Side yard work

Wow, the amount of work just for this little section.  Phew!!  Here's the before:

And after!

Okay, not looking like much of a difference but wow did I get rid of a lot of creeping bellflowers and Lily of the Valleys! 

So first, I had to clear out an area to make way for a path to the telephone box and electric meter.  I'm not sure if anyone has actually been to either one, but just in case!

I told Bobby to bring these crescent-shaped pavers up to the steps but did he really have to block the entire pathway?!

Actually bumped my knee trying to avoid these pavers and totally broke skin through my jeans. Sheesh!

Okay, pathway cleared:

The shape of these pavers are pretty unique. I've never worked with them before.  Hmmm, interesting!

I think this might work??

Now to clear up the rest of the slope and I've used the pavers to create borders around the plants.  I think it looks okay.  The circles are definitely cute :-)

Definitely looking better than what it was before:

Next round of sand, gravel, and rocks.  This is definitely a workout!

Okay, I ran out of those crescent pavers but found some bricks in the garage.  Figured I need a path of some sort when I have to water the plants:

After contemplating a little bit as I didn't like the way the bricks looked, I swapped them out with the other crescent pavers that I had used previously for the path.  There - much better!

And yup, mo' better! I will have to fill in those gaps with either sand and/or more gravel:

After 2 afternoons of working on this side yard, I actually lost 2lbs.  Ha!

And now to work on this one lower section.  Sooooo many of the same creeping bellflowers and lilies.  When will this ever stop!  I did just read up on it and looks like it's best to make sure the plants don't reseed. That's one thing we weren't paying attention to - letting nature take its course. So I guess it's really our own doing with this plant invasion??? We'll have to pay better attention this year!

I'm smothering as much as I can with newspaper:

So, I didn't get to take a before photo.  But there was a crawling Hydrangea right against this wall. And since we've moved here, I never knew what it was until just a couple of days ago.  Thank goodness for these Apps on the phone that can identify plants!  I thought it was going to be a tough chore to dig it up, but Graham was able to dig it up with a few good digs with the big shovel.

And now, just prepping this spot where it's going to call its new home.  I'm going to put the trellis right next to the downspout and hopefully that's where the hydrangea will cling on to.  And if it does go up the brick wall, we'll just have to keep and eye on it and make sure it doesn't hurt the brick:

I went to pick up some rocks too for this little section:  

So Bobby think I overpaid for the rocks, but I don't think he realizes how expensive rocks can be!  Anyway, I think it was a good bargain because the guy even carried the bucket and unloaded it into the truck.  He also laid down a doggy pee-sheet so my trunk doesn't get dirty. So I say, win-win!

I didn't realize how tricky it was to arrange these rocks.  I guess we should have picked out flatter ones, but it is what it is now:

And I think the creeping Hydrangea will be happier here in this corner.  I've never seen it flower before so maybe it will this year?

And I've picked one MacDaddy stone for this project and it's the perfect perch for our Yoga Frog. Yay! There are cracks in our frog so that's another thing on my to-do list.  Never-ending list.  Aaahhhh!!!

There's still one more section on the top full of this section that has lots of creeping Bellflowers and Lilies.  I'm hoping to level it out and put a raised bed there.  I found 4 raised beds by the edge of the property near the firewood.  So exciting! Anyway, hope to plant some leafy veggies since this area does not get a lot of sun.  That's the plan for now, at least.

And hope to see some blooms on the peonies that I bought last year.  And also on this one other plant which I have no idea what it is now.  But at least it's seems to be growing and is happy.  More photos to come once everything blooms (let's hope)! 

Grow light

I never thought I'd need a grow light.  But it seems to be a thing here in the Midwest!

I started a few row of flower seeds when we left for NJ during Spring Break last month.  And actually, I didn't set up the grow light yet.  But once we got home after our 1-wk trip, I started to water the seeds again.  And this time used the grow light.  It's set to 9 hours every day, on a timer thankfully:

And look, after a couple of weeks, the little sunflower seeds started to sprout!

And then, another week after that - the other flower seeds were starting to sprout too.  It's amazing how quickly these seeds grow with the grow light.  Impressive!

Look how cute the sunflower seedlings are!

We've transferred the sunflower seedlings into bigger pots:

And eventually, I'll need to transfer the other flower seedlings into bigger pots too.  And once I can clear up a couple of areas in the garden, hopefully we can have a few more variety of flowers to attract butterflies and hummingbirds.  I'm so excited!

Perhaps in a few months, assuming all goes well, I can post photos of my lovely garden. Fingers crossed!!

Tree trimming

It was that time of year again to give our leaning tree another haircut. Unfortunately, it's always so expensive! But anything to make sure this tree doesn't topple over.  Even the Tree Guy mentioned that it's leaning even more this year. Yikes!

Okay, tree guys are here and the bench is in the perfect position now to see what's going on in the yard.  I don't know why we had it in the perpendicular position prior to this. This is so much better!

These guys really know what they are doing:

Guy at the bottom has a rope that's tied to the tree trunk. So once that trunk is sawed off, it can be lowered to the bottom gently. Clever!

This is how much the tree is leaning:

And from another angle (where our little garden wind spinner is currently located). You can really see how much this tree is leaning!

If anything, at least we are getting some mulch:

Not much but enough to get through a couple of spots in the yard.  This house has so many trees and shrubs and flowers to take care of.  Aaahhh!!!

