSTICK (PIN 1121) 30% off everything + free shipping (plus 2% cash back through Ebates)

Cabela's: Use WGIFTS for free shipping on orders over $99 (plus 2% cash back)

Sephora: Assortment of samples with code MYSTERY; free shipping on a $25+ order with SHIPNOW (plus 8% cash back through Ebates)

Ballard Designs: 10% off + free standard shipping

Van Dyke's Restorers: Use CM20 for 20% off everything

Altrec: Use CYBERMONDAY11 for an additional 20% off select items

Lamps Plus: Use invitation code BLCKFRIDAY to save up to 50% (plus 10% cash back through Ebates)

Eddie Bauer: Use CYBER40 for 40% off everything + free shipping with $49+ (plus 6% cash back through Ebates)

Fair Indigo: Free shipping on everything, no coupon required.

West Elm: Use BEMERRY for free shipping on everything except furniture and rugs

Loft: Use SHOP50 for 50% off everything plus free shipping (plus 6% cash back through Ebates)

Crate & Barrel: Use SAVE15 for 15% off + free shipping (plus 6% cash back through Ebates)

World Market: 20% off plus free shipping (plus 8% cash back through Ebates)

Gardener's Supply: Free shipping (no code needed) (plus 9 % cash back through back)

Wisteria: Use ESAVE25 for 25% off everything

Layla Grayce: Use THANKS-GIFTING for 20% off everything

Guest posting today

2011-11-28T09:00:00.000-06:00

Hi everyone!

I'm more than a little excited to be guest posting on one of my favorite blogs today.

House of Turquoise is one of my daily reads and it serves as a daily source of inspiration for me. If you're not already reading it daily, you should be. And if you are a House of Turquoise reader visiting The Impatient Gardener for the first time, welcome! I blog about a little bit of gardening, a little bit of DIY and little bit of everything else. I hope you enjoy it and become a follower. And if you're so inclined you can also find me on Facebook and Twitter.

I'll be back in a bit with a listing of some of the best Cyber Monday deals around. Aren't you glad it's not another counter update?

Things that would have been good to know 3 weeks ago

2011-11-23T10:00:00.001-06:00

So help me God if I have to end up making a "countertops" label on this blog.

My e-mail to Waterlox (by the way, I underestimated, it has happened way more than twice and technically the countertops are doing OK, but I had the problem again with the desktop):

Dear sir or maam,

I hope you can help me figure out what is going on with an ongoing issue with a Waterlox project. The same problem has now happened twice.

I'm working on a butcher block-type counter (new). I used a wood conditioner, then stained it (General Finishes water-based stain and conditioner). After allowing the stain to dry for 24 hours, I applied a coat of Waterlox. I am using a natural bristle brush. I allowed the first coat to dry for 72 hours (didn't have a chance to get back to it before then). I very lightly sanded (1000 grit) a few areas that had some dust issues, cleaned off all the dust with a dust-free rag with mineral spirits, and applied a second coat of Waterlox original (low VOC). As soon as I was putting it on, it became clear that some areas were finishing quite differently from other. There is a large swatch (1 foot by 2 or more feet) plus a few other patches, where the finish is almost sandpaper-like. Like I said, this showed up while putting on the coat, not just when it dried.

This is the same thing that happened with my first attempt, but in that case I thought perhaps I had applied it wrong (I used a staining pad) and didn't allow it to dry enough in between coats (I allowed 24 hours). I sanded the counter down to bare wood and started over, but the same problem seems to have happened again.

What can be going on? More importantly, is there any way to salvage this? If I have to start from scratch again, I'd rather do it now than after I spend a lot of time and money applying more Waterlox. I just wish I knew what was going on so that I can make sure it doesn't happen again.

Thank you for your help.

Erin

Waterlox's reply:

Erin,

Thank you for using Waterlox and for writing to us today.

My guess would be that all the spots that you sanded lightly are the spots that have the film wrinkled. With the VOC compliant product, if you spot sand or sand any areas of the surface, you will need to wait a minimum of 12 hours to 24 hours afterward to let the oil under where you’ve sanded dry out / harden / cure. What happens when you “open up” the film is that it opens up and gets attacked by your next coat of finish.

You will want to scrape off the areas that had the affect and let the areas dry out for 24 – 48 hours, then re-coat.

Kellie Hawkins Schaffner
Vice President
Waterlox Coatings Corporation

Well, that explains what's been going on. But I have to say, I read a LOT about Waterlox and never once saw this mentioned before. Oh well, now I know.

The 2011 Garden Awards

2011-11-22T07:37:00.001-06:00

I spent part of the weekend officially putting the last of the garden to bed for the winter. The new or sensitive plants have been caged and covered with shredded leaves, some of the perennials have been cut down (the others will be cleaned up in spring) and the spring bulbs have all been planted. Since it's officially the end of the season, as well as the beginning of awards show season, I thought it would be a good time to give out a few garden awards for 2011.

Since Ricky Gervais was not available to host The Impatient Gardener awards, there will be no host. So let's just get to the awards.

Best performance by a newcomer

It was a great year for plants in the 2012 Proven Winners introductions that I had the opportunity to trial for the summer, so this category was a tight race. In the end it came down to sister plants Superbena Royale Peachy Keen and Superbena Royale Iced Cherry, both of which have officially turned me into a verbena lover. In the end the nod goes to the cherry red version of this plant only because the almost neon red color, which bloomed all season without fail, is unlike any I've seen before.

Best performance by a veteran

The Stargazer lilies were fantastic this summer. Why I never liked this plant before, I'll never know, but whatever my hang-up was, I'm officially over it.

Best out of the box

Superbells Cherry Star looked great from Day 1. The intensely colored flowers covered the plant for months. I did have to cut it back in late July or early August to refresh it a bit, but it came back within a couple weeks.

Best 'Leap' year

Acer japonicum 'Acontifolium' is starting to come into its own and it put on a great show this autumn as usual. There are so many wonderful trees out there that it would be hard to justify having two of any one kind, but this tree is charming enough that I could be tempted.

Most likely to be felt up

I couldn't resist throwing this one in. Not only is hydrangea 'Limelight' a great performer, but it doesn't even mind a little squeeze every once in a while.

Highest hopes

I didn't expect to fall in love with Gingko 'Gnome' but I am totally head over heels for this diminutive charmer. Unfortunately Gnome had a rough first year and I'm crossing my fingers that it got a chance to get established before the winter weather came around. I have caged it (to protect it from both wild critters as well as the ones I share my house with) and given it a good layer of shredded leaf mulch so hopefully it will appreciate the babying.

Best performance by a vegetable

I love 'Bright Light' Swiss chard not only for its taste, but also because it is beautiful. I like it enough that I think it would be worth growing as an ornamental. It gave me great leafy greens all season long and I can't get enough of the array of colorful stems. I love it cooked with a bit of shallots or garlic and a little chicken stock with a piece of grilled salmon on top. Best of all, it grows great from seed and seems to be relatively free of bugs interested in munching on its leaves.

Best overall

If I had done these awards last year I would have named papyrus 'King Tut' best newcomer, and this year the statuesque annual gets my top award. Topping out at about 6 feet tall in my yard, I not only grew King Tut in this large container by the front door for the second year in a row, I also planted a trio of them in the garden in front of the deck. They softened the edge of the deck and could be pulled out for the winter where a lot of snow is bound to pile up. Give this plant enough sun (the two I planted at the pool at the family cottage in part sun/part shade didn't do very well) and enough water and King Tut will impress like few other plants can.

What are your award winners from the gardening season?

Counters …. yada, yada, yada

2011-11-18T07:00:00.000-06:00

Yep, I yada, yada'd the counter topic. Frankly I've not provided an update because I'm SO bored with the whole project.

Here's the good news: things are going better (I think, but I'm a paranoid kind of girl so I'm not declaring victory yet) and I think I've identified the problem.

Lest this blog turn into "Wood Finishing for Morons, from a Moron," I'll keep it brief. Basically, I wasn't letting each coat dry long enough. Waterlox says to wait 24 hours between coats, and in most cases that would probably work just fine. But Waterlox's dry time is directly related to the flow of oxygen, and there isn't a whole lot of airflow in the basement. So the finish wasn't dry enough, and then I made the situation worse by sanding it (also not recommended by Waterlox; instructions are really interesting to read halfway through a project), which schmucked up the not-quite-dry finish and then I plopped more finish on top of that.

Anyway, I'm trying very hard to be a more patient person and just let the stuff dry before moving on and I hope it will work.

In the meantime, the incomplete state of the office is driving me more than a little mad (or maybe it's just the Waterlox fumes) and I'm hoping to wrap it up soon. I have the upper cabinet doors back on (although they need some touching up and I have to put the hardware on them) and it's an amazing change so it will be a good thing when I can get this all finished.

Anyway, thank you all for the encouraging comments. And I promise not to write about these stupid counters again until they are all finished.

How about some photos?

Ah … virgin counters. A chance to redeem myself.

I filled the seam with Timbermate wood filler.

But all was not well in counterland. Seems I sanded the wood filler seam more than the rest of the counters and this is what happened. I wiped off as much stain as I could, and went back with 120-grit over the whole thing. Ironic that I sanded TOO much.

Here's what they looked like after staining. This time around I used a mixture of mahogany and walnut stains (General Finishes brand) because I felt like they were too dark and a bit too red the first time around.

Right after applying the first coat of Waterlox:

Twenty-four hours later you can see that the Waterlox wasn't totally dry yet. The following day it was dry but some spots were shiny and others were dull. I just applied another coat instead of trying to overthink it again. You'll notice that the wood filler (as expected) didn't take the stain evenly. I'm OK with it. Last week I might not have been. This week I am. We're calling it rustic. Plus, I figure that's a good place to keep my dictionary.

You can't make this stuff up

2011-11-14T08:54:00.001-06:00

With a spare piece of window trim serving as a makeshift saw guy and a pair of clamps squeezed to within an inch of their lives, Mr. Much More Patient wielded the whirring circular saw. I stood by doing what every good carpentry assistant does: repeatedly hit the home button on my iPhone to light up the saw's path.

I have several observations to make about that:

Hand-me-down el cheapo Black & Decker circular saws may not be up to every job.
Circular saws that have been launched 20 feet in frustration may no longer have a blade that is 90 degrees to the guide. You may want to check that after throwing and before cutting again. Subsequent launches are not recommended.
Mobile phone home screens don't really provide that much light. Everyone should download a Flashlight application for their phone in case of an emergency. Like cutting countertops in a unlit parking lot.
Headlights provide very little useable light for carpentry purposes.
Mr. Much More Patient and I will probably not be getting a commendation from the Woodworkers' Safety Association anytime soon.

I hadn't intended to write about the counters for the office again so soon but as they say, you can't make this stuff up.

Here's where we left off on the counters on Friday (this post).

On Saturday, we picked up the counters to move them down to the office and as soon as I picked it up I saw the underside. The virgin underside. The underside that I could have sanded and stained and started from scratch on when everything went south on the finishing (regular reader Linda was way ahead of me on this one and asked about this after my last post). The prudent thing to do would have to been to cancel the plan for the day and start over on the other side. You can probably guess that's not at all what we did.

So then we set to installing them. I should preface this by saying that I cannot get my head around the concept of things being square. I mean I know you want them square, but when they aren't square through no fault of your own, I just cannot grasp how you make them that way. And you know what? I don't think I want to know.

I'm going to gloss over this next part because it's really too painful to relive in detail. We needed to joint two sections of countertop together. The walls in the office are WAY out of square. The cabinetry below the counters is way out of square. And Ikea's counters aren't really all that square either. We spent five hours fitting the counters together with a butt joint. The only good thing that came out of this is that I got to use the biscuit maker. It's not called that, but it's what I call the thing that makes the holes for the little biscuit things that you glue in joints and I get to call it that because I had a crappy weekend and calling it a biscuit maker makes me happy.

This was the process of gluing the joint together (the first time). The dictionary was weight to help level the top, but it might have been better served looking up words like "frustration" and "debacle."

The butt joint was ugly. The countertops, when in place, were even uglier. Well I thought they were anyway. Here's what it looked like and actually looking at the pictures it didn't look that bad.

I threw on one more coat of Waterlox, cracked the window, turned on the high powered fan and left.

Mr. Much More Patient wasn't happy with the joint. He was kicking himself that he hadn't thought of a scarf joint (cutting both pieces at an extreme angle that gives you a lot more area to glue and makes for a much more seamless joint). I wasn't happy with the finishing. But we slept on it, and decided to go down today to see if it was really so bad. The joint wasn't horrible. It could have been better, but it wasn't awful.

The finish was another story. My little fan trick served the purpose of blowing the finish across the counter. So one area had ripples of finish that was sticky, weird and, oh yeah, white. In other words. I screwed up. Bad.

Here's how the counters looked after Attempt No. 1. Half the cabinet doors are up as well. We didn't get around to putting up the other doors because we spent so much time monkeying around with the counter. Looking at it now, it really wasn't all that bad.

Onto the next plan (I lost count of what number/letter we were on by this point). We decided to gently pull it out (we hadn't screwed it in yet, thank goodness) and attempt to flip it over to start the finish over again. But of course our glued joint broke.

The good news is that we had a large piece of spare countertop left over (and we obviously cursed ourselves by bringing it with "just in case"). And Mr. Much More Patient was happy to have a shot at doing his scarf joint.

The circular saw had different ideas. By the way, that's not really the right tool to be making that kind of cut. I have about a foot of countertop, cut in a quarter-inch increments, to prove it. (Somewhere in there is when Mr. Much More Patient did something very out of character and tossed the saw halfway across the lawn behind the office.)

Window trim as a guide and a cell phone as a flashlight, the saw, having survived a 20-foot launch, makes the final cut. Hopefully for a very long time.

Right around the time the sun set is when we scrapped the scarf joint and went back to the butt joint.

And in record time we cracked off three cuts (carefully measured and squared about 10 times over before saw went to wood), sanded the tops and used the biscuit maker on each end. In the parking lot. In the pitch black. With the headlights of the car and my phone providing the light. Bob Vila my butt. Let's see him do that in the dark.

