You may be wondering about the lack of activity here on the blog…well, I’ve been keeping busy—just not here. A lot has been happening…like interlocking brick!

It’s a mucky job, but I am liking the idea of no more sand coming into the house. Yes, most people would have opted to finish siding the place first, but the weather’s still too cold, rainy and damp for painting shingles.

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I’m heading back outside—there’s O-pipe to deal with (drainage), lots more brick to lay (there’s a bit of a retaining wall happening to deal with a yard that slopes upwards from the back of the house), and later there will be muddy laundry and probably a tub to clean.

Oh…friggin’ great…Martha just informed me her ceiling is leaking. Again. Gotta go.

This is shaping up to be a fine long weekend!

technorati tags: houseblog, DIY, landscaping, futility

With Mother’s Day just around the corner, I thought I’d share some of my most treasured gifts with you.

My mother was a wonderful gardener, and especially adored tulips. In 1997, the year I was married, she began giving me an assortment of her favourite tulip bulbs to plant in my garden each fall.

When spring comes, their magnificence astounds me and I want to drown in them, for their beauty is so exquisite and fleeting…as ephemeral as the gift from my mother was, for I only received this annual present three times.

Even though mom passed away in the fall of 2000, she manages to find a way to visit me every Mother’s Day.

With the exception of the first photo (taken on Monday), all of these pictures were taken in my garden around dinnertime on Wednesday.

The first tulips mom ever gave me were ‘Blushing Beauty’—a spectacular pale yellow tulip with blush pink veining on 30” stems. Like most of my bulbs, these are in their third garden—having moved with me twice now—and it’s the first time since we’ve lived in this house that the rabbits didn’t get them (thank you, neighbours who now have dogs).

Seeing them in bloom is particularly satisfying; at my wedding I carried a simple bouquet of just these tulips, with sheer green organza ribbon wrapped around their incredibly long stems.

I love that moment just before a tulip unfurls. I think it’s when the flower is at its most beautiful, and parrot tulips (like the ones above) really have a way of capturing it best, don’t you think? They have this fantastic, almost surreal look about them.

Happy Mother’s Day, everyone.
And thanks, mom, for the most awesome gift ever.

technorati tags: houseblog, DIY, gardening, home+renovation

This weekend we got down and dirty in our yard, finally attempting to tackle the ‘Back 40’. Technically, this is about a 58’ x 6’ stretch of uncharted territory along the back of our yard, a large part of it formerly occupied by a row of overgrown privet hedges.
We dug out the hedges when we built our fence a couple of years ago—and with so much else on the go, just left it. Its only use has been as a depository for other plants we’ve yanked out of the yard and would like to relocate down the road, like the lilac bushes that we moved from behind the house before we started the addition.

We’ve had welcome discoveries after removing the hedges, like two really lovely peonies that are both thriving now, but mostly, we’ve been met with quackgrass and weeds. Lots of them—and two in particular that I have now made it my mission in life to thoroughly eradicate from my yard.

It’s not that these weeds are new to us, it’s just that they are relentless. And we gave them carte blanche to multiply faster than rabbits. They are both of the creeping variety, so they send out runners and show up wherever they bloody well please. In abundance.

The first unwelcome weed is commonly known as Creeping Buttercup (Ranunculus repens). I have been digging this scourge out of my garden beds for years, and now I have a battlefield of them.
The second seems to be some inbred cousin of Creeping Charlie that we have named Creeping Crap (Crapperrenialus vulgaris). This one’s easier to remove from the garden beds, but is completely taking over my lawn.

So, pitchforks in hand, we are attacking the Back 40 over the next couple of weekends. Our goal is to completely remove every weed and blade of grass. Then, we’re going to cover the bare ground with landscape fabric and hope to heck we never have a repeat performance of this magnitude. Just today, we have about 20 bags of yard waste. And we’re nowhere near being done.
We’ll probably lay a brick path down the centre of this area once we get the growth under control, so I can cultivate the existing garden bed from both sides. What will become of the remaining ground is still up in the air, but I think there’s enough space for both of us to be buried back there.

technorati tags: houseblog, garden, noxious+weeds, renovation