Last year, we didn't get to mulch this area - so doing it now :-)

Looks like the snow shovel is coming in handy even when there's no snow. Ha ha!

I think I have a name for this tree now - Linny.  Or Lenny?? Well, which ever name it might be, I think he looks happier now :-D

Okay, until the next couple of years before the next haircut!!

Random photos

Quite a few photos to dump today! :-)

First off, now that the weather is nicer - there's too many plants and weeds sprouting everywhere! I'm trying to thin out the hostas around the front:

And then, I thought these were hostas and were offering them up to my neighbors.  But they are actually Lily of the Valley. And as you can tell, quite invasive!

And supposedly, these are pretty invasive too - creeping bluebells. Well, right now I don't see any bluebells but they are definitely creeping everywhere too! So out they come too:

Another creeping thing and I think this one is actually called Creeping Charlie.  I wonder how they came up with this name. Ha!

I replanted this hydrangea from the yard into a pot.  This seems to be a good spot for it, like it was meant to be!

I did have to pull out this log out from the pot out first though. Actually, I couldn't pull it out. I needed Graham to help me and I had to lean the pot so I could dump the log out. It's heavy alright! Glad I didn't break the pot and there were ants everywhere. Ewww!

Speaking of help, I had the boys (including Bobby!) help me make little pots out of newspaper:  

It was for our first ever neighborhood Earth Day event.  It worked out quite nicely although we didn't have a lot of kids show up.  Hopefully better turn out for next year!  But so glad the Youth Committee that I'm part of was able to turn my idea into an actual event :-)

Boys are finally also cleaning out all those leaves by the outdoor firepit.  Hope to be able to use this spot more often now that the weather is warming up:

And at first, I was going to use all these pavers to make a pathway between the outdoor deck and the back patio.  But now we have some cucumbers and tomatoes to plant, I've decided to use it for another raised bed instead.  Yay for Bobby for helping out. Those pavers are heavy!

This doesn't look half bad!

I did have a trellis but now I've used it for our creeping Hydrangea. More photos to follow on that later! So anyway, now I have to figure out what else I can use as a trellis instead of buying something that's too expensive.

In the meantime, the birds are back making another nest in the outdoor heater.  They just don't learn, do they?!  But I can definitely tell why they would use it.  Definitely a nice shelter with that huge top!

Thankfully, there were no eggs in the nest yet:

The birds just won't quit making more nest in between the outside wall and downspout.  As long as there's no poop around the area!!

Can you believe it, we had frost last week!  So I had to cover up all of my tender plants with kitchen towels and what not:

Thankfully everything survived!

Including this little pansy that's growing through the pavers in our front porch. This one didn't actually get covered during the frost.  A friend told me that pansies are like cockroaches. Nature sure find its way. LOL!

I'm glad I waited to plant the strawberries.  This tiered planter was meant for some herbs but looks like I'll have to think of something else for our vegetable/herb garden now:

These little ones are in little planters for now.  I'll have to figure out where to put them.  

I did discover some raised bed that were left by the previous owner.  So I'm very excited about this discovery and now I just have to figure out where to put them!

So... we tried to fix Graham's bicycle.  He managed to get his chain really stuck to the back of the gears.  And finally had to bring it in to an expert/bicycle shop. And due to a backlog, it will take about 3 weeks or so before we can get it back.  Yikes!

And yup, more furniture.  I just can't help myself.  See a need, fill a need :-D

And this was rather random, I saw this map for $2.  And it's of Pueblo, Colorado.  This is the town where I got my ticket for "Aggressive Driving" many many years ago when I was still touring as a professional golfer.  What a weird coincidence to see it in a thrift shop.  So, yup - had to get it too. LOL!!

And answer to finding my spices.  Yay for $4 each!!

The shelves are a bit deeper than I like so they are limiting more of what I can put into the cabinet.  But I can at least see all my spices now.  Thank goodness for some really sticky velcro tape because I really didn't want to make any holes into these cabinets:

And this was probably not necessary but I really wanted some sort of hanging pendant in our toilet.  I don't know why.  Ha ha! I'm not quite liking this though, so... to be decided, I guess:

I'm down to my last pack of Japanese crackers!  These are sort of like saltines but for whatever reason, I just really like these.  I picked a few up during my travels/transit in Japan to Malaysia end of last year:

Also finally decided to try out this coffee and tea mix - in a bag. Picked these up in my hometown last year as well Definitely an interesting taste!  But I think I'm starting to like it, especially when mixed with some condensed milk.  Who doesn't like sweetened condensed milk?! :-)

We recently went to another STEAM event.  Unfortunately there wasn't too many things that caught Graham's interest.  He was able to do one of these little soldering projects again though for free:

Looks like he passed because it lights up. Yay!

Charlie, on the other hand, did not succeed in making "Oreo Sushi":

We will need to recalibrate his recipe another time!

And oh, what time is it?  Lake time!  

Yup, another spontaneous purchase.  I do have a clock I really like - but for only $10 - it would have been cheaper to buy this used one than trying to fix my old clock.  I guess eventually perhaps I will still want to fix it.  But for now, I love this one!

Last but not least, photo of me in my new readers.  Yeah... long-sightedness is getting pretty bad now where I have to wear readers when I have my contact lens on!!  I think these look pretty fancy :-D

Okay, that's it for now!