So we're back to square one again. But it's a good square one. It's probably the square one we should have started with from the beginning. The butt joint isn't great. In fact, it's worse than the first one because the blade wasn't at a perfect 90 degrees for the cut so the bottom of the joint is tight but there's a healthy gap on the top (i.e. the important side). But since the counters are unfinished I will be able to use wood filler to mask the seam. And I get another crack at finishing. And having learned two serious lessons about the Waterlox finish, I stand a better chance at getting it right this time.

We can only hope.

I didn't have an ounce of energy or brain power left to take a photo of what the counters look like now, so I'll post another picture from work today. Check back later for an update.

One step forward, two steps back

2011-11-11T12:02:00.001-06:00

In the interest of "keeping it real" I'm going to share the progress of working on the countertops for the office project well before I was planning to. I was hoping to go through this whole project and be able to show you the photo of the gorgeous countertops installed, and hopefully I will get there eventually but there's been a bit of a hitch in the plan.

Here's how they started. These are the Lagan countertops from Ikea which we cut down to size (we'll have to join the two pieces together so there will be a seam when they are installed). This is also your first look at my lair. Can you believe what a disaster the basement is? I need to stop doing projects just so I can clean the place up. Oh and the blue thing in the back (conveniently serving as a horizontal surface on which to set anything and everything) is an iceboat (you may notice it is the same color as the blue door was originally ... leftover paint). The iceboat is sitting on a table saw. Handy, huh?

After I lightly sanded them to remove the factory-applied finish, I applied a wood conditioner and then followed that up with mahogany stain. Here's what they looked like after I stained the smaller section.

Things were going pretty at this point. The stain was a bit darker than I wanted, but I knew that the Waterlox I was applying next would lighten it up a little.

The next night I applied the first of four coats of Waterlox. From what I read online, it sounded like a lambswool applicator was the way to go. So I bought a cheap one from the hardware store and cut it into sections (it was meant for applying finish to a floor so it was quite large) and I applied coat No. 1 of Waterlox after getting the surface as dust free as possible (I sanded VERY lightly with a 3m sanding pad with 220 grit after each step up to this point just to knock down the raised grain). And this is where the wheels feel off the bus (just like those wheels in the background of the picture).

When I was done doing all three pieces (I'm also working on a desktop at the same time), I took the shop light and looked at the surface to make sure I hadn't missed any spots and what I saw was horrifying. Bumps all over the place. Bumps caused by lint from the el-cheap fake lambswool applicator which shed all over my counters. Looking back what I probably should have done at that point was remove as much of the Waterlox as I could with mineral spirits. Instead, I opted to let it dry, thinking I could just lightly sand the fuzz out. Now, I had read the Waterlox instructions carefully and it specifically said not to do any sanding of a stained surface with Waterlox on it, but I thought, "Oh, a little light sanding won't matter."

Famous last words.

As soon as I started sanding with 220 grit, the finish started coming up, even though I hadn't sanded all the way through the Waterlox. It's almost as though the Waterlox absorbs some of the stain or something. Anyway, I ended up with a very blotchy mess. So I made a tough call and decided to start over. Almost.

So last night, I sanded it down. Wanna know what failure looks like? Something like this:

On a promising note, I think I figured out how you make that sort of worn Belgian finish that is so popular. Anyway, I restained last night and I'll start the Waterlox process over again tonight. It puts me behind schedule, but since I bought the low VOC Waterlox, I think I'll be able to do a couple coats after it's installed in the office.

Let's hope it's smooth finishing from here on out.

Leafy bits

2011-11-08T15:35:00.000-06:00

I'm working on so many projects right now that sometimes I can't remember which one is which, but I took a bit of time off this weekend to help Mr. Much More Patient with some leaf removal. It's the least I can do seeing as how I have a very specific way in which I like the leaves to be handled and he's nice enough to appease me.

It's taken me awhile to come around to it, but I'm now firmly in the camp of those have an unnatural love of leave mold. And you know, it only makes sense. Anyone who has ever dug into the dirt on the forest floor knows that it is rich, black, loamy goodness and that's partly because there are no anal suburbanites in there raking (check that, blowing) all of the leaves out. And all those leaves break down into really good stuff.

Of course whole leaves are no good on our lawns and gardens because they tend to form a mat that chokes out anything living below it. Good for forests (fights weeds), bad for gardens (kills your precious plants/grass).

Leaf mold, which is just decomposed leaves, is great for all kinds of things, not the least of which is a natural, good-for-the-soil mulch. Like everything, leaves break down much quicker if they are smaller. Which is exactly why my husband spent the better part of the weekend walking back and forth on our lawn.

I stuck my hand in the wheelbarrow of leaf bits to show you the rough size we chop them up to. This pile of brown bits will turn into a lovely soil amendment or mulch with time.

The system we have figured out is that you take the mulching mower we have (a walk-behind model) and chop up the leaves once and let them lay on the ground. Then you engage the bagging feature and mow over them one more time, which cuts them up nice and small and bags them for you. With a lot of leaves on the ground, I bet he only gets about 75 feet before the bag is full, so my job is to continually dump the wheelbarrow as it fills with leaves dumped from the mower bag.

Lots of the leaf pieces go in the compost bin, but even with the relatively small amount we added I'm sure our brown-to-green ratio is heavy on the browns. I also make a pile next to the compost bin. I can add these to the compost in spring or summer when I have a lot of greens or, more likely, I can use them as mulch on the garden beds next spring or summer. They won't be completely decomposed by then, but they don't tend to tie up the nitrogen in your soil as much as some wood mulches can. And if all that doesn't convince you, let me tell you that since my mom starting mulching with chopped up leaves about four years ago her mostly clay soil has become pretty amazing.

So that's one thing I learned from my mom. Here's another:

For the past several years I've been heeling in all the plants I didn't get around to planting for whatever reason, caging them with chicken wire to protect them from critters and then filling the wire up with chopped leaves for some additional protection from the elements. Usually I do this in an out-of-the-way corner of the garden or on the edge of the woods. This year my mom asked why I didn't do it in the raised veggie garden. After all, it's already caged in and therefore protected from critters, it's much easier to dig into because the dirt is nice and soft, and I unearth my plants well before it's veggie planting time. Chalk one up for mom. Not sure why I didn't think of that.

Can you see the plants sticking up out of the leaves? They are all snug in their (veggie) bed for the winter. I also filled up the auxiliary raised bed in the background with leaf bits because that dirt needed some help and I figured they can break down just as well in there for the winter.

Anyway, the handful of plants I had sitting around (maybe eight or so), got plunked in the dirt in the veggie garden and I covered those too with a healthy amount of chopped up leaves. Next spring I'll just work the leaves into the soil. Win. Win.

House tour: Guest bedroom and hallway

2011-11-03T08:21:00.001-05:00

We're finally at the end of this rather prolonged house tour. `There are a couple rooms not worth sharing at this point, but maybe in the future if they get a little sprucing up I'll share them with you.

You've already seen the new bathroom, the kitchen, the living room and the master bedroom. Today we'll finish up the upstairs and show the hallway and the guest bedroom. Although the hallway got a bit smaller to allow for room for the bathroom on one end and the master bedroom closet on the other, it was important to us to preserve the character of it. We had several pieces of paneling custom made to match the existing panel so we could fill in the areas that were taller due to raising the roof.

It is open to the living room which helps the whole house feel bigger as well as allows the light streaming through all the new windows on the east wall of the bedrooms into the living room.

Here's what it looks like now (looking at the bathroom).

And here's what it looked like before:

And the new view of other end of the hallway:

The gallery wall probably deserves a post of its own because in typical form, I made it far more complicated than necessary. But for now here is a close-up that shows some of the different blue colors I used to paint the frames.

From here we move into the guest bedroom, which is admittedly a bit sparse these days. I can't seem to get the furniture placement right in this room, so for now I've sort of plunk the bed under the windows. At a minimum, it needs a headboard (do I see a DIY project in my future?) and some art to cover the large expanses of gray walls, but it needs more than that too. But, I'll get there when I get there.

Many of the features are the same from the master bedroom. Same floors and plank wood ceiling. The nightstand and matching dresser (not shown) were custom made for my the girls' room in my grandparents' house. Four girls, two beds. It was a good thing they had cool furniture.

Anyway, onto the details. Let me know if I miss anything that you have questions about.

Paint

Trim, ceilings, staircase: Benjamin Moore Mascarpone
Hallway paneling: Benjamin Moore Gray Huskie (and yes, it is spelled like that, but if you try to buy it as Gray Husky, they won't find it)
Guest bedroom walls: Benjamin Moore Stonington Gray

Floors

Hallway: Original red oak floors (bleached)
Guest bedroom: Teragren bamboo Synergy Porfolio Brown Sugar

Bedding: Pottery Barn

Throw pillow: Target (but you knew that because everyone has that pillow, right?)

Lighting

Guest bedroom: Lamp here; fan existing, fan light kit: Lamps Plus
Gallery wall: Barn Light Electric

The short and the long of a trip to Ikea

2011-11-01T16:03:00.001-05:00

Fair warning: After writing this post I realized it has what we call a "niche" audience. So for those of you who don't give a rip about shopping, or Ikea or what I did this weekend, allow me to summarize. We went to Ikea. It was a long drive. My husband got real cranky. I got what I needed but didn't get to do any of that fun stuff women call "browsing," and I got a lot stuff to do more projects with.

If you follow the Facebook page, you knew that on Sunday I borrowed the company minivan (back seats permanently removed), loaded up the iPhone with music, grabbed Mr. Much More Patient and headed down to the Ikea in Schaumberg, Illinois. It's only the second time I've been to Ikea and the first time was pretty much a disaster, so I was hoping for a better result this time around.

I did a little bit of homework this time around, asking Ikea-savvy friends for tips and printing out my shopping list online prior to leaving (and I definitely checked to make sure the main items I wanted were in stock). Obviously it wasn't optimal to go on a weekend, but you have to go when you can.

It was about a two-hour drive, although we certainly made good time on the way down with Mr. Leadfoot (previously known as Mr. Much More Patient) at the helm. In fact we owe a debt of gratitude to the driver of this car, who paved the way at speeds in excess of 80 mph for a good portion of the drive.

We actually happened upon a pretty good parking spot, considering that we arrived at 11:45 a.m. on a Sunday morning. That was key because a bit part of my plan was multiple trips to the car.

The two big items I needed were two sections of Lagan beech countertop for the back counter in the office and a Vika Byske table top for the desk. We made our way straight to the ground level warehouse/check-out area and picked up the items after a lengthy discussion of what the inventor of a cart with four wheels that all rotate (meaning that the odds of taking an unsuspecting shopper out with a 96-inch long piece of countertop was not just possible, but probable) was thinking. We had to pick up the countertops in the large furniture area so that was an additional wait but they played HGTV in the waiting area so who cares.

Then we loaded those up in the van and came back inside for the rest of the items on the list, which were mostly cabinet pulls and a handful of accessories. I have to say, with all the renovations we've done in our house, I've become something of an expert at cabinet hardware shopping and the prices at Ikea are really pretty amazing and the quality is far beyond what I was expecting.

Then we ate lunch. I think this is where things started to really go downhill. The cafeteria area was basically crippled with a lot of people walking around not really knowing where to go (like we were) and not knowing what they wanted to eat. I was shocked at how many different languages I heard being spoken. It's a pretty amazing thing that Ikea is probably the most multicultural place I've been in the U.S. other than the international terminal at O'Hare.

Sometime in between the first and last meatball on the plate it became clear that I was running on borrowed husband time and I had better made quick work of getting whatever else I needed. We were whipping through the floors so quickly that the only thing I had time to grab was a couple bundles of hangers. At one point, as we were making our way through the maze that you must traverse in order to find a way out of the store, we passed a mother telling her children, "OK, kids, we're almost finished here." And Mr. Not Very Patient Anymore (previously known as Mr. Leadfoot and Mr. Much More Patient) turned to the woman and her kids and deadpanned, "There is no 'almost finished.' We're all trapped." I figured it was time to hightail it out of there before some Swedish security guard intervened.

Back in line.

Look how much room we have left. I could have bought so much more!

Anyway, we made our way through the checkout one more time and headed back to the car for a rather exciting drive home, thanks to Mr. Get Me the Heck Out of Here. This week we'll get the counters fit to size and hopefully I can start the staining process soon. I hope to end up with something that looks like this.

Oh, and on the way home we stopped here. Mr. Totally as Impatient as I Am insisted.

Happy Halloween

2011-10-31T14:41:00.000-05:00

I'm not a huge Halloween fanatic. In fact this year I didn't even buy a gourd or two to stick on the front porch, much less carve a pumpkin or do any other fall-themed decorating. And since I don't have kids, I don't do any other kind of spooky decorating.

But if I were to get on the Halloween bandwagon, this kind of display is exactly what I'd want.

Redbor kale and white pumpkin container design and photograph by Deborah Silver

That stunning container is by my favorite container designer, Deborah Silver. The kale is redbor kale which is absolutely stunning in its own right (and definitely on my "must find" list for next year), but the combination of it with the white pumpkins is, well, absolutely perfect.

Check out Deborah's other ideas on fall color here.

I hope you're all enjoying your Halloween. What kind of outdoor decorating did you do for the holiday?

Office update

2011-10-27T14:46:00.000-05:00

I've been spending the past couple of weekends plugging away at the office project and I thought it was time to offer a bit of an update. Progress has been frustratingly slow because everything has to be cleaned up and able to be worked in during the day. So I found myself retaping frequently and spending much more time cleaning up after each workday or weekend.

So far I've finished painting the window and trim Benjamin Moore Cloud White. I've also finished painting the frames on the top cabinets. I'm splitting the cabinet project into phases because I only have enough room in my basement to be painting one set of doors/drawers at a time. So right now I have all the doors for the top row of cabinets at home in various phases of painting (it is taking forever to finish them because of the drying time for the primer and paint and I don't want to flip them over until they are dry because I don't want to take the chance of messing up the paint job). I've also painted the back wall BM Hudson Bay, which will eventually cover all the walls. I am waiting to paint the other walls until I've painted the lower cabinets and removed the existing counter.

White window trim!

The window before

It's a good thing I sit with my back to this disaster!

I did just the back wall because it was quite the process to move those file cabinets and I only wanted to move them once, so I pounded out the trim and the wall this weekend (painted wet edge to wet edge of two contrasting colors was quite the trick and I don't recommend it) so I could move the file cabinets back Monday morning. Of course, I've since found out that we didn't need the files in three of the cabinets and they've been shredded, which means I can move two of the file cabinets out of the office for good and I'll have one empty one for future use.

