Lessons from the Master Gardener Walk

Lesson #1: take friends.

Lesson #2: take a camera.

Lesson #3: document the things you saw that might help you with your own yard projects, and promptly forget everything else :)

I like the idea of fencing the backyard from the driveway. It's something I'd like to tackle in my own yard soon.

Hibiscus! Beautiful, glorious, hibiscus. Gotta keep it in a pot this far north, but maybe I love this flower just enough to bring it inside every winter.

Hanging baskets on fences. I have a long, long back fence that could use a little more interest.

Mulch paths defined with log portions. Something to think about.

It's called "Indian Pink" and it grows these bright colored flowers in deep shade.

This is a stone walkway with something besides grass between the stones. Doesn't need mowing.

Allium. First time I've ever seen it. Apparently, this firework of a flower pops out of the ground in spring with no leaves whatsoever. It's just a 12-24" stick with a big, blue pom pom on top that turns into a stiff little brown flower and stick that stays around until you cut it down. The current trend is to keep the brown bit around a bit and spray paint it silver or gold or something else dazzling. My friend tells me she saw someone paint them red, white, and blue for the 4th of July. How have I never seen this before in my life?

I like the row of annuals in front and a row of taller perennials in back with a mix of colors and textures in between.

I just obtained a hardy kiwi vine which tends to grow like a honeysuckle. These folks plopped their honeysuckle in the middle of the grass and turned it into a neat focal point. It's something I'd like to consider before planting my kiwi vines along the cedar fence, especially since the kiwi can grow up to 20' in a single season (optimal conditions, of course, but still a daunting possibility).

I forgot to take my phone to every garden on the walk, so I asked my friends to take pictures of a couple things for me:

• I finally pinned down the name of that neat little spiraling arborvitae shrub I've been curious about
• One gardener put up a tall, beautiful fence about 6 feet in from her actual property line fence to create a hidden place to store stuff and work on all the messy bits of gardening (wheelbarrow, compost, mulch, extra pots, odds and ends). I would LOVE to carve a niche to tuck away all of my garden's messy bits somehow. It was such a seamless setup!

Coming Home is tasty

We just got back from a week-long trip to the south shore of Lake Michigan. It was lovely. A relaxing and fun beach adventure for everyone. I will probably post more about it soon. What I wanted to share in THIS post, however, was how excited I was to come home to this:

James snuggling one of the tiniest chicken eggs I've ever seen.

One of the hens is laying! It's one of the new birds...a Golden Buff. Maybe it's time to name them. Anyway, not only did we get a cute little egg, but the yard and garden are producing edibles! We picked raspberries, sweet snap peas, broccoli florets, collard greens, and cocktail cucumbers. The giant zinnias are so big and bright! They make me happy. I cut a bouquet and delivered it to a friend. Irrigation is a wonderful thing.

I'm so glad I planted those seeds and built that trellis and laid that soaker hose and hauled that mulch and pulled those weeds. June is truly my most favorite month to be a gardener.

These are the first blooms. Many more now. More colors.

"Girls, Meet the Other Girls"

My friend hand-delivered (literally, the chickens sat wrapped in towels on her children's laps for the 25-minute ride) three young pullets to my coop this afternoon. They are Golden Buffs. My two birds are Black Australorps. They are very obviously different and the birds can tell. They don't like each other yet :(

My 'lorps have been sticking to the back corner, only coming out periodically to fight for food and water access. They're making a new kind of cluck that I've never heard before. I've been throwing in treats all afternoon (slugs, half-rotten strawberries) just to mix things up a bit and get them in a better mood. No dice.

*sigh*

Maybe they're too old to integrate properly. Hope not. Let's see what the next week brings.

Remodel thoughts

I don't know who else to hash this out with, so I'm gonna put it up here.

WARNING: this will probably bore you to tears.

Remodeling the kitchen and creating a mudroom has had ripple effects. I expected a few, but this is getting a little out of hand.

• Discovering water between the flooring layers in the kitchen has finally forced us to address the gutters, soffits, and fascia issue outside. Those get a facelift next week while we're away.

• The kitchen ceiling (and half of the mudroom) is currently a layer of new drywall and mudded joints. Perfectly smooth. Ready for texture and paint. That's in stark contrast to the popcorn ceiling that runs through the rest of the house. I had a drywall/ceiling/paint professional come by today to offer some ideas on how to make that look better. Well, everyone is against popcorn ceilings these days. He recommended taking it out of the living room altogether and applying an orange peel texture instead. I asked about the potential presence of asbestos and he said asbestos wasn't in acoustic ceiling applications like this one. Hm. That's the FIRST time I had heard anything like that. I'm extremely skeptical. Luckily, I had an asbestos testing kit on-hand. Minutes after he left, I took a sample and sent it away for testing. I'll have the results in a week or so. If he's right and there's no asbestos in this particular type of popcorn ceiling, then I'm not that bothered by it staying. If he's wrong, and the ceiling contains asbestos, then I'm more motivated to see it go, but not willing to finance it until it starts to deteriorate. The guy was helpful, though, pointing out a few spots where it appears to be weakening. I'll keep an eye on things and eagerly await the test results. 

• Living so heavily in the dining room has taken its toll on the carpet. We initially wanted to redo the dining room for aesthetic reasons, but now it's getting pretty gross in there, and I'm looking for flooring and paint options that are much more scrubbable.

• The kitchen opens up into the living room, which now needs some decorating help to make it a cozier space. Functionally, it has turned into half of a living room next to a major superhighway. 

• And now that the kitchen is updated, I see so many other places that could use a little update. Nothing will be as expensive or extensive as the kitchen: front hall light fixture, paint, move a bookshelf, new knobs/handles on a dresser.

Farm update

The raspberry canes are COVERED in small, green berries...

I am literally living two realities: 1) Don't count your berries before they ripen, and 2) It's gonna be a Gma/Gpa Evans raspberry patch kind of summer! Well, for the kids, anyway :)

In other news, a red fox (or two or three) made off with three of our hens last night :( Greedy little group. They exploited a weakness in the door of my impenetrable fortress. It's a good thing that foxes don't leave any gore behind. Just feathers. The kids were a bit shocked, of course, and Alice was in tears when she discovered that "Zippy" was one of the unlucky ones. Zippy was the only hen we could distinguish from the others because of her malformed feet. She remained the fastest, trickiest hen of the lot despite her physical defect. None of our hens are old enough to lay eggs yet. Another month or so. Anyway, the kids felt a little better when I told them it was probably a family of foxes ("babies" being the key word here) that benefited from this disaster. I wish they had feasted on rabbits, instead...

My friend has already offered us a few young hens of her own to fill out our flock again. They will be a different breed called Golden Buff. Hybrids. Great brown egg layers. I have tasted the eggs that come from my friend's farm and still preferred the eggs of my own birds, but soon I will have a direct, genetic, side-by-side comparison to see if it's all in my head :) Sounds fun.