A Little Garden Report

There’s not a lot going on in the garden right now. But a few improvements have been made, so thought I’d share them.

This is what I see when I drive up. (It looks better in person.) Those are vanilla marigolds, with some petunias between, and sweet alyssum behind. I have enjoyed this area of the garden a lot. I am looking forward to filling it with tulips again for the spring.

Remember the patchwork pathway? Where I tried to plant plants in the six spots. Yes, that never worked. I think if I had wanted it to work, I should have pre-dug out about a foot of dirt and rocks and replaced it with good soil. So a few weeks ago I told Kevin that I wanted to get rid of the plants. We looked around our pile of unused stuff, and these light colored blocks almost fit perfectly. Except for 1/2 inch that he had to saw off of each of them… Anyway, I am very glad that I don’t have to be sad looking at the plants that don’t want to grow there.

Costco had these tall solar lights (like 5 or 6 feet tall) on sale. So I got four of them. Two are by the front fence (in the above photo) and a few days ago we put these among the Japanese maples.

This bed has gone a little wild. I planted some zinnias in there quite a while ago and they just started blooming now. Bringing a bit of cheer to the garden.

This is a dwarf abutilon that came back from last year, and is blooming like crazy. I like it better than the huge one that takes up a whole garden bed and is scarcely blooming.

And the weed/morning glories have come back after a few years off! This picture is not re-touched. They really are that brilliant in the morning. Only trouble is, I usually forget to go out and look at them in the morning 🙂

Okay, unrelated to the garden. I finally started back to work on my rug hooking (this is an upside down view of a giant redwood tree.)

I glanced over to see all three girls sharing one bed. There are literally three doggie beds in this room, but I guess they all wanted to be in the bed closest to me.

And that’s about it for this week. The weather has cooled down a bit and we are having a whole week of cooler weather. So wonderful!!

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I Went to Ohio!

Last fall I entered one of my rugs “He Holds All Creation Together” in a national contest called Celebrations. Rug hooking is not like quilting. There aren’t too many shows or contests. So when I was accepted into the exhibit in the Originals category, I was VERY excited. They publish a book with pictures and descriptions of all the quilts, and I have looked forward to and bought the Celebrations book each year. They also display the Celebrations rugs at a big rug event in Ohio held at Sauder Village. I’ve always wanted to go to Sauder, and so that’s how I happened to go to Ohio last week. Here I am next to my rug.

Sauder Village is a fairly large village with some authentic buildings and some reproductions. They have all kinds of demonstrations going on–spinning, weaving, even broom making! The first day I of course visited the farm, and watched a demonstration on milking a goat and making butter. I loved it! When I get tired of chickens, I will turn that into a goat house 🙂

This little building and garden was just charming.

They had a museum too, which I wandered through. Isn’t this a kick? Imagine getting your mail this way. Amazon might have trouble getting your packages to you in two days.

And a wooden bike!! Can you believe it?

Now I only took a picture of this toilet because I would love to have a toilet like this 🙂

Then there was a famous glass man who actually works there. I went the first day, and stared at all his beautiful glass creations and knew that I was not going to spend that much money on glass. But I was so glad I went back the second day. I watched him work on this glass for a long time. He also had a helper there that was very good at explaining what was going on.

One day I wandered the back paths of Sauder Village. There was a fur trader there. Did you know that Beaver hides were the main commodity for trading? I also visited the grist mill, where the nice man gave his whole talk just for me. So of course, I bought two pounds of corn meal… Its in the freezer. But I do like corn bread, so I might try making that soon.

I came upon this beautiful conservatory. But by that time I was too hot to even go inside. I just enjoyed the beauty from outside.

Then one day I thought I’d be more adventurous and headed out to visit a nature preserve. It was rainy, so I just drove through. Everything is so green in Ohio!

The things I noticed most about this area of Ohio were how extremely straight the roads were, corn fields everywhere, and also small cemeteries just sitting on the side of the road in between the corn fields. I realized I hadn’t taken any pictures of the corn fields, so when I saw this view with the pretty flowers in the foreground, I snapped it.

On my last day, I didn’t need to get to the airport until 3:30. I googled “things to do in Toledo.” And I saw that they had a zoo! I decided to be adventurous and visit the zoo. But I have to admit, that was a bit of a bust. I was dressed all in black (very comfortable in airports and airplanes.) But not so great for walking MILES in hot humid weather. And yes, it was so hot and humid, most of the animals were hiding…

They did have a bird aviary that you could walk through, and I really enjoyed that. I like birds. Someday maybe I’ll have some specialty finches again.

After walking all that time in the heat, I was SO HOT. I googled “frozen yogurt” and found that the only one listed was between the zoo and the airport! Perfection. This was my lunch at 2:30. No apologies for the treats on top. They actually had a yogurt that they called California Tart. How about that? Who knew it was a California thing. Its usually the only frozen yogurt that I get.

Of course, I haven’t even mentioned the rug show. I spent a great deal of time there, looking at all the rugs. Someone said there was somewhere between 300 and 800 rugs displayed. Oh, and there were vendors too 🙂 If you want to read more about the rug show you can visit my other blog. I haven’t written about it yet. It’ll probably be up by Friday.

Catching Up on Garden Stuff

Its so hot here. Day after day its 95-100 degrees. Its not humid, its just hot and dry. I don’t really like working in the garden when its like this. So I just go out every morning and/or evening to sprinkle the Japanese maples and to check the pot plants and water them as needed.

Here is just a shot of part of the garden. You can see the hose that is always present, and also the weeds that I just haven’t gotten to.

Remember when I had a FOREST of these fairy impatiens? I was pretty relentless in removing them from the garden. But I was glad when one showed up here. This is a place that I have a hard time growing anything.

A really pretty begonia grew back from last year’s bulb.

I planted a “Sweet 100’s” cherry tomato. So far I’ve harvested 6 little tomatoes. But there are quite a few more growing on there.  The other little plant is basil. It kept wanting to go to seed, so I chopped it down and gave a bunch of basil to my neighbors, and that worked. It is coming back again!

Lilies! Daylilies and Oriental lilies. They all did very well this year. But does anybody ever want to do this? I just want to tear everything out of this particular bed and re-do the whole thing. If the feeling doesn’t pass, that might be on the agenda for late fall.

This lily was hanging over into the mandevilla vine, which isn’t doing that well this year.

And I have decided that this is the best way to enjoy Gerbera Daisies. Buy a bunch at the grocery store for $3.99. They lasted two weeks in my house!

Well, that’s the garden report for this week. In other news, bears have made a large appearance in the area. Five of my neighbors have had their garbage cans (and one bee hive) attacked by bears. I stopped taking walks for now, and I look around very carefully every time I go outside of my fence. I put my garbage in my little outdoor studio room, and maybe its because Noah spends so much time outside, but so far I haven’t seen any bears at my house.