Here's the color on the back wall. It actually looks remarkably like the computer design our graphic artist did to get a sneak peak of what it might look like.

So here's the worklist for the office:

~~Paint window~~
~~Paint trim~~
~~Paint upper cabinet frames~~
Paint upper cabinet doors (in process)
Paint lower cabinet frames and doors/drawers
~~Disconnect sink~~
Remove counter
Paint the rest of the walls
Make fabric covered bulletin board "backsplash"
Paint desk base
Replace counter and desk top
Gussy up the file cabinets
Replace window blinds (this is new to the list; I've decided I need to get something that fits inside the window)
Buy area rug

Lots to do and hopefully there will be a trip to Ikea in the plans for this weekend to pick up the counter and table top.

House tour: Master bedroom

2011-10-26T08:27:00.001-05:00

We'll finish up the rest of the house tour this week (it's a small house and I'm probably going to cheat and not show you the ugly rooms) now that I found the battery charger for the camera (whoops). So far we've toured the new upstairs bathroom, the kitchen and the living room.

Today we move up to the master bedroom, which is not the room that was the master bedroom when we bought the house. There is actually a room downstairs that was a bedroom when we bought the house and we preferred to have our bedroom upstairs so we took the south-facing bedroom.

As you can see, the before was, um, "modest." The ceiling was low in the middle of the room and really low on the east side. I actually took that side of the bed because Mr. Much More Patient couldn't get over there without hitting his head on the ceiling. There is no light fixture on the light because everyone would have hit their head on it. As it was the mister almost got banged in the head with a fan blade more than once.

You'll also notice that the dreaded wall texture showed up in this room too. The only real tragedy of the upstairs renovation is that the bedroom floors couldn't be saved. They were original to the house and we were told they were "just Douglas fir" but when we had all the floors refinished shortly after we bought the house, we told them to just do their best with the bedroom floors and they ended up being absolutely gorgeous. I actually don't think our contractor really tried to save the floors and it still sort of bugs me, but what's done is done.

This is what it looked like after one day of demo. The old chimney (make of Cream City brick, which is a material unique to the Milwaukee/southeastern Wisconsin area) had been sandwiched in the walls and was removed brick by brick. We also found out that the closets in both bedrooms had been cedar lined but someone had drywalled in the cedar. Don't you wish you could ask previous homeowners what they were thinking sometimes?

And here's how it looks today.

By putting in a small (5x5-foot) walk-in closet at the end of what had been the hall, we got rid of the small closets between the two bedrooms and we put that extra floor space into the master, which added a couple of feet to the room. The entire east side of the room is now windows, which not only floods the room with light that spills into the living room downstairs, but also gives us a bit of a view of the lake beyond our neighbors' houses when the leaves are off the trees. I designed the built-ins and we had the same great craftsman who built the banquette in the kitchen make them. He and his teenage son spent an entire day installing them and then I finished them myself. They provide a huge amount of storage and hide a little television as well.

I'm still using the old headboard, which I don't think particularly works anymore but it's one of those things that was one of my first big "grown-up" purchases and it's tough to get rid of those. We have no art hanging in here yet, and I think I need a couple of mirrors to flank the bed. You'll notice that the nightstands don't match, which is a look I prefer although ours REALLY don't match. Still, I don't mind the look. I bet you can tell which side is mine and which is Mr. Much More Patient's.

The wood-plank ceilings are one of my favorite features in the room. What you can't see is that there's a bit of paint problem with them. The ceilings and the doors are the only things we paid a professional painter to do for us (upstairs) and I made sure that the knots in the wood were spot-primed with BIN shellac-based primer (a must for sealing knots). And I was told they were. Well guess what? Every knot had bled through and the ceiling looks like Swiss cheese now. I need to call the painter to see how we'll be dealing with this, but it's a drag. If you do this, make sure you spot-prime the knots!

Here's the info on the room:

Floors: Teragren Bambo Portfolio Brown Sugar (self-installed)
Paint: Walls: Benjamin Moore Revere Pewter, trim, ceiling and built-in: BM Mascarpone
Duvet cover: Rough Linen
Nightstands: Pottery Barn (white) and World Market (wood)
Lighting: Lamps Plus

Things left to do in this room:

Art! I must get something on these walls. It's driving me mad. I just need to find or create the right thing.
Mirrors. I think mirrors would be good behind the nightstands.
Banquette cushion (I borrowed pillows from the kitchen banquette for the photos). I have the fabric, I just need to get my mom to help me make it.

Savoring the waning fall color

2011-10-20T07:59:00.001-05:00

It's been a wild and windy autumn here and as I write this we're on Day 2 of a northeaster cranking down Lake Michigan and showing all signs of blowing whatever color might be left on the trees onto the ground. So I thought it would be a good time to just take a quick look at some fall color (from shots I took last weekend). We have a couple more stops to make on the house tour but we'll get to that next week.

The cool temperatures are bring out the best in the ornamental kale.

Techically, Heuchera 'Pear Crisp' is this color all year, but it's a lovely shot of lime green in an increasingly browning garden and landscape.

The Oso Easy roses are still blooming and, even better, their foliage is looking great. Shabby looking foliage is my biggest rose pet peeve.

They are optimistic little plants. I'm all in favor of any plant that wants to keep pretending it's summer.

Japanese Maple 'Acontifolium' is getting a little rangy in its third year here, but it's trying its hardest to do a little showing off before it drops more leaves.

Still, it's nothing compared to what it looked like in 2009, which was one of the best years for fall color in recent history. I have great photos from that year, this one taken on October 24, 2009.

Great ideas from unlikely places

2011-10-19T11:40:00.003-05:00

Source: rareandbeautifultreasures.com via Erin on Pinterest

When we were working on the renovation for the house, I spent inordinate amounts of time on Houzz.com. I would save any picture that I liked for any reason and then go back through all of them and see what they had in common. It was a great way to figure out what I really liked so that I could draw inspiration from it for our renovation.

But the problem with Houzz, is that it only deals with pictures of living spaces. What the world needed was Houzz for everything. Enter Pinterest.

I know you've heard of Pinterest, and if you haven't you absolutely must check it out right now. Don't worry, it's not another social networking thing that is going to suck every last bit of free time from you and make you feel guilty when you can't get to it. It's just incredibly inspiring.

Every day I find things that inspire me on Pinterest and with one click I save them (aka pinning). And sometimes I find great things that I'd love to share with you. But instead of blogging every time I become obsessed with a really cool chicken coop, amazing bouquet of flowers or the coolest kitchen I've ever seen, I've been putting links to these pictures up on The Impatient Gardener Facebook page. So if you're a Facebook kind of person and you don't already "like" the page, swing over there so you can see what I'm loving right now. Of course you can also follow my pins on Pinterest. I'll make sure to follow you back because I love seeing what other people love.

The Language of Flowers

2011-10-18T12:14:00.001-05:00

It's funny how just a couple weeks ago when I shared what I've been listening to while I paint, sand, weed and drive, I mentioned that it would probably be my first and last post on books. And here we are again.

But I had to share this book that I just listened to. It's another one that goes in the category of books I wish I would have read instead of listened to, and I probably will read it in a few months (or at least when it comes out in soft cover).

It's called The Language of Flowers by Vanessa Diffenbaugh. It's a lovely story about an orphan emancipated into adulthood and struggling to find her way in the world. The only thing she really cares about are flowers, and even more so, the meanings of flowers, a gift from the one caretaker she had in her entire childhood who actually cared about her. The book takes place both in the present tense and in the past, when she lived with her foster mother Elizabeth, who taught her all about the Victorian meaning of each flower.

The story is lovely, but it's especially interesting for gardeners, who may never look at a hydrangea again. I'll let you look it up for yourself in this flower dictionary on the book's website, but let's just say, if you care about such things it may not be the best choice for a bridal bouquet.

I found myself quite taken with the protagonist Victoria, and I love the idea of each bouquet of flowers sending a message to its recipient.

And now I'm off to study up on what flowers mean. I think today I could use a bouquet of ginger, sage and lupines. I think probably the worst bouquet a girl could get would be composed of yellow roses and tansies.

House tour: Living room

2011-10-18T07:14:00.000-05:00

After the bathroom and the kitchen, this is a somewhat unexciting stop in the house tour: the living room. This is pretty much our only living area in the house and I would say this is the room we spend most of our time in. Almost every blog post I've written has been composed on that red couch.

Although the living room was ripped apart during the renovation, very little changed aesthetically speaking. This was the room that I thought we were going to live in during most of the renovation, and then we found out that the roof on this half of the house was sagging and would have to be shored up at some point. Since we weren't planning on ripping up the house again anytime soon, we opted to take care of while everything was ripped up.

You might recall that the living room walls and ceiling were covered in the oddest heavily textured swoopy stuff that was a dust magnet and drove me nuts. When the construction guys started taking down the ceiling they discovered that it was actually joint compound. We think that a previous owner just bought buckets of the stuff and stuck it on for a plaster look. The compound was on so thickly that they couldn't cut pieces much bigger than 3-by-2 feet because they were so heavy. Anyway, once the framework was exposed, they jacked up the 2x6 joists (which apparently is what they used in 1938) and sistered them with 2x8s (it's OK to be impressed by my vast knowledge of construction terms). Then we had them do about 4 inches of spray foam insulation and fill the rest in with rolled insulation, as we did in the rest of the house.

Here's a view from upstairs looking into the living room the day that the drywall texture was applied (it's still wet so that's why it looks all wonky in the picture). The wainscoting on the lower level is original, and in we had them replace the drywall to get rid of the horrible texture on the walls as well. This picture shows where they removed the railing during the construction and I have to say, it was really freaky to not have that there.

And here it is now.

Here's a view looking the other direction so you can get a feel for the whole room. You can see the horrific wall texture (which I'm lucky enough to experience every day in the three rooms in the house that remain untouched) in this picture taken before the renovation.

You can also see the very first thing we changed in the house in these pictures: the sconces that flank the fireplace. When we bought the house they were some kind of shiny gold, beveled glass 1980s wonder and I couldn't stand them. We bought those copper outdoor lights from Smith and Hawken way before anyone (in Wisconsin at least) heard of putting outdoor lights inside. The Calder-esque mobile that is hanging from the beam in both photos came with the house (one of many, many things left behind by the previous owner during a chaotic moving day). Even though it doesn't have a lot in common with the room, I love it. And, I fit under it. Mr. Much More Patient does not.

As much as I once loved the color scheme in here, I don't much anymore. I'd love to change it all over to a navy, off white, pop of color thing, but I'll just add that to the list. I've given some thought to having the beams (which we found out really are structural) faux painted to be a different color (they do have a bit of a pink cast to them sometimes), but they don't bother me that much and I bet that would be pretty expensive.

I sort of wimped out in choosing colors in this room, but I felt like the ceiling and walls should be the same color since they sort of flow into each other, and I knew I wanted something I wouldn't easily get sick of because with the super tall ceilings, this is definitely a professional paint job. Plus, I knew at some point I wanted to change from the red/mustard color scheme and I didn't want to limit myself with the existing wall colors.

There's not a lot to tell about this room, but here are the paint colors:

Walls, ceiling, trim: Benjamin Moore Mascarpone
Wainscotting, wall paneling: Benjamin Moore Gray Husky

House tour: The Kitchen

2011-10-13T07:28:00.000-05:00

From a room that didn't even exist a year ago, our tour moves to the kitchen, which has had some modifications made over the years but is largely the same as it was when we bought the house.

The cabinets, countertops (laminate, but not bad looking, and very easy to keep clean) and window treatments haven't changed. We did replace the white vinyl kitchen floor with porcelain tile, bought new appliances, moved the laundry out of what should have been a pantry and made it back into a pantry (next to the dividing wall between the eating and cooking areas, shown just in the bottom left corner of the second photo). I also painted the walls and the paneled ceiling, which was sort of pickled pink.

The eating area has changed quite a bit. We took it from a round table that seated four people and stuck out into the walkway from the back door (the most frequently used entrance) to a banquette that can seat seven or more. We still badly need a piece of art on that wall, but I'm picky about art and haven't found the right thing for that spot.

Paint

Walls: Benjamin Moore Revere Pewter
Trim, ceilings, banquette, table: Benjamin Moore Mascarpone AF-20
Cabinets: Unknown color badly in need of painting, but it's close to Benjamin Moore White Dove

Sources

Banquette: Custom made (if you are local, contact me for information)
Banquette fabrics: www.fabric.com, www.joann.com
Entry rug: Dash & Albert indoor/outdoor (highly recommended, washes up bright white in the washer)
Table: Restoration Hardware Outlet
Chairs: Existing
Eating area lights: Velocity Art & Design
Butcher block light: Pottery Barn (several years ago, I don't know if they still carry it)
Sink light: Barn Light Electric

Here's a roundup of some of the projects we've done in the kitchen:

The future of the kitchen:

I'm not finished in here yet. At the very least the cabinets need a coat of paint, but I'm not satisfied to stop there. Once we've recovered a bit financially from the renovation, we'll do some sprucing up in here. What we do will be largely driven by budget, but ideally, I'd like to continue the cabinets all the way up to the ceiling by adding another row of cabinets on top of the existing cabinets sort of like this:

via Pinterest

There is nothing wrong with our cabinet boxes, so I'd keep those, but if the budget allowed, I'd have them refaced, skipping the arches that are seen on the top cabinets. I'd also like to turn some of the lower cabinets into drawers if possible. And then, of course, I'd like new counters, but every day I go back and forth on what those might look like. I'm pretty sure I'd pick a quartz though, as I'm thrilled with how our bathroom counter has performed and as beautiful as marble is, I'm not a person who would be satisfied with a counter that gets "a patina." And last but not least, I'd add in a backsplash, probably some variation on classic subway tile like this elongated tile:

via granitegurus.com

House tour: The bathroom

2011-10-11T08:00:00.000-05:00

I know I've show some (OK, a lot) of photos of the renovation here, but I thought I'd do a bit of a house tour now that I have some good photos of the rooms thanks to getting the photos from the article that was done on the house (a wide-angle lens is a beautiful thing).

