Bathroom #2 Finished (a la Azteca!)

Inspired by the radical improvement in the upstairs bath remodel, I finally got off my uninspired rear end and finished the boys' bath downstairs. I had done a lot of the hard work last year, patching and repainting the ceiling, then painting the ceiling and walls with the cream and turquoise, but I stalled out at the "tile" mosaic. After dropping the "stamped tile" idea and cutting my own stencils for the 5-color tile design I created, I was finally back in business.

I stenciled the mosaic pattern all the way around the bath, then added a simple mosaic around the window to set it off.

I found a nice shelf unit at the thrift store and covered up the pink roses with dark green paint (thought the boys would appreciate that). I wanted a little more storage since this bath has no vanity.

The boys like it! Jo likes the lizards and Z appreciates his school colors in the design.

We Interrupt the Gardening in Progress...

...for a bathroom mini-remodel. We're having a potluck with some friends from church next Sunday here and it was motivation to finally check this off my summer to-do list.

The cabinets are the original 1960's vanity installed when the house was

built. With a little help from a friend with a mitering saw, we patched the chipped areas in the cupboard doors and trimmed the edges with molding from the hardware store.

Two coats of paint and we were ready to rehang the doors. Then we painted the mirror wall lavender (mixed some white and deep purple wall paint we already had), framed the mirror with some wider molding to hide the aged edges, and painted the light fixture to hide the rust. Viola! Mini-makeover for $25! Well, that doesn't include the parts to reseal the leaking toilet I discovered when I was painting down there... but at least we caught it before the floor was damaged!

Behold the scary "before" pic. It didn't look this bad when we moved in 7 years ago with our then 8 and 5 year old boys...

Recycled Rubber = New Pond!

Last night, our neighbor (who has a pond landscaping business) came by with a "recycled" piece of a pond liner that he had recently replaced on a job. Just the thing we need for our front yard mini-pond! I laid the liner pad in, then the liner, and J helped me fill it up and add some rocks today. We'll need to trim the edging and cover it all around with rocks, but it is looking great, and at the right price - FREE!

We have the cement blocks laid out on top of the grass, fit together in a mosaic pattern. Hopefully we'll find more recycled broken sidewalk this summer to complete the other part of the path. We plan to dig it in flush with the ground then plant the crevices with creeping thyme or some other hardy ground cover.

Back & Front Yard Successes

Yesterday I "harvested" all the spinach and beets in the shady, poorish-soil backyard bed (you can see where this is headed...). After washing them and taking off the stems, I think I have - a cup and a half. Maybe one salad's-worth. Sigh.

But on the other hand, the Sugar Snap peas in the same bed are doing terrifically! My husband helped me with emergency height-extending poles to train them on up to 6 or 7 feet, since they had outgrown the tomato cages and started to flop over. I picked up another packet of the same seeds, so I can start another crop for the fall. Hey, if I can get something to grow back there, I'll stick with it! I'm sure improving the soil would help...

In the SFG (square foot garden) bed in the front yard, the one month old Regal spinach was ready to pull this morning. Other than some minor bug holes, it is gorgeous. Gotta plant more of this!

2009 Harvest totals:

.5 lb radishes

.5 lb spinach

one individual strawberry!

Mid-June update

An updated aerial photo of my veggie bed from this morning: compare to here. The empty blocks have been seeded with carrots and fennel (for friendly bug attraction purposes).

The spinach is ready to harvest too. I still have the squirrel-proofing up and it's working great - no invasions at all. We'll see if it's coon-proof when the

corn gets ripe!

2009 harvest to date:

.5 lb of radishes

Successes and Failures: all learning experiences

Lots of changes in the home garden here! Let me catch up:

- We harvested our first crop! Our "square" of radishes was ready to pull, true to the seed packet's prediction at 21 days. Very pretty and fun to pick. If only we liked to eat them...

- The spinach in the backyard bed has bolted in the warm weather. It is only 1-3 inches tall, so THAT experiment was a bust. The spinach in the front yard is about ready to harvest and is a good size and only about 4 weeks old. The sun exposure makes all the difference.

- The sugar snap peas, on the other hand, are doing TERRIFIC in the backyard. They have outgrown their tomato-cage trellises and are blooming like crazy now. I'm thinking of planting more for the fall since they've been so successful so far.

- The new asian pear got "pear blight" in the one variety branch that bloomed. So snip, off it came! It looks a bit unbalanced but there is still a stub to regrow for next year.

- I planted a whole bed of purple bush beans in the 2nd backyard bed, just because I had them. With the low light, I'm not sure how successful they'll be. I've grown them there in the past, but the surrounding trees have grown to block even more sunlight since then.

- Lastly, we were able to acquire a whole BUNCH of these broken cement sidewalk chunks for free from a neighbor down the street. They will be used for path paving according to our plan...

April Showers Brought May Flowers

The new 5-way cherry has blooms on all 5 varieties: Montmorency, Early Burlat, Kristin, Rainier, and Lapin. Wouldn't it be cool if we could get at least a couple cherries to taste the very first year?

I had to try and capture the beauty of our Clematis montana which grows up about 15 feet into our big maple. The pale pink blooms just hang in long garlands from the branches - so beautiful.

