(Via Snappy's Gardens Blog)

Posted by admin to garden, renovation on 2007-12-11, 04:37:00

The Garden yesterday... I have been in the house for 12 days, and in the garden every day of those twelve, even just to look..

The end of the fourth day of renovation, complete with some new plants that I bought with Cat at Hampsons big plant nursery.

The Garden at the end of the third day with the light fading. The lines of the Borders are now visible, the clothes line is now alone with no weeds at its feet.The years of damp and soil show on the dirty looking slabs.It also rained every day I was in the garden or at work. The viburnum has been trimmed a bit, at the base and sides.

(Via Snappy's Gardens Blog)

Posted by admin to garden, renovation on 2007-12-11, 04:22:00

The photos show how I cut the brambles down, dug the weed roots up, and cleared the grass and mosses. There was so much to clear it was hard to find. Once upon a time a gardener lived here as there were borders on either side of the garden. A few years of neglect had them overrun by weeds and brambles.
How much quicker is it to show photos then to do it! The top photo shows the white tiles I took from the cellar to keep the soil in the border instead of blowing over the stone slabs.

(Via Country Gardener)

Posted by admin to September, drought, fading flowers, rain, renovation on 2007-09-04, 19:04:00

As September arrives and the gardening season begins to wind down, there's beauty in the fading away, such as these prairie coneflowers from our meadow. I belong to a camera club and a few of us got together on Sunday morning to try to photograph monarch butterflies at the meadow. Alas, the butterflies eluded us, but the fading flowers were lovely. This was my favorite picture from that morning.

I haven't posted much lately, as we have started a major house renovation. We are getting a new kitchen (very exciting, as I've never had a great kitchen ever).

The complication is that we are moving the kitchen space to another part of the house and what was the kitchen until now will become a bedroom.

For various reasons - the kitchen move, repairs, updates, space for the fridge - five rooms are involved. We have done a lot of moving in the past few days, and the only livable space right now is the study, where we are sleeping and the living room. I have converted the main floor laundry room into a provisional kitchen, with microwave, kettle and coffee maker.

The old range is going down to the furnace room tomorrow, so I will be able to do more than microwave dinners. There are some nice garden fresh tomatoes begging to be made into sauce.

Wish us luck: by my birthday in mid-October, we should be ready to move into the new kitchen and updated bedroom.

PS: As for rain, we are still in drought mode. There hasn't been a drop since the wonderful rain on Aug. 25. The extended forecast shows dry, dry, dry to past mid-September.