And there is no better place to start than my favorite room that came out of the renovation: the upstairs bathroom. Since we were a one-bathroom household before this (and that bathroom leaves something to be desired in the space and decor department), it was a real treat to be able to make room for a second bathroom, and, as I've mentioned before, any splurging that happened in the renovation, happened in this room.

Here's what the space that became the bathroom (thanks to raising the roof and adding a small shed dormer) looked like before. Take special note of the absolute hideous wall texture. The peak of that mini dormer ceiling was 5 feet 3 inches.

And here's what it looks like now.

Paint:

Walls: Benjamin Moore Gray Mist
Ceiling: Benjamin Moore Healing Aloe
Trim: Benjamin Moore Cloud White

Fixtures (All Kohler unless otherwise noted):

Sink: Archer undermount
Vanity faucet: Margaux
Shower valve trim: Purist
Showerhead: Flipside 02 (LOVE this thing!)
Toilet: Toto Carolina II
Towel warmer: Runtal Neptune

Other:

Countertops: Hanstone Ruscello Aspen
Vanity/cabinet: custom, made of beech veneer
Teak shower floor (removable) and teak niche shelf
Mirror: Pottery Barn Kensington pivot mirror
Bath fan/light: Panasonic Whisper
Vanity lights: Sonneman 1-Light pendant
Door: Salvaged from my grandmother's house

Sources

www.faucetdirect.com (all Kohler fixtures)
www.houseofantiquehardware.com (door hardware)
www.grabbarspecialists.com (towel warmer)
www.lumens.com (pendants)
www.bathroomfanexperts.com (fan)
www.blindschalet.com (blinds)
www.ebates.com (make sure you sign up at ebates if you're an online shopper. I got hundreds of dollars back by shopping through them whenever possible.)

Let me know if I missed anything or you have any other questions.

Wide angle photos by Sam Arendt/Ozaukee Press

Birthday memories

2011-10-10T07:00:00.000-05:00

I'm showing you this not to show off my unbelievable cute and huggable dog, Hudson, (which he is, of course) but because I think this is a great birthday thing to do for both critters and kids. I'm totally embarrassed to admit that we only did this with our older dog. I don't know why poor Rita got left out, but I suspect it's the same reason why there are precious few pictures of me between the ages of 1 and 8 and 80 billion of my older brother.

Hudson turned 8 at the end of September and we were thrilled to make a big deal about it. The poor guy has been through his share of orthopedic issues and more than vet told us we'd never see this age with him. Newfoundlands are generally pretty short-lived as far as dogs go to begin with, and all of his health issues didn't help. But I'm happy to report that the big guy is doing great and running up and down the beach every time we go.

As a little aside, it's sort of interesting to get a peek at the plantings I've done on the front steps over the years as well.

Baby

Age 1

Age 2

Age 3

Age 4

Age 5

Age 6

Age 7

Age 8

Things to know before you reno: Part 2

2011-10-04T14:00:00.000-05:00

Honey, does it seem drafty in here to you?

This is the second part of a list on what you need to know before you renovate. If you haven't read part Part 1, check it out here. And now, here's the rest.

6. Have a friend who won't get sick of talking to you about your reno.

You need to have a person to run ideas by. Ideally this person will share your design style or at least understand and respect your designs. They need to be honest, because sometimes you really need someone to tell you that something is REALLY ugly, and you can't have someone mincing words. This person should not be your spouse (whose opinion also counts but in a different way). It should also, under no circumstances, be your mother.

7. Spend your money on the stuff you can't see.

I know this is one of those things you hear all the time, but it's true. And that's simply because as much as you'd hate to, you can always go back and change out an ugly light fixture in a few years when your budget had recovered a little, but you can't rip back into your walls and put in more insulation. We had to fix some structural issues on the side of the house we weren't planning on touching, but we did it at the same time because we couldn't fathom coming back in 10 years and ripping our house up again. We also took the opportunity to thoroughly insulate everything with a layer of spray foam insulation and then the regular rolled insulation. It's not a fun thing to spend money on but it's worth it.

8. Get what you want.

I guess this more a matter of what kind of person you are, but it works for me. I'm one of those people who would rather save up for a longer time and get what I really want rather than spend less but get something I don't like as much. For most people a renovation is a big deal and it was for us. I don't intend to do many (any, actually) more of these, so this was my one chance to get some of these things right. So that's why we spent a lot of time figuring out our priorities and deciding which things were really important to us and which things we could live without. For us, the bathroom was a priority, so we sort of went hog wild in there. We did manage costs by getting an inexpensive field tile and then spending more on the accent tile rather than using accent tile everywhere, but, in general, we pretty much got what we really wanted in the bathroom. That meant we had to cut costs elsewhere and one of those places was the bedroom floors. We wanted a gorgeous nailed-in hardwood floor but the cost plus installation was more than we were comfortable with. So we went with floors we could install ourselves to save money. We still love them, although I would have liked other floors better, but it's not a decision I regret. I'm certain if we had cheaped out on some of things we chose for the bathroom, I would regret it every morning.

9. Be a team.

If you are undergoing a renovation with a partner or spouse, remember to stay on the same side. There's no doubt it can be horrible and frustrating at times and you will both be at your breaking point because all you want to do is get dressed in the morning, have a cup of coffee and watch a little TV, but you can't find your clothes because you're living out of laundry baskets in the basement, the coffeemaker is covered in a quarter-inch layer of dust and you can't even find the television. These are the times when you can't lash out at each other. You have to share the frustration. One person gets to be frustrated and crabby at a time. The other one has to normal and sane, and remind the other that it will be over soon and it will be so worth it. You can switch spots later.

10. Consider being your own general contractor.

OK, I know that sounds really scary, and I certainly wouldn't recommend it for a new build, but honestly I think it's very doable for a lot of people. We chose a lot of our own subcontractors for various reasons, either because we wanted to give a specific company our business, or we had a friend who could do it better, etc. And every time we went with our own guy, they became our responsibility. Also, one of us was at the house almost every day, even if it was just stopping in for lunch. And if we didn't, invariably something was done incorrectly, or we were getting a call asking how we wanted something to look. And even with the subcontractors that were hired by our general contractor, we were often expected to communicate directly with them to ease the process. With the exception of the complicated structural issues in the beginning, I think we could have handled the general contracting just fine.

11. The construction guys will see your underwear.

Yep. At some point, no matter how much you try to keep your unmentionables out of public view, random construction guys will see your undies. What's worse is that if the renovation drags on long enough, you won't care anymore. And what's even worse is that if it drags on even longer, you won't even care when they see your dirty undies in the laundry pile in the basement (which sometimes looks a lot like the clean clothes pile since they are all being kept within a foot of each other). Hey I didn't tell you it would be pretty.

Things to know before you reno: Part 1

2011-10-04T07:00:00.000-05:00

Resident supervisors Rita and Hudson posed for a photograph for the newspaper photo shoot a couple weeks ago.I'm just realizing now that somebody should have washed Rita's feet first.

In continuing to revisit the renovation roughly a year after it got started, I thought I'd put together a list of things you should know if you are considering a renovation of your own. This list got a little longer than I anticipated, so I'm breaking it in to two posts.

1. Even though you've heard that every renovation goes over time and over budget, you will talk yourself into thinking that with all your planning you will be the exception to this rule. You are wrong.

We budgeted an extra 10 percent into our loan to cover the surprises. Believe it or not, this was at the suggestion of our lender and our contractor swore to us that he would do his best to bring the numbers down as the project continued. Although the financial situation got so dire during the renovation that I stopped keeping track of it all, but we probably finished about 30 percent over the original budget. As for time, the project took about 50 percent more time than we expected, due to hiccups with supplies of some items and various other issues that hung things up.

2. Have a partner.

Even if you're building or renovating and you're a single homeowner (and if you are, I applaud you), you need to have another person involved. That's because you need to have a person on reserve to wear the black hat. There will be times that have an issue with a contractor and you need one person to be sweet and understanding and another person to be the nasty one pushing for things to be done correctly. I handled most of the day to day things, but when something serious came up, or when I felt like I was getting the "you're-just-an-irrational-woman" brush off (and yes, I do think that happened), Mr. Much More Patient would step in handle it. I think our contractor knew that if he got a call from the husband he knew we were serious about something.

3. Find balance.

Throughout the entire renovation I constantly felt like I was walking the line of being a pushover or being a bitch. It was difficult to find a middle ground. Certainly you don't want to come out of the gate swinging on a project, but you also don't want to come across as a person who will let them slide with subpar work.

4. Make every decision you can ahead of time.

I did pretty good on this. I had plumbing fixtures chosen and delivered for months before they were needed. Tile was picked out before the bathroom was even officially drawn on paper. But there were other decisions that came up out of nowhere and needed to be made quickly. I expected to have a couple of weeks to figure out what we wanted for the roof. We ended up having a weekend to pick out the style and color of shingles as well as underlayments, etc. It's important to make decisions in a timely fashion to keep things moving along, and I found that the contractors seemed to have a lot more respect for us when we were able to quickly make decisions. Having so many things decided ahead of time (and then not second guessing ourselves: I did not look at a single bathroom picture on the Internet after we picked out tile and fixtures because I was afraid I'd find something I'd want more) made making the quick decisions a bit easier because we weren't thinking about tile, plumbing, lighting and roofing … just roofing.

5. But don't be forced into making a decision you are not comfortable with.

No matter how much pressure a contractor is putting on you to make a decision, do not allow yourself to be forced into making it until you are truly comfortable with it. You may delay your project a bit, but it will cost more in the long run when you can't stand it and have to go back and fix it. This is what happened with the shingle siding on the upper half of the house. We went back and forth on where it should be and we were getting a lot of pressure on making the decision, and what that decision would be. We were both suffering from renovation fatigue and we sort of threw up our hands and said, "Yeah, whatever," and we ended up with the shingles starting higher than we'd like them to. We actually bought additional shingles to have it fixed, but we've since had a falling out with our contractor so we won't have them do it and I just haven't bothered to look for someone else to do it yet. Everyone told me I wouldn't notice in a few months. I do. And it bugs me every single time I look at the house. Every day.

Stay tuned for Part 2 of the list later today.

Books to paint by

2011-09-29T07:58:00.000-05:00

Boy, I have been all over the place on the blog lately and we are about to enter a subject that I've never dealt with before and probably won't revisit anytime soon. I hope you all are at least a bit amused by these posts.

As you know I did a lot of the painting for our renovation. All of it, in fact, except for the living room and bedroom ceilings (after doing the kitchen ceiling I swore I'd never do it again) and three new doors. I couldn't even begin to estimate the amount of hours I spent painting, but I'm certain it's in the hundreds. I don't really mind projects that involve more busy work than mental stimulation and this includes another task I find myself doing frequently: weeding. In fact, after staring at a computer screen all day long for work, it's sort of nice. But I hate feeling like I'm missing out on something. I'm a multi-tasker to the core and always have been. If I'm not doing at least two things at once I feel like I'm wasting time. So when I discovered audiobooks (something I had previously thought was reserved for people with four-hour commutes and people with bad eyesight), it made all that painting (and weeding) that much better.

I just checked my iTunes library and I have 69 audiobooks. And most of those have been listened to in the last year. I have a few rules for choosing audiobooks:

1. I always read the reviews. Sometimes the book is great but the reader is horrible and it's ALL about the reader with audiobooks. I have a weird thing where I can't stand to hear the reader swallow when they are pausing between sentences. It's like bad table manners. For the same reason I'll often listen to the sample before I buy a book.

2. I don't like to listen to books that are too good. There are some books that I won't allow myself to listen to because I want to savor them, and more than a few books that I've listened to and been a little irritated with myself because it's so good I wish I would have read it. And I have gone back and read a couple of them (like the Stieg Larsson books).

3. I prefer female readers or an ensemble cast of readers. I get really irritated when male readers try to change their voice to read female dialogue.

4. Honestly, I often pick them based on length. They all cost basically the same (and since I now get them through a monthly subscription to audible.com they do all cost the same), I like to feel like I'm getting a lot for my money. I know, that's dumb.

5. I like to mix it up and listen to a variety of thrillers, unique sort-of indie fiction and even some chick lit. Every once in a while audible has a sale and I'll pick up something I never would have listened to otherwise. This experiment usually is a failure but sometimes there's a nice surprise.

Here are pictures of my entire audiobook library so you can see all the titles I've listened to. And trust me, some of them are more than a little embarrassing (Charlaine Harris vampire novels anyone?) Scroll down below the pictures to see my top picks.

My absolute No. 1 pick for an audiobook is Tina Fey's Bossypants. This book is hysterical to begin with but it is so great read by Tina herself. I actually listened to parts of it twice, and this is the only book I've done that for. (The opposite of this was Chelsea Handler's Are you there Vodka? It's me Chelsea which I found completely boring despite the fact that I love Chelsea Handler.)

Among the list of books that really were too good to be listened to and should certainly be read are the aforementioned Stieg Larsson books (which I LOVED, along with, apparently, the rest of the world), The Help, The Kitchen House (which is very similar in feel to the The Help but even better, in my opinion) and Ann Patchett's State of Wonder.

I'm a sucker for James Patterson and even though he puts out about two novels a year (if not more) which certainly has to affect the quality of his writing, I still find his books to be great reads/listens. This is the kind of book I love to travel with.

Bill Bryson's A Walk in the Woods is a book that I somehow missed hearing about when it came out several years ago. I absolutely loved this book, which is equal parts humor, adventure (and misadventure) and reality. This was another one read by the author and I think that makes it even better.

A big surprise for me was Garth Stein's The Art of Racing in the Rain which is, if you can believe it, told from point of view of a dog. Sounds corny, right? And maybe it is a little, but it's a charming corny. Generally I stay away from dog books (and movies) because invariably I end up bawling at the end, but this is a truly a heartwarming story. If you are a dog lover, you really should pick this one up.

And every once in a while I need to listen to something that is nothing but fun and that's when I plug into a little Janet Evanovich. OK, so it's a more than a little formulaic, but who among us doesn't see a little bit of the totally dysfunctional Stephanie Plum in ourselves?

After all that listening, I have to report that I am completely hooked on audiobooks even when I'm not painting or weeding. I listen to them in the car even though my commute is only 13 minutes from door to door. I listen to them when I'm cooking (although not when I'm baking because I tend to leave important ingredients out. Like sugar). I even listen to them when I'm running (or I should say attempting to run).

Anyone else hooked on audiobooks? Got any recommendations for me?