The sugar snap peas are finally taking off (yes, they are trellised inside old tomato cages). I think it was less a light issue (they are in the shady backyard beds) than a warmth issue. Once the temps hit the upper 60s then 70s, they started growing in front of our very eyes!

Growth in the Garden

Top row: Heirloom tomato, 3 pickle cucumbers, 2 blocks of sweet corn, 2 Sugar Pie pumpkins, Stupice tomato.

Second row: Jalapeno, purple string beans (not up), onions, 2 basil plants (toward back to allow the zucchini below more room), Mammoth dill, onions, empty, jalapeno.

Bottom row: Strawberry, beets, lettuce, 2 spaces for one Gold Rush zucchini, spinach, radishes, strawflowers.

Beautiful weather here lately: mid-60s to 70s and clear sunshine. The garden is thriving. Under the dogwood tree, the birds enjoy a place to drink and splash, surrounded by sheltering rhodydendrons. I have moved many clumps of aquilegia to grow with the white bleeding heart under the bird bath.

Late Spring in Bloom

New in the front yard garden: the recently-planted fruit trees are doing great and God's been taking care of the watering duties the last few days. I was surprised and thrilled to see that the grafted 5-way cherry has developed flower buds on three different types so far! I guess since the tree has to be older and thicker to be grafted, the branches are mature enough to bear fruit. I will be tickled to get any the very first year!

Also blooming is my "Sugar Plum Fairy" lilac I received as a birthday gift a couple years ago from my brother and sister in law. It is a dwarfed variety that only grows to 4-5' tall and wide. I love the lilacs this time of year - they smell so good.

One Man's Trash...

... is another man's treasure. I happen to work at a health food store that sells only organic produce. So what can I bring home every evening I work? Free organic compost fodder! Cabbage leaves, kale stem ends, overripe bananas, squishy mushrooms: we got it all.

Since I started composting our kitchen scraps and now am bringing home work compost, my compost production is going way up. I have had to start a second bin while the first one finishes up. Besides food, I am using our lawn cuttings and dried maple leaves that I had insulated our perennials with over the winter. Every third day or so, I dump out the bins, move them a bit, and refill and water them to get the compost all oxygenated. So far, it's working great - the ingredients in the first bin are almost indistinguishable and totally broken down.

Planting Day!

Planting day for square-foot-gardening box #1 has arrived! Yesterday I cut the lath boards to make my grid and filled up the box with the prescribed 1/3 vermiculite, 1/3 compost, 1/3 peat moss mixture. What lovely black soil!

First I'm planting a square of each of the spinach, lettuce, and beets I've already started in the backyard. That way I can compare the growth in the 2 locations. Then we add all the seeds and starts we have acquired via saved seeds, trading starts, and purchasing a few starts (my younger son insisted on a trip to the nursery so he could buy a few of "his own" veggies). So the role call in our 24 square-foot garden goes like this:

- One heirloom tomato (traded with sis-in-law)
- One "Stupice" tomato (a delicious Czech variety I love at the farmer's market)
- 3 pickling cucumbers (son wants to make dill pickles!)
- 2 Sugar Pie pumpkins (saved seed from the holidays' pie pumpkin)
- 2 squares (10 plants) full of sweet corn, one type traded and one "Bodacious" from the nursery
- 2 jalapeno peppers (for homemade salsa for hubby and sons)
- 3 squares (27 plants) of Royal Burgundy string beans (will plant in 2-week intervals)
- 2 squares of Copra yellow onions (starts from nursery)
- 1 "Mammoth" dill for pickles, soups, and ranch dressing
- 1 square (16 plants) of "Sparkler" radishes from two year old dollar store seed (we'll see...)
- 1 "Puget Summer" strawberry (son can't wait to try fruit)
- 1 plant "Gold Bar" bush yellow zucchini
- 1 square of strawflowers.

That's a lot of vegetation in a 3 x 8 foot box! We'll see how it goes! This first bed is strictly by the book! We did add 5 foot corner stakes and wrapped the whole box in 3/4" nylon critter netting after hearing from the neighbors what the squirrels have done to their garden starts!

Mother's Day Gardening Blitz!

This weekend, great progress was made in our front yard freedom garden! While hubby and our older son dug 2 deep holes to plant the fruit trees on the west half of the garden, our younger son and I dug out the foundation of our first cedar 3 x 8' veggie bed. Our front yard slopes gradually from the house to the perennial bed and retaining wall, so when we set down the frame, we needed to dig out about 3 inches on the upper edge so the frame was level in the ground. Then we took out the sod at an angle until the inside of the bed was also level. It's all ready to fill and plant!










I really appreciated the Mother's Day labor the guys gave me to get the trees in - the ground was NOT easy to dig out: LOTS of rocks and roots. Thank you again!!
Here, lastly, you can see the two halves of the front yard, now that all the former plantings are gone. The flag pole on the ground to the right is the property line. The boulders in the center will be moved as the garden progresses. Our first veggie bed is on the far upper right of the yard, next to the stone path in lovely full-day sun - Wahoo! Haven't had any of that to work with in the seven years we've been here!
You can see the lines in the lawn where I had boards lying to place the future veggie beds. And see how the house casts a shadow? That's why there will be a path along there, not veggies!