Go, Ginkgo, Go!

2011-09-26T07:22:00.000-05:00

When planting the new gardens in the back yard I treated myself to three unusual and special plants, all from Klehm's Song Sparrow Nursery, one of my favorite online nurseries.

The plant that, I will be honest, I picked just because there was no difference in the price for shipping three plants or two plants so I figured I might as well pick something else up, was gingko biloba 'Gnome'. When I took it out of the box, though, I was completely head over heels in love with the little guy. This dwarf gingko has densely package foliage and is (or rather, was) the most beautiful emerald green color.

But this poor little Gnome was having a tough time dealing with the transition. Within a week of planting, it was looking a bit peakid, and within three weeks it was looking worse. Because I'm not confident in exactly what is going on with the dirt in that part of the garden (you might remember that all the dirt in the upper part of the garden came from what we dug out for the path, which was a combination of beautiful, dark soil, red sand and full-on clay), I was worried that I was dealing with a drainage problem, something I rarely encounter here given our proximity to Lake Michigan.

I was watering it deeply about once a week, depending on the rain, but I worried that if the drainage was off I might be overwatering.

So I took a pretty drastic measure: I dug it up to see what was happening. And, the answer was: nothing. Well, nothing unexpected, that is. Turns out the drainage seemed to be just fine and little Gnome was probably just suffering from good old-fashioned transplant shock. Transplant shock that I probably just made worse by essentially transplanting it again.

But there wasn't really much I could do about it other that keep being nice to little Gnome.

And I suspect we won't know how this all turns out until next spring. Winter is tough up here in zone 5 and any plant that is stressed going into winter will have an even more difficult time dealing with the relentless freeze and thaw cycle that some winters dish up. I hope it makes it. I really like the little guy.

Door redux redux?

2011-09-23T19:35:00.001-05:00

Yes, I know I just repainted the front door a deeper blue a few weeks ago. But the October issue of Coastal Living just came today and I think I might have to paint it again.

Coastal Living photo

I'm pretty sure I need that. Including that awesome starfish wreath (from Beach Grass Cottage on Etsy, according to the magazine). I guess the problem with the fact that it was pretty easy to paint the front door is that it might be really easy to do it again.

This is why no real projects get done around here.

A tumultuous tomato season

2011-09-23T13:54:00.000-05:00

Before I get into today's post, I just wanted to say thank you to you all. The ideas you've been sharing on the office plan have been amazing and really inspiring. I can't wait to incorporate many of them into the office.

Since it is the first official day of autumn (groan), I thought it would be appropriate to talk a little about how my favorite summer crop—tomatoes—did this year. And there's not a lot to talk about.

I knew it was going to be a challenge for the tomatoes this year because we had a very cold and long spring so everything was off to a slow start. Here in zone 5 we have to look for varieties that are quick to mature but even some of those are still full of green tomatoes, and with temperatures predicted to max out in the mid-50s for the next week or so, it's unlikely many more will be ripening.

As you may recall, I grew tomatoes in two locations this year: in the at-home veggie garden and in a plot I shared with my mom at the community garden seven miles west (and therefore away from the chill of Lake Michigan).

The highly scientific (or, um, not at all scientific) study (mentioned here and here) we did between my mom and I when we planted the same kinds of tomatoes from the same source on the same day but treated them slightly differently turned out to be sort of a wash. In the end we both got about the same amount of tomatoes and the only noticeably difference is that my mom's were sort of deformed but maybe a bit larger.

At home, my plants once again succumbed to some sort of blight, although I still got tomatoes (about a bushel of which ripened in the past week).

The state of the tomato plants now might nicely be described as "sad."

Paul Robeson looks truly dreadful.

This is Japanese Black Trifle, which has produced dozens of tomatoes in the last couple weeks. They are smaller, black tomatoes with a really nice flavor. This is one of two grafted tomatoes I grew this year, and while it produced pretty well, you can see it didn't fair a lot better in terms of disease.

I grew two (expensive) grafted tomatoes this year, one in each garden. The Japanese Black Trifle was quite nice, although I'm not convinced the grafting part of it had anything to do with it. I grew a double tomato—San Marzano and Brandywine grafted onto the same rootstock at the community garden but only got a few San Marzanos and no Brandywines at all. It was fun to try the grafted tomatoes but I'm not convinced they are work the extra cost (which was almost double the cost of the other tomato plants).

The cherry tomatoes (black cherry and snow white) had no problem growing this year, ad you can see from the way they grew up and over the garden fence and they suffered very little in the way of disease but very few of them got ripe. I'm wondering if that's because there was SO much foliage, there just wasn't a lot of sun hitting the fruit.

I have a lot of tomatoes to eat yet in the house and I'm savoring every last one, but I think that will probably be the end of it for this season. Soon I'll be thoroughly cleaning out the beds and throwing away all that diseased foliage (instead of composting it) and before you know it I'll be craving the sweet taste of summer in a tomato while staring at the wretched red cardboard-ish globes that pass for tomatoes in January.

Summer, I miss you already.

An office plan

2011-09-21T07:30:00.000-05:00

Well howdy everyone! I can't even tell you how crazy the past week has been. I picked up a little side job last week—volunteer, not paid—that took up way more of my "free" time than I expected and then I had several dinners related to an event, and a golf outing. And then, of course, I was busy trying to "style" my house in preparation for the photos for the newspaper's home and garden section story on our house.

Procrastinator that I am, I was up until 2 a.m. Monday night finishing up the gallery wall. How ridiculous is that? But I was bound and determined to have that area finished, or at least look sort of finished, so I was painting frames, cutting mat board, printing out last minute photos on the home printer (I figured for a photo shoot you can't tell if it was printed on recycled copy machine paper or fancy photo paper) and believe it or not, sticking a big piece of wood to the wall (you know I have to leave you with a teaser).

And by the time I finished with that I just didn't care anymore. So I pretty much just jammed anything extraneous in the closets. In the kitchen I took the paper towel holder, the compost bucket, the cutting boards and half the utensils that I keep in a crock on the counter and literally threw them in the pantry along with a half consumed bottle of wine and a couple of the random bottles of alcohol that live on top of the fridge. I'd rather err on the side of bare than cluttered.

Anyway, I'll get back to the photo shoot and the story (due out next week, I think) soon, but I thought we could revisit the office project that I mentioned a couple weeks ago. The graphic artist at work and I banged around a few ideas and that clever little lady put them right into the HGTV design software and spit out some renderings, which is pretty darn cool.

If you'll recall, here's my hideous office at work. I've gotten preliminary approval to redo it as long as I can get the design approved and that I do (and pay for) the work myself.

A lot of you weighed in with some ideas of what might improve this space and the real hangup was that green carpet. I've decided that trying to work with it would be challenging at best and quite possibly horrific. So I'm going to look for an inexpensive large, low-pile area rug that will work to neutralize the space a little.

That opens up a few options. Here's the leading plan right now:

1. Paint the cabinetry light gray and replace the hardware with something a bit more modern looking.

2. Pull out the countertop (including the sink) and replace it with wood counter sections from Ikea or make my own similar to this.

3. Paint the trim white.

4. Paint the walls navy blue.

5. Remove the top of the desk, paint the bottom of it white, and replace the top with a wood table top (also from Ikea), stained a medium to dark color to match the counters.

6. Wrap the top and exposed side of the file cabinets with stained birch plywood and trim.

7. Possibly wallpaper, stencil or hand paint the backsplash area with a funky pattern that may or may not be repeated on the face of the file cabinets.

It's still a very rough plan, but I think it achieves a lot of the things I was looking for, namely a fresh, clean space, that is stylish but not overly feminine and still plenty businesslike.

Here's a view of the rendering showing the one wall I didn't take pictures of. Please note the art just represents where a piece of art could go, rather than the actual art (no neon sunsets please). Also the guest chair I have in the office looks like it was stolen from the conference room (actually, I think it was) but I'd probably be on the lookout for a chair I could redo to match the room but not look out of place. (Sadly the lights shown in the renderings are very true to life, but short of putting in track lighting, I think they have to stay and changing them out really isn't in my personal budget.)

The rendering is incredibly helpful when I'm trying to envision this. What do you think of the rough plan?

Style help for a jeans and T-shirt girl

2011-09-13T13:21:00.000-05:00

I never developed the ability to accessorize, whether it be in my wardrobe or my home. I tend to like a more clean-cut wardrobe full of basics (a good white shirt is the key to all humanity as far as I'm concerned although I rarely wear them because I usually spill coffee on them in about two nanoseconds) and I admire outfits that are basically jeans, a white shirt and some great jewelry, but I can't manage to put the same thing together on myself. I've been wearing the same pair of hoop earrings (that have not come off except for a handful of dressy occasions) for two years now.

The same goes for my home. Oh how I long to have a perfect styled bookcase. Even if it only has books in it, do you notice how they just look better in magazines? But no matter how I stack my books, I cannot make it look like that. And I sort of abhor buying home accessories just to fill space. I love found objects and things that I love or that have meaning to me, but it takes awhile to find such things.

eclectic dining room design by birmingham interior designer Tracery Interiors

Oh look, you're just in time for dinner. We're having apples.

So it's a bit humorous that I've spent most of last night looking through magazines and online images trying to get a feel for how spaces are "styled" (that's what the cool kids call it, you know). But there's a damn good reason for it. Our house renovation is going to be featured in the local newspaper's home and garden section. And that's not quite like ending up on the Nate Berkus Show or on the pages of House Beautiful, but there's a certain amount of pressure involved in it. Imagine if everyone you knew in high school—your best friends, your not best friends, your ex-boyfriends, and those people who totally had it out for you for four years—were all invited to your house for a party. You'd want it to knock their socks off, right? I know that's not a particularly charming personality trait that I just exposed there. It's much more interesting to say that I don't really care. I live how I live and they can take it or leave it because I'm perfectly happy here, but let's just say I haven't gotten to that point in my life yet. Maybe I just need a few cocktails. That would probably help.

spaces design

Obviously the person who sleeps in this bedroom just got up, threw off the blanket and walked toward the light at the end of the tunnel through the French door.

Anyway, I have a lot of bare walls and bare shelves in the house right now because you might recall that in spring I put a moritorium on all indoor projects so that I could get a much needed break and go outside and garden. And since I'm in denial about the changing seasons, I haven't exactly picked up where I left off inside. I have less than a week to get the place as "photo ready" as it's going to get and I know fresh flowers will only get me so far.

eclectic bedroom design by los angeles interior designer Domicile Interior Design

All that stuff on the nightstands and no alarm clock?

Lonny

But here's what I observed:

1. Tables always have something on them. Mostly books, but usually a trinket of some kind as well.

2. Pillows are always a little squished.

3. Most pictures look like you JUST missed someone walking out of the room. Because no one really lives with cookbooks randomly laying open on the kitchen counter, right?

4. Nobody actually lives the way these pictures look. Period. Which is of course the point of the wonderful and hilarious Catalog Living blog.

eclectic living room design by los angeles interior designer maison21

OK, those barely count as bookshelves since there aren't many books on them. And photo shoot or not, I'm not wrapping all my books in white covers!

So ... do you have any tips for me on how I make the place look good? No book covering allowed.

Falling for a great performer

2011-09-12T07:59:00.001-05:00

One of the new plants in the garden this year that has really thrilled me is heucherella 'Redstone Falls.' I got three of these through the Yahoo Co-op as plugs and they are all over a foot wide now. The coloring in their part-sun location is a gorgeous combination of terra-cotta, orange, yellow, green and a hint of red.

I'm really loving all of the new heucheras and heucherellas that are being developed (many by Terranova Nurseries), but you do have to be a bit careful as to placement of them. I've found that many prefer a good amount of sun, although others tolerate—no, demand—shade. Clearly I hit the nail on the head with where Redstone Falls ended up.

Looking back at the reno, a year later

2011-09-07T10:00:00.000-05:00

It is hard to believe that it was just about a year ago that we started the house renovation (September 1, 2010, to be exact). The renovation seemed like it lasted forever (and it was a good six months) but looking back on it now it seems like a distant memory. Surely renovating a house (and probably building one too, although I have no experience in that area) must be like having a child: you forget the worst parts and remember only the good.

I'm not quite to the point where I've forgotten ALL the bad parts, but I suppose I'll get there someday. Having been through it, though, I can see why some people become serial renovators: You learn so much during the process that would have been really helpful to know in the beginning that you almost want to do it again (almost) just to apply that knowledge.

I didn't blog much about the renovation after it was finished because I was sick of it and exhausted and I thought anything I wrote about it would probably come out sounding overly bitter. Now that I'm a bit removed from it I thought I'd share a few thoughts about renovating with you this week.

First, though, an update. There are a lot of little projects in the house that are not finished. When spring came I so needed a break from house projects that I dropped them all and went outside. And I'm just starting to come back inside now. Some of the items on the short-term agenda are the gallery wall I have planned for the upstairs hallway (by the time I get this finished I suppose gallery walls will be passé), making the cushion for the window seat in the master bedroom, moving things onto the shelves in the master bedroom and generally just filling the walls with art. I also need to paint the doors on the mini-closet in the second bedroom. I've still not done anything about window treatments in the bedrooms and at this point I'm not sure if I will. We haven't had a need for them yet, and I think the windows might look OK without them.

And now, onto some photos. For whatever reason I've never put the exterior photos together like this before.

Here are the plan drawings of the front (south side) and back (east side). Yes I realize that doesn't make sense that we consider one the front the other the back, but in my bizarre mind that's how I've always thought of it.

Here's the original front side (on the day we moved out of the house for the reno hence the junk on the patio):

And here's the new front:

And the old back (that snow fencing protected a dwarf Japanese maple that I'm happy to report made it through the construction just fine):

And here's the new back of the house, including the new landscaping I worked on all spring:

And just for shock value, here's maybe the scariest demo photo:

If you're interested in looking back at the whole process of the remodel, check out these posts:

Construction Update 1
Construction Update 2
Construction Update 3
Construction Update 4
Construction Update 5
Construction Update 6
Construction Update 7
Construction Update 7.5
Construction Update 8
Construction Update 9
Construction Update 10
Construction Update 11

Construction Update 12

Punch list

Stairs

Guest bedroom sneak peak

Reprieve granted

2011-09-06T07:28:00.001-05:00

A couple weeks ago I mentioned that I had finally put the potentillia that I never really liked in the first place out of its misery. Well, my misery really, because it wasn't doing too badly, I just couldn't stand it in the garden anymore.

There is one other plant that has underperformed since we bought the house. A Rose of Sharon was here (in the former vegetable garden that eventually became the circle garden) when we bought the house more than nine years ago and I've moved at least three times since then. A few years ago I just stuck them in the main garden, but shortly after that I planted a purple smokebush (Cotinus coggygria 'Royal Purple'), which has since taken off.

Frankly, I'm just sick of moving this Rose of Sharon, which has annually produced about three blooms for all that hard work, and it was scheduled for the chopping block this year. It's only because I've been so busy with the back yard that it wasn't tossed in the compost heap months ago.

Well, I guess that Rose of Sharon caught wind of its fate because check out what it did this year.

Not only has it put on about a foot of height but it's covered in blooms.

I might seem ruthless with underperforming plants but I'm not totally heartless. Any plant that tries that hard to please can stay. But it can't stay where it is, so I'm currently looking for a new, permanent home for it. I'm sure it will carry a grudge for a couple years, but eventually it will get over it and reward me again. It better anyway, because I'm about to save it from the compost heap.

The awful office

2011-09-02T07:00:00.000-05:00

The air is just a touch crisper. The mornings are a bit cooler. Stores are full of fall-themed merchandise. Fall bulb catalogs were filling the mailbox weeks ago. As much as I'd like to pretend it's not the case, autumn, apparently, is around the corner. And the surest sign of that is that I'm starting to think about projects that don't involve plants.

Don't worry, there's plenty of garden blogging yet to come, but I thought we'd take a quick detour into DIY land to take a look at a project I have my eye on for the fall/winter.

If you follow The Impatient Gardener on Facebook you've already gotten a sneak peek of this project-to-be and it's pretty scary. It's also fairly embarrassing because you'll see just what a messy office I keep. In my defense, these photos were taken in the throes of deadline and I generally let everything else sit until deadline is over and then do a big clean-up. Plus, you know you all love getting a real-life peek into other people's chaos. I aim to please.

So here's the situation: My office at work is a totally depressing space. I love that I have a nice big window but I hate pretty much everything else about the room. I've gotten preliminary approval to make some changes to the office as long as I get clearance from the tower before I do anything. Oh, and the budget is basically nil. In fact, I'll probably pay for most of the renovations myself which means we are talking about the thinnest of shoestring budgets.

Since I don't really know exactly what to do in this space and the challenges require some serious creative thinking, I'm looking for any and all suggestions you all might have. So let's get to the photos.

Let's just start with the elephant in the room (well, the weirdest elephant in the room because I think there's a whole herd of them in there): The sink on the back counter. This building used to be a doctor's office and my office was the exam room. How would you like to be stripping down to your unmentionables in a doctor's office with that big window? Anyway, the sink is leftover from that. But worse than the fact that there is a sink in the middle of my office is that we don't think it works. Actually, everyone in the office is afraid to try it so we don't know if it works but what would I do with it anyway?

Here's some more information on the office:

• It's 11' x 12'

• There are actually five or six of those tall file cabinets in the room and they have to stay there. To make things more challenging, you'll notice they are not all the same color. Their current location is really the only place in the room they work. They have to stay but they can't stay the way the are.

• The carpeting is a very low-pile multi-colored deal with green, teal, gray and beige tones in it. The overall effect if you squint your eyes is sort of in the range of BM Lafayette Green. More than likely it has to stay unless someone can come up with a low-cost alternative. I considered putting Flor carpet tiles over the top of it, but after pricing them out I think it would be too expensive to do the whole room with them. This is certainly the biggest challenge to the rest of the color scheme.

• All of the cabinetry WILL be painted. If it's the last thing I do. It is what drives me the craziest in that space.

• Right now I'm thinking about having that sink removed and replacing the counter perhaps with a stained wood countertop like this one.

• As ugly as it is I really like the desk. It has tons of storage and I need a storage solution (you wouldn't think that would be the case with all those cabinets but we use many of them for storage for office-wide items). It can't stay the way it is, but ideally I'd find some solution to make it better looking.

• The wall color has to change as well, but I feel like I can't figure out what color that should be until I get a color for the cabinets decided.

• I didn't take a photo of it (I'll get on that when I can), but one wall (the door is in the corner) is empty and in need of some art. I also have a guest chair there.

• The room cannot be too feminine. It is, after all, a business office, not a home office, so it has to reflect the company as much or more than it reflects me.

So that's the starting point. There is no timeline for this, but since I obviously have to work in the space I'll have to block off a few weekends in a row to crack it all off in. Lay it on me. What do you think? Do you have a vision for this space? Are you still stuck back at the picture of the disaster that is my office?

Petal perfection

2011-08-29T07:22:00.001-05:00

I know I go on and on about hydrangeas, and particularly Limelight, but I simply can't help myself.

I mean look at how many petals are simply packed into this flower.

And the blooms on my older Limelight are enormous! Of course all I have for scale is my hand, so here's a picture of me feeling up my hydrangea blooms. Awkward.

The blooms on the new Limelights that I planted by the deck are significantly smaller, which is not surprising, but are also much whiter, although I'm wondering if that has more to do with exposure than age.

The white house with the blue door gets a paint job

2011-08-25T13:11:00.000-05:00

I apologize for the lack of posts this week. Since most of what I blog about in summer is stuff that happens outside, and because I'm usually at work during the day when the light is decent, I often take most of the photos for the blog on the weekend and then pump out a bunch of posts related to the photos during the week.

But no matter how much I pretend to deny it, summer is waning. We've had gorgeous weather lately and I can honestly say that last night might have been the most perfect night ever (with the exception of some obnoxious mosquitos). I sat outside well past sunset trying to savor every second.

Anyway, last weekend I was busy doing summer-type stuff and didn't get time to snap any photos. And then when I get home from work during the week the light sort of stinks and then I end up with no blog posts. Still, I could wait to show you what I've been up to.

You know our blue door that I adore? The one that was the very first project I took on when we bought our house nine years ago and ever since have called it "The white house with the blue door"? Well, I painted it.

Now don't be alarmed. It's not a drastic change, even though I am currently in love with yellow doors and after seeing this amazing house tour I damn near painted it Benjamin Moore's Wythe Blue.

BM Wythe Blue

But after thinking about it, I knew our otherwise plain white house (which I was once so nicely told on Gardenweb was the "most boring white house anyone could ever imagine" and the very nice poster suggested that I fire whoever was responsible for that. Ah, the Internet, don't 'cha just love brutal anonymous honesty?) needed a bold color that would stand out in our new entry.

So I chose (drumroll) .....

Another blue.

Wow, I'm a crazy party animal, aren't I?

I changed it from what I have always called "Greek blue," although I don't know what color it really is (I painted it before I ever started paying attention to paint colors and neurotically googling the name of the color to look for images of what it looked like in other people's homes), to a more royal/indigo blue: Benjamin Moore's Down Pour Blue.

BM Down Pour Blue

Anyway, enough chit chat. Onto the (lousy, taken after work) photos. By the way, this was one of the easiest projects I've ever done. Because I painted it last, I knew I had used water-based paint (I ALWAYS use water-based) and that I had primed it thoroughly. So I just sanded it with the palm sander, touched up a few blemishes caused by moving in and out however many times in nine years for floors, renovations, etc., and put on two coats of semigloss paint.

So here's the best picture I have of the before (pre-renovation):

traditional entry design

And here's what it looks like now (with the screen door open because I've not painted it yet; that's a project for winter):

It's actually kind of nice to have the screen door the old color so you can see the difference in the blues. And yes, the stairs are all wet because I was blasting bugs off the house right before I took the picture.

And speaking of that screen door, there's a bit of a problem. Can you spot it?

How about now?

It turns out that the hanging light that I really love and picked up for a steal, doesn't work so good with a screen door that opens out. Fortunately we don't really go in and out of the front door much, but we do frequently open it for more light and airflow in the summer, so we're just really careful when we do open it.

I'll work on better pictures that show more of the house this weekend!

Moving Day

2011-08-19T07:30:00.000-05:00

There are so many garden chores that escaped me earlier this season since I was busy basically redoing our entire backyard (including this path and these walls) so one of the many things that needed attending to was some plant moving. Sadly it seems like the worst of the heat is behind us (90 degrees? I'll take it. PLEASE.) so I thought it was safe to start moving things around. I never like to wait too long to move things because I worry they won't have time to get established before the temps drop dramatically. I'd rather have to baby them a bit more in the beginning than take the risk of losing them later.

The target of most of the moving was the fringes of a garden I created four years ago or so that served as a holding bed for things that didn't have another place.

As you can see, it wasn't exactly stunning to look at. The first thing to get moved was the Nikko Blue hydrangea that you see in the middle, which was moved to that location before the house renovations last year. When I dug it out, it was actually two plants. I think a branch rooted itself awhile ago and actually that part of the plant is nicer than the mother plant. This hydrangea, which blooms on old wood (that often freezes out over winter), isn't a great performer. But a couple years ago it gave me five gorgeous light blue blooms and I fell in love with them enough to keep trying.

I moved the two plants to the west side of the house where I've never really had anything great growing. I'm hoping that a protected spot by the house might help keep those buds safe. And in the front I planted a 'Let's Dance Moonlight' hydrangea that I got through the Yahoo co-op a couple years ago and have been growing out in a container. (By the way, do you like how I can't even manage to take the shovel out of the garden before I take a picture?)

The next thing that needed to happen was to get rid of a potentilla shrub I've been chasing around for NINE years. And what you'll be interested to know is that I didn't like it to begin with. My extremely sweet and well-intentioned mother-in-law took me plant shopping shortly after we bought our house. I didn't have the faintest idea what was already growing in the yard nor did I have a clue what my gardening plans were, but I was reluctant to pass up free plants. So we went to a nursery and my mother-in-law asked an employee what was deer resistant and I came home with three potentillas. Two of them (thankfully) died (and that may or may not have something to do with how I "cared" for them) but one just kept on going. I moved it once, and still hated it, so I finally moved it to an empty space. It never bloomed again and got rangy and unattractive. But for some reason I had a hard time throwing away a plant I really didn't like. Well, no more. It had to go. And I think a far more noble purpose for it will be serving as compost several years from now.

After I freed myself of that monkey on my back, it was time to move a couple of hosts that had also been relocated last fall before the renovation. I blogged about the process of moving them here, and I'm happy to report they handled the move wonderfully and looked great this year.

I divided both Blue Angel and Paradigm (just into two divisions) before moving them to the back yard where they are flanking the east-facing stairs off the deck. I didn't cut the foliage off them, but I may if it starts looking shabby.

And then I filled in the newly cleaned out area with more hydrangeas I've been growing out in pots: two Incrediballs and one Invincibelle Spirit. I hope they do well and fill in that area that until now has been just a storage spot.

Well that's just peachy

2011-08-16T07:25:00.000-05:00

One of my favorite parts of being part of Proven Winners testing program is that I have the opportunity to grow plants I might not otherwise pick up. I'll admit that when I pulled Superbena 'Royale Peachy Keen' out of the box I had flashbacks to my teenage bedroom, decorated in the latest hot colors of peach and forest green and, well, maybe I wasn't really feeling it.

Well surprise, surprise. Guess what is quickly pulling to the forefront of my favorites of all the 2012 Proven Winners plants I'm currently growing? Yep, Peachy Keen.

Even though we've been through all sorts of weather this summer, from cold and rainy, to a 10-day stretch in the high 90s and even a few days over 100, Peachy Keen is still growing strong. But it's not just a tough cookie, it's also darn good looking and rather eye-catching from a distance.

'Royale Peachy Keen' is planted with 'Purple Ruffles' basil, Superbells 'Blackberry Punch,' Papyrus 'King Tut' and creeping Jenny. On the right you can also see 'Blue Mohawk' grass which is growing in the adjacent pot.

The color on this picture is some kind of weird, but you can see that Peachy Keen jumps out.

Peachy Keen's cousin Superbena 'Royale Iced Cherry' is almost neon. I love it. It's growing in the window box with lots of other plants including Superbells 'Sweet Tart,' on the bottom.

Garden Bloggers Bloom Day

2011-08-15T07:35:00.001-05:00

Since I've missed every single one of these so far this season, I thought I better hurry up and participate in one before there are no flowers blooming. So last night I set down my gin and tonic and snapped a few pictures of what's happening the garden now.

As always, thank you to Carol at May Dreams Gardens for hosting this. Make sure to go to her page to see lots of wonderful blooms across blogland.

Everytime I think that Rudbeckia isn't worth chasing around the garden digging it up wherever it has spread to next, I fall back in love with it again.

A baby bloom on a baby Hydrangea 'Let's Dance Moonlight.'

I think this is 'Chorus Line.' I love the lime green throat.

Limelight is out in full force and I think I love this stage of the blooms, when they are a beautiful chartreuse, the most.

The last of the lily blooms. I used to think I didn't like lilies and now I really love them, at least when I can get to them before the deer do.

Four plants I'll (probably) never plant again

2011-08-12T07:28:00.000-05:00

I'm sure we all have them: Those plants that the rest of the world finds innocuous or maybe even loves, but we can't stand. I have a short list of plants that fall into that category and it always sort of surprises me that I carry such a grudge against these plants, especially when I see them in someone else's garden and (gasp!) sometimes sort of like them.
So here's my list of plants you won't catch me planting again (probably):

1. Coreopsis
OK, I should have known better. This was one of those pass-along plants that the gardener I got it from had "plenty to spare." This, in case you haven't figured it out, is code for "It will take over your garden faster than a garlic mustard weed farming operation." And certainly it has its good points. It does bloom its head off. OK, well that would be its one good point. But it also looks like crap if you don't stay on top of the deadheading and it flops all over the place making for a garden that looks like a small tornado has gone through. Every day. I know there are lots of varieties of coreopsis and I suppose many are better than others, but my experience with what I assume was a fairly common variety of this plant was so heinous that my stomach churns when I hear the word "coreopsis" and I actually swore off any yellow flowers out of my garden for about five years. Can you imagine? Do you know how many flowers are yellow? Anyway, after several years of pulling seedlings, I eradicated this little bugger from my garden.

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Source: Paz gardens

2. Artemesia 'Oriental Lime Light'

This thug has no redeeming value. Period. Oh sure, I know you're look at it and thinking, "Oh my gosh, it's so bright! What a great way to brighten up a corner of the garden. Imagine it with purple flowers or foliage nearby!" Nope. Imagine an entire garden full of it. Because that's what you're going to get. I actually had a hard time finding this plant and if I recall (I've gone through extensive therapy to rid myself of the nightmares this plant caused me, but I have some bone-chilling recollections of it) I planted two small containers of it. Within a summer it had more than filled the area I had in mind for it. By the next spring it had taken over the entire bed and was threatening to move into the house.
I'd like to be able to tell you that I've closed this disturbing chapter in my life, but alas, this artemesia continues to haunt me. It has been at least six years since I attempted to remove the last vestiges of this plant and it is STILL popping up in my garden. Just a few weeks ago I was in the circle garden and had that creepy feeling like someone was watching me. I turned around and this is what I saw:

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Cherry Bells: Its baaaaaa-aaaaack. As is, apparently, that lovely weed in the foreground of the photo. Just keeping' it real, folks.

3. Campanula punctata 'Cherry Bells'

I have mixed feelings about this plant. It really is pretty and there's a reason I begged some from my mom's garden (hmmm, do you notice a pattern here? What kind of parenting is this anyway?) The blooming time is not long, but honestly, that's not unusual for my garden. I'm perfectly willing to deal with gorgeous blooms for a short time if they are worth it. Once again, the problem with this plant is its vigor. It just kept spreading and spreading and spreading. I dealt with it for a couple years and this spring I finally started pulling it out. And just when I thought I had gotten it all … well, you know the drill. It's still there. In full force. Most of them didn't get a chance to bloom, which is really the worst-case scenario. Now I have mini Cherry Bells all over the place but they aren't even going to bloom.
I will say, if I could find a way to effectively contain Cherry Bells, she could be invited to stay. But she's a rude one, and really has no manners.

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4. Sea Holly

I fell in love with sea holly when I saw it in a bouquet, and I think that is really the higher purpose that sea holly was put on this earth for: flower arrangements. I will give sea holly a partial pass on my judgement of it, because I planted it in part sun, not full sun, and perhaps that's why I was disappointed with it's performance. The flowers were still beautiful and a nice shot of blue. It was a plant that everyone commented on. But its tall stems flopped the minute they hit about 30 inches and it was a holy mess from then on. Because the stems are skinny, it was hard to stake them in any attractive way and ultimately it had to go. But it was stubborn and apparently liked it in my garden and kept coming back. I haven't seen any signs of it in my garden for a few years now, but it lives on … in the gardens of all the people who told me they wanted some, no matter how unruly it was.

So, what do you think? Am I crazy for banning these plants that plenty of people love? And do you have a list of plants that you've banned from your garden?

An expansive (and clandestine) garden crash

2011-08-08T07:00:00.000-05:00

I've been so excited about the garden tour I had planned for the weekend. An expansive garden, just minutes from my house, was open as part of the Garden Conservancy's Open Days program. The 120-acre property known as Afterglow Farm was established in 1929 by the Uihlein (pronounced Eee-line) family. (You can read more about the garden in this great article in the local newspaper).

Much of the property is naturalized, with wide paths leading around large ponds, past charming pump houses and off to the far reaches of land. What I found most interesting was that most of the planted areas by the main house relied on what I consider to be "old standards" and often natives. So often when you tour a garden it is full of hard-to-find cultivars that are interesting partly because they are so unique. But this garden used wide swaths of classic plants.

But here's where the clandestine part came in. As I was walking up the path to enter the garden with my SLR, a volunteer stopped me to tell me no photographs were allowed. Why, I cannot imagine, especially since several photos of the garden appeared in the newspaper and on various websites, but whatever. So I put the SLR back in the car and started doing a lot pretending to be text messaging on my phone while sneaking photos (there were volunteers everywhere busting people for taking pictures). So that explains why the pictures stink, which is really too bad, but hopefully you can still get a feel for this great garden.

A winding path that goes past several ponds opens onto this prairie, full of native plants.

The path from the beach (the property is on Lake Michigan) borders a beautiful ravine.

An orchard is enclosed by a fence on which vines grow. This is probably one of the most formal parts of the garden.

Hydrangeas, blue fescue, creeping thyme and more are combined in the planting on the back side of the house.

Ligularia 'The Rocket' is always a stunner, but it is even more eye-catching when planted en masse.

At first I thought this was a little well house or something, but it turns out it's just a very creative way to stack firewood. I'd hate to be the one who pulled out the wrong piece of wood though.

Purple coneflowers and Eupatorium are a simple but absolutely lovely combination.

Why don't I grow astilbes?

And why in the wold don't I have any Anise hyssop in my garden? This photo shows how meticulously the beds were edged. I've always said that nothing cleans up a garden more than a fresh edge. This one was amazing and very uniform, and obviously done by some kind of power tool. Anybody know what that might be? Because whatever it costs I think it's worth it.

The showpiece of the property is a large circle garden enclosed by a fence covered in climbing hydrangea and full of small paths. A fountain stands in the middle.

Black-eyed Susans and Monarda: more classics that look great together.

There was a little bit of everything in the circle garden, from herbs, to natives, to sedums and standards. You can see the top of the fountain on the left side of the photo.

Potting bench/area of my dreams.

Want to see more garden crashes? Check out this one and this one.

Perfecting plant combinations

2011-08-03T10:44:00.000-05:00

I come from a long line of ink-stained wretches so it should come as no surprise that I love magazines and newspapers—the kind you can hold and fold and read at the beach without some sort of specialized case (and trust me, I'm a gadget girl too. I haven't met a product that Steve Jobs had a hand in that I haven't loved). I love reading magazines and newspapers, studying them and I even like recycling them (either to other people or in the recycling bin). I subscribe to several magazines and will keep a handful of most of them when there is a particularly good issue. But two magazines, House Beautiful and Fine Gardening, are never tossed. House Beautiful magazines usually go to our collection at work, which we use for graphic design inspiration from time to time, but the Fine Gardenings are all mine.

The stack of Fine Gardening magazines in my hallway closet is part of my finely tuned system of getting through the long Wisconsin winter. It is my main source of garden design inspiration.
That's also why I like the special issues Fine Gardening puts out. I have at least 10 of them in my collection and I like referring back to them when I'm looking for something special, such as containing gardening ideas or plants for the shady spots in my garden.

So I was happy to have the opportunity to review their most recent special issue "Plant Combinations," which gives readers a handbook on plant pairings in their gardens. I just wrote about some of the plant combinations I'm happy with in my own garden, but the key to a garden you love is really having everything work well with each other.

Frequent readers of the magazine know that Fine Gardening ends each regular issue with a photo of a great plant combination; this special publication takes that concept to a full 99 pages.

What I particularly like is that the editors focused on featuring very common plants that work in a wide range of zones. Nothing is more frustrating than seeing a plant in a magazine that you absolutely have to have and can't find anywhere. They also break then down into different light categories which is really helpful if you're looking for something for a specific spot in the garden.

One of my favorite combinations in the magazine is one featuring 'Autumn Joy' sedum, a fountain grass and 'Alice' Japanese anemone. Not only does it look fantastic, but it might be the most maintenance free plant combination known to man.

'Autumn Joy' sedum and feather grass are a perfect combination. You can just see 'Alice' Japanese anemone peeking out from the top of the photo. To see the whole thing you'll have to pick up the magazine. Susan A. Roth/Fine Gardening photo

"Plant Combinations" is already well worn with several pages turned over. Filled with classic stand-by plants that should be easy to find (many even in my own garden) I'm sure it will serve me well for years to come.

You can pick up "Plant Combinations" for $7.99 on the Fine Gardening website.

A window box abbondanza

2011-08-01T07:01:00.002-05:00

I cannot believe it's August already. That fact is particularly sad given that I haven't even weeded one section of garden for spring yet, nor edged any of the beds. Whoops.

When I was gone a couple weeks ago I was on my annual trip (via sailboat) to Mackinac Island. I didn't have as much time on the island this year so my annual garden touring time was cut short, but as I was waiting for a taxi to the airport (you have to love a taxi that has to stop twice on the way up the hill to rest the horses), I couldn't help but snap a few photos with my phone of the massive window box outside Doud's Market (the island grocery store).

This photo should run next to the word "abundance" in the dictionary.

I love the use of nasturiums in this window box because I love the texture the leaves provide as much as the pretty flowers.

It caught my eye from far away with its bright colors and sheer volume, but also because I knew it was designed by my favorite Mackinac Island garden designer, Jack Barnwell (check out my Q&A with him here).

In fact, Jack wrote about building the window boxes for the market in spring on his Facebook page, so it was even cooler to see them planted. Because there are so many people strolling the streets of Mackinac Island, it was impossible to get a straight-on photo showing the magnitude of this window box display. The boxes are under every window of the store, so there is probably a good 25 or 30 feet of flowers.

I think the idea of bridging the gap between window boxes with a black-eyed Susan vine is ingenious.

Even a begonia snuck into this planting!

These are very free-form plantings, which I think works so well with the whole cottage/resort feel of the island. There must be at least 15 different varieties of plants used in the boxes and the look is one of abundance but not at all chaotic. The overall color theme is purple and orange, but that ranges from peach and yellow to even orangey reds. I especially love how Jack used the black-eyed Susan vine to bridge the spaces between boxes but also as the "thriller" of the entire planting. Genius!

Tomato race update: Close but so far

2011-07-29T15:00:00.000-05:00

For those who have been following the great tomato race, which isn't officially a race but rather a quest for bragging rights between my mom and I at the community garden plot we share specifically for the purpose of growing tomatoes, I have good news and bad news for those of you on Team Erin.

Here's the good news:

See those beauts? That's just one cluster on my heirloom Legacy tomato. There are about three other clusters like that. The tomatoes are a great size; as big or bigger than the typical tomato you'd buy in the store. My mom has nowhere near the number of fruits on her Legacy.

Here's the bad news: They've been like that for about three weeks, despite the fact that we've had record temperatures and plenty of warm (and even hot) nights. They just won't ripen (and no, this isn't a green tomato variety).

Meanwhile, my mom's Delicious tomato plant also has less fruit than mine, and she officially gets the price for the first ripe tomato of the year from that plant. But what's weird is that the tomatoes on my Delicious plant are nicely formed and otherwise pretty (although, like their next door neighbors on Legacy, they aren't getting ripe any too fast), while the tomatoes on my mom's Delicous plant are a big deformed (although she reports that they taste delicious ... go figure).

There's still no real way to know exactly what accounts for the differences in the plants.

To recap, the plants were purchased from the same place and planted in the same plot. They are receiving the same water and both are in complete full sun. I planted mine with Tomato Tone organic fertilizer and my mom enrobed hers in plastic for the first several weeks of the growing season.

My mom did sneak a cucumber and a few beans in there as well. As you can see the cucumber is pretty happy.

So here's the question though: Who can tell me why all those tomatoes on my Legacy plant are taking so darn long to ripen? Is there anything I can do to speed up the process?

Here are the past updates:
Tomato Race: I'm behind
My name is Erin and I'm a tomato hoarder

Is good landscape design timeless?

2011-07-26T07:08:00.000-05:00

In this Sunday's Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, the front page of the home and garden section was dedicated to "updating your landscape." The premise of the article was that it is good to update your landscape. In fact the article compared having an "outdated" landscape to having harvest gold appliances.

And all this got me thinking. Does a truly good landscape design ever become outdated? I'm not talking about overgrown bushes that threaten to eat houses. I consider that to be a maintenance issue. And I'm not talking about replacing plants that have either gone onto a better place or that you've just gotten sick of. That's just human nature to want something different after awhile (which I think is a perfectly good reason to redo a landscape, but that's not the same as redoing it because it is outdated).

To me, one of the signs of a great landscape is that it is timeless. Certainly there must be a reason why a formal parterre garden still looks beautiful and appropriate in the right landscape and why so many of us strive to have free-form, lovely cottage-style gardens like our grandmothers had.

Would anyone call this landscape outdated? Fine Gardening photo

The article also offers a list of things that are "out" in landscape design:

Lava rock
Mulch in unnatural colors
Plastic swans and pink flamingos
Whiskey barrels
Old gazing balls
Old birdbaths
Wagon wheels
Railroad ties
Plastic flowerpots and flowers
Garden gnomes
One kind of flower in a pot
Spikes surrounded by geraniums
Honeysuckle
Privet hedges
Some types of junipers
Ash trees (because of emerald ash borers)

But I ask: were any of these things ever "in" in good landscape design? Some of the items on the list fall under the category of "whimsy" and therefore I think they can belong in the garden without forcing the rest of it to be declared "outdated."

To me this is the beauty of landscapes: you're not at the whim of whatever is in at the time. You don't have to ask yourself, "Is this (landscape equivalent of the all-white kitchen) going to be dated in 10 years?" Mother nature is a confident lady and she's been around a lot longer than any landscape designer. Choose well for what will work in the space, take care of it, and you're good to go.

At least that's what I think. What say you?

I'm back ... and so is Limelight

2011-07-25T07:35:00.000-05:00

I got out of town for a few days and then I was beat when I came back so I spent a lot of time thinking about blog posts and not so much time actually writing them. Anyway, I have lots to update you on, and certainly lots to do in the garden. If you don't realize how much pulling a weed here or deadheading a plant there makes a difference, just leave your garden for four days in the middle of summer and see what it looks like when you get home. Yikes.

To start of the week, I thought I'd update you on a plant near and dear to my heart. You all know about my love affair with hydrangeas, and particularly Limelight. You might recall that back in April I did a slightly-later-than-I-should-have, rather aggressive pruning of my Limelight.

Here she is before the big pruning (I love leaving the flowers on during winter):

Here she is just a few minutes and a lot of hacking later:

And check this out. This is what she looked like a week or so ago. Flower buds are starting to form and they don't even really seem delayed, as the new Limelights I bought this year are at about the same stage. Standing at well over 5 feet tall, if this isn't reason enough to prune confidently, then nothing is.

So ... what's happening in your garden?

A couple of plant combinations I'm digging

2011-07-13T08:15:00.001-05:00

Sometimes plants work together. Sometimes they fall a bit flat. In general I find that plants that work best together exhibit contrast, either in color or texture.

Here are a few combos I found in the garden this weekend.

Here is Proven Winners Superbena Royale Peachy Keen with purple ruffles basil (and you can see Blackberry Punch in there too). This is in my big container which I haven't shown you much of because it's not looking too spectacular this year. Peachy Keen, though is showing off now.

Don't you love it when you turn around in your garden and, WOW, something catches your eye. That was the case with one of the frilly red poppies that seeds itself quick happily around the place. The seeds originally came from a co-worker and at least four of us at work now grow them. For all of us, the first ones popped open on Saturday, which is pretty interesting because other things in our gardens can be two weeks or more different in blooming time because of the microclimates at our houses. I call them "Carolyn's Magic Poppies" which sounds pretty bad if you don't know what we're talking about.

I have a few growing in a corner of the circle garden that I've been trying to turn into a red and yellow garden and despite the ketchup and mustard comparison, I do love how these bold poppies look next to Heliopsis Loraine Sunshine.

I'm finally accepting more yellow into my garden after banning it for awhile (more on that soon) and one of the unlikely combinations I've fallen in love with is pink and yellow. One of my favorite plants that I was sent by Proven Winners for their garden writers' trials this year (in which they send plants for the next year's introduction) is Superbells Cherry Star. I'm a sucker for a bright fuschia flower and I love it with a sunny yellow. And I love it even in more in a blue pot. I wish I could say I came up with the combination of Cherry Star and Nemesia Sunsatia Lemon, but I didn't. I stole that baby right from Proven Winners because I loved the photo on their website. I couldn't find three Sunsatia Lemons, so the middle pot has Mecardonia Gold Dust, which was one of my favorite PW introductions last year.

I have very informal (to a fault, lately, given the amount of weeds taking over the joint) gardens, so it's ironic that one of my favorite spots in the garden is probably the most formal area of the garden. It's a tricky spot on the west side of the house, in front of the fireplace wall, which I think creates a testy microclimate. I've tried (and lost) both a rose and a Japanese maple in this spot. Now it's a combination of a witch hazel shrub (just a baby, as it was added last year, and I'm not sure exactly which one it is), heuchera Black Beauty and hakonechloa All Gold (which I've read is "overused" but I don't give a rip, I love it). There is also heuchera Miracle in the background but that doesn't really add much to the equation. Certainly it's the combination of the dark leaves of Black Beauty against the chartreuse of All Gold that makes this area pop.

And sometimes, Mother Nature makes her own combinations that don't follow any rules at all but just look good. Somehow a pulmonaria seeded itself in a piece of driftwood "art" in the garden a few years ago. I left it there because I thought it was kind of neat how it grew up through the driftwood. There is no reason why it should be blooming right now, but it is, and so is clematis recta Pamela, which I let creep around the garden. For whatever reason I love how the combination of the delicate white flowers of Pamela combine with the pink bell-shaped flowers of the pulmonaria against the rugged driftwood. There is no design rule in the world that says that those two flowers should look good together (or be blooming in the same place together for that matter), but I like it.

So what great plant combinations are growing in your garden this year?

Proven Winners sent me a selection of plants for review as part of their Garden Writers testing program. I have not been paid or instructed to write about them. All of the opinions on them expressed here are completely my own.

The prettiest vegetable?

2011-07-11T07:01:00.000-05:00

Swiss chard might be one of the prettiest vegetables there is. I admit that I started growing it for it's looks, but now I really think it's delicious and I love it with a beautiful piece of fish. Plus, it's about as easy to grow as it gets.

With it's shiny dark leaves and multi-colored stems, Swiss chard is absolutely a vegetable that could and should make the leap from the vegetable garden to the border.

The back side: What a difference!

2011-07-06T07:00:00.000-05:00

I inadvertently took all off last week off from blogging but in a second you'll see what I've been up to. I've been busy, busy, busy working on the back yard (which is really the side yard but for whatever reason we call it the back yard). And it wasn't until after work yesterday when I snapped a few photos that I realized:

1. Holy smokes, somewhere along the line this turned into a really big project, and

2. What a difference from nine months ago.

Here's what the house looked like September 1, 2010:

And here's what it looks like today:

That's some kind of after, huh? In the past six weeks or so, I put in the stone path (which leads to our detached garage), the stone retaining walls on either side of the path, and all of the plantings to the right of the path and the little bit you see in the foreground on the left side of the path. I'll give you a closer look at some of the new gardens, which are pretty bare bones, later this week. My goal for this summer was to just get the framework in, so I focused on getting in trees and shrubs. I filled in with many of the perennials I had around from buying sprees and some of the things I have purchased through the Yahoo plant-buying co-op.

I'll try to take some photos of the garden from different angles. I struggled for a long time about whether to add the half-moon shaped garden on the left side of the path (as you're looking at it now) so I'll be interested to hear people's thoughts on that.

I haven't written much about the renovation since it ended because I was just exhausted and sick of the whole project. It definitely was emotionally draining and every time I tried to blog about it, it got way too preachy and whiny, so I'm saving that for another time when I have had more time to gain better perspective on it. I will tell you this, though: Toward the end, when it became clear that we were way over budget, we gave serious though to eliminating the deck from the plan, and looking at this photo, I'm so happy we kept it. We have been eating outside much more at a table under the pergola and it truly feels like an extension of the living area.

Tomato race: I'm behind

2011-06-22T14:36:00.000-05:00

Before we get to this post, I just wanted to mention that I did a little tree planting 101 tutorial on The Design Confidential yesterday. Basically you shouldn't do anything you've ever seen a city tree planter do, but check it out if you're looking for some info on planting the framework of your yard.

Late last week, I swung by the community gardens at the YMCA to check on the progress of our tomato experiment going on there. And the news, I'm afraid, is not good.

My mom's Legend tomato (in its protective plastic partial enclosure) is not only bigger than mine, it has TOMATOES! What the heck? Although her Delicious tomato has no tomatoes on it, it too is bigger than my Delicious.

Tomatoes on my mom's Legend tomato, above, and filling up its enclosure, below.

My Legend tomato. No tomatoes here and it is slightly smaller.

A few interesting shots from other gardens:

The trellis structure in the middle is just branches tied together but I really like it. Looks arty. And the marigolds brighten it up.

This gardener put PVC pipe sections next to all his or her tomatoes to help get water and fertilizer to the root zone.

These are maybe the tallest tomato cages I've ever seen, but the holes in the wire are so small I don't know how this gardener will get the tomatoes out.

The easiest garden ever

2011-06-22T07:46:00.000-05:00

I've mentioned and recommended one of my favorite blogs, North Coast Gardening, more than once. There is loads of great information, but probably my favorite feature on the site is the product reviews. I have yet to buy one thing recommended by Gen that I don't love and a couple of things she hooked me onto are my favorite gardening tools (my hori hori and my Bahco pruners).

Recently I was l fortunate enough to win a giveaway for an Eartheasy Farmstead raised bed kit through North Coast Gardening and I can't tell you how excited I was. I've been looking at doing a small addition to the raised veggie garden to move out some of the more space-intensive plants that the critters won't touch (I'm looking at you, zucchini), and this sounded like the perfect solution.

After what can only be described as the most convaluted method of delivery ever (Fedex didn't just get on the failboat for this one, they were the captain, navigator and first mate of the failboat), the raised bed arrived, sort of. It was actually found on the side of a neighbor's garage. And I use the term neighbor loosely, since it was actually on an entirely different road. But I guess these things happen and I will say that the people at Eartheasy were amazing about the whole thing, which was not even close to being their fault.

But I digress. Stay on task, Erin, my fourth grade substitute teacher Mrs. Hummerding would say.

Anyway, amazing raised bed gets here. And I set about putting it together. But you see, Gen and her rather well-known cohort Amy Stewart (author of "Wicked Plants," "Wicked Bugs" and official Garden Rant ranter) made a big ol' fuss about how quickly they could put together their raised bed (Eartheasy says you can put it together in less than five minutes and Gen and Amy were aiming to do it in significantly less). So I watched their video (the unedited version so I could time them myself) and it took them exactly 30 seconds.

Never one to turn down an imaginary challenge not issued by anyone, I decided I would do it quicker than that. And I did.

28 seconds, baby! And oh yeah, I was by myself, so boo-yah.

(We regret to inform you that video footage of said major accomplishment/engineering feat is not available because I didn't shoot one. But trust me, I blew them away.)

So the last two pictures are phone pictures and boy are they horrible. Unfortunately the camera I use for the blog is actually the work camera and someone needed it for a work-related purpose so I've been without it for a week. How dare they!

Seriously, though, this is the easiest thing I've ever put together in my life. Slide in the ends and stick in the dowel pegs that hold it all together. That's it. Oh and since it's made of white cedar it smells amazing.

Fill that baby up with dirt (all I did was cut the lawn short underneath it and use my garden fork to sort of perforate the ground under it), and plant away. I'm thrilled to have the garden-eating zucchini moved out and I put a few herbs in it too. I hope to plant some garlic in fall and next year it will be the perfect spot for onions, too.

And yes, I realize I'm going on a bit much about how much I love this raised bed, but all I did was win a great contest. Nobody even asked me to write anything about it, but I had to share it because it is truly the quickest way to get gardening that I've ever seen.

Meh now, wow later? Let's hope

2011-06-20T08:02:00.001-05:00

You know I'm all about keeping it real here, which is why I sometimes show the bad and the ugly as well as the good. As I mentioned last week, here in the Midwest we are suffering from a truly cruddy spring. Most plants are stuck at whatever size they were when they were purchased at the nursery.

The window box is no exception. So so many big landscaping projects going on this year, I've not put as much thought into containers as I usually do so the window box was sort of a last minute operation.

I'm one who works by inspiration, so I do best when I can find a picture of something—a combination of textures, colors or specific plants that I like—then tweak it to my tastes or needs, and my go-to source for inspiration is Deborah Silver's blog Dirt Simple. I've mentioned it many times before but Deborah elevates containers to an art form. Although I would have a hard time duplicating what Deborah does—the containers themselves are amazing, not to mention the interesting and mature plant material she uses—I find them very inspiring. If Deborah ever writes a book on container design (please????????) I will be first in line to buy it.

So when I found a picture of a line of containers going up a set stairs that were packed with an insane combination of colors: red, purple, hot pink, I thought, "Why not?" It's a little wilder than I usually go, and I'm not sure if it relates to anything else that's going on in the garden or on the patio, but I was drawn in immediately to the inspiration photo so there must be something there.

Even though we put the window box up using a French cleat that would allow us to taken it down, it is so high and so heavy when full of dirt, that it's just easier to plant it up on the ladder. So before I take all the plants up there, I laid them out on the front steps to get an idea of the best arrangement.

After rearranging things a bit, I carried everything up to the box (which I had refreshed the dirt in as well as added some time-release fertilizer) and put it in.

And the effect was ... underwhelming. It continues to be, actually. Containers are only really good looking once everything fills in and given the lousy weather, there is no filling out (or in) going on here. Still, I have hope that once the weather turns around it will come the window box will come to life. The fact of the matter is that most home gardeners will deal with this situation when planting containers. It's better to buy smaller plants that haven't bloomed themselves out and if you want the best selection at the nursery, that's exactly what you'll be buying. In an ideal world, we'd all plant our containers in April and then put them in a greenhouse to fill in and be babied until it's time for their unveiling, but that's very realistic. So we plant, squint a lot to imagine what it will look like in a month and hope for the best.

Superbells Grape Punch is looking positively pathetic in this picture but it perked up overnight and is looking fine now.

This is not exactly the big unveiling of the window box I was hoping to put on the blog, but that's just not how things go sometimes. Instead, we'll watch it grow and see if it's a success or a candidate for the failboat.

The background is dark red geraniums and a few nicotianas. Along the front edge is:

Superbena Royale Iced Cherry* (a crazy bright pink that I love! The Superbena Royale series is pretty spectacular: Last year I grew Royale Chambray and loved it and this year both Iced Cherry and Peachy Keen look promising. I hereby proclaim that the next addition to the Superbena Royale line is Superbena Royale With Cheese ... please Proven Winners?)

Suberbells Sweet Tart*

Superbells Grape Punch* (the "punch" line of Superbells is pretty fantastic too. This one is sort of medium purple with a dark purple center.)

Lime green Licorice plant (Helichrysum) for a little shot of cool color in this "hot" mix.

* These plants were provided by Proven Winners free of charge as part of their garden writers testing program. To my knowledge, all are set to be 2012 introductions so you probably won't find them in nurseries this year and they may be in limited release next year. I have not been paid to write about these plants and any comments on them are entirely my own.

Professional weather grousing

2011-06-16T07:43:00.000-05:00

Midwesterners are professional weather crabbers. That is to say, complaining about the weather is pretty much our main hobby. The first sentence out of the mouth of many a midwestern baby has been, "Hot enough for ya?" or of course, "Cold enough for ya?" And that's pretty much what we say for the rest of our lives. It's basically what comes after "Hello" in any given conversation.

I do my best to avoid complaining about the weather on the blog too much because it just gets old after awhile. But after yet another 50-degree mid-June day, I think I've earned the right to complain a little.

My biggest problem with the weather is what it's doing to the plants. The tallest peas, which I actually planted on time this year, are only about 16 inches tall. The tomatoes appear to be stuck in some kind of time warp; most of them don't look like they've budged since I put them in the ground. That's just what's happening in the veggie garden. The annuals are ridiculously small this year and I can see that it will be a good month before the containers even look like anything. The buds on the peonies are just nickel-sized and the clematis look like they want to bloom but are afraid to.

The tomatoes and the few basil plants that look like anything anymore all seem to be stuck some sort of time warp: they don't seem to have grown at all.

Over on the other side of the garden, the peas are finally starting to climb but there is no sign of any peas. The lettuce is doing great and the beets and Swiss chard in the foreground are in dire need of thinning.

A new plant I'm trying this year is malabar spinach. It's supposed to be a beautiful vining plant and the leaves, which are quite thick, taste like buttery delicious spinach. I hope it lives up to the hype but it too hasn't done much since it was planted.

There are a few things that seem to like the weather. The lettuce is delicious and plentiful and the hostas seem particularly large this year. The only other good thing about the weather is that I'm so far behind in my garden maintenance that I feel like I have a little more time to get things in shape before "real" summer weather arrives.

So am I suffering alone here or has the weather in your part of the world been lousy too?