Green Thumb? Not!

June 2011
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As promised I'm making a post about the rebirth of my garden. If you find this kind of stuff a snore, then just skip past this post because it's full of rambling about plants and bushes.

Spring 2003
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As I mentioned in my last post, all month I've been working on my gardens. When we moved here 11 years ago, the house was brand new and the yard was BARE!  I planted a few things our first summer here and just kept adding as the years passed, including my flowering crabapple in the front yard in 2002.  It was just a stick really, and my Lovie really didn't want a tree directly in front of the house, but I put it there anyway. It's now my absolute favourite part of my whole yard!  Marcus still hates it, and threatens to cut it down every year, but he knows better than to incur my wrath. LOL

Anyway, what was I talking about? Oh yeah... I tried really hard for a few years to keep my gardens beautiful, I even started my own seeds indoors in late winter for a couple of years. I really did love being out there... the smell of the earth... there's something so peaceful and therapeutic about digging in the dirt. And then Mother Nature rewards you with beautiful flowers and luscious greenery.  Ahhh....

This is one of my all time favourite photos of my little Bug. Doesn't this just say it all?

These are all in the summer of 2003.

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Wildflower garden - I LOVED this garden! So beautiful and lush and full of colour!

But something happened and I lost interest... I couldn't keep up with the weeds and I could afford the mulch  to keep them all away.
So the weeds won...

Every spring I would try to promise myself that I would just do it. 15 minutes every few days to pull weeds was easy. Not too much to ask, right?
I dunno... I guess it was, because I couldn't do it all summer and eventually the weeds got the better of me and I gave up.
I would cringe when people would come to the door and have to pass through the mess that was once my pride and joy.  I wanted to just pull out all the plants - except my tree of course - and fill it all in with grass seed or interlocking stone and be done with it.
And I was ready to do that right up to this year.
My Lovie saved the garden! He went out and ordered 3 yards of mulch and put it in all the gardens to keep the weeds down to a managable level. And once there was no weeds in the garden, it looked sad and empty.  And guess what?  I wanted to plant stuff again!  But this time I am being smart about it.... I only want the lowest of the low maintenance plants. Few, if any, annuals.  All perennials.
I know it will take a few years to really figure out what is going where, but I am back in the garden and it feels great to be excited about it again!

 I moved the Potentilla (to the right of the stairs) last year and it seems to like it there.  The barburry (sp?) bush came from the front garden, as well as the iris.  I also planted some creeping ground cover plants to fill in between.  I will plant some mums too, and I might add some tulip and daffodil bulbs back here for spring colour. I was also considering roses.  I do have to keep in mind that the dogs run through the gardens, and in fact, Cujo promptly dug up several of the iris immediately after I planted them and ate them.

We added these two trees last summer. A Japanese Maple and a Japanese Willow Treeform. Both are ornamental trees and quite delicate.  They made it through the winter despite not having been wrapped. However the Japanese Maple has some damage to some of the leaves and I'm not sure if it's due to frost exposure over the winter or something else... Does anyone have any ideas?

I've nursed and nurtured the new additions every day for a couple of weeks now and I believe they have finally taken to the soil, with only one casulty that didn't survive the transplant.  I added a cute little toadstool stool under my tree too.  Lilli found it on one of our outings to the garden centers and it was soooo cute I had to have it.

I still have a planter box that is 99% empty so I am going to buy some annuals this week to add to it, before I hang my little lanterns on the stakes.  This location gets zero sunshine and I know it's hard to find annuals that don't need full or even partial sun, so we'll see what I can find.  I am also considering adding some hostas and ferns on either end of the planter box, as well as some creeping ground cover plants along the front of it.

Summer 2008

All growed up...

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*sniff, sniff*
Last night my little Peanut - the tiniest baby in the NICU at the time he was born - graduated from high school. I won't bore you to death with my babbling about how fast time flies or how I remember this and that or the other.... Suffice to say 18 years ago I thought of this day and said, "Pffft! That's such a long way off!"
HA! Boy, was I naïve!
Anyway, here we are and he is a high school graduate, about to complete his 18th year of life and get the wake up call to join the "real world".
We couldn't be more proud of him!

Nana & Papa made it back from BC in time for the grad reception. So happy they could be there! :)

Goings ons....

Whoops! Been a couple of weeks since I've posted anything, so I'll try to get you caught up........

The most exciting  thing would have to be that I got a new car! Well, it's an SUV actually.  A 2004 Ford Explorer to be exact! We've aptly named her Dora. She's two tone navy blue and gunmetal grey. 8 cylinder, part-time 4x4. She holds up to 7-passengers, has a sun-roof, and a towing package. Nothing really fancy, but I don't need lots of bells a whistles.  I just want to get from A to B. I know that the 8 cylinder is going to be a killer on gas, but I don't go very far.  Usually within 5 minutes of home, and the occasional jaunt a little further, so really it's no big deal. The best part is that it's NOT A MINIVAN!!!! And even better... it's in MY NAME! I have never had a vehicle in my own name before!

I also had a visit from my mother from the 16th to the 21st.  Her 60th birthday was on the 19th, so we had a celebration here for her.  She moved back to her hometown of Thunder Bay, ON fours years ago to be near my aging grandmother, but she really misses her family (us!) and friends here in the Greater Toronto Area.

 We made a traditional sandwich loaf, with egg & shrimp salad, chicken salad and devilled ham. 

It was really yummy!

I also made my very first "trifle" - chocolate raspberry!

 I didn't follow a recipe. I cut up a chocolate loaf cake. Then I just followed my instincts and made my own "custard" from 1 cup of real whipping cream, a package of instant vanilla pudding and a half cup of milk.  It turned out really good!

Layer it in a trifle bowl, et VOILA! Pure deliciousness!
But that wasn't the best part.... the birthday cake was a family tradition, prepared with my secret recipe.
Black Forest Cake!!!! Scrum-diddly-umptious!

I'm going to get into more about this in an upcoming post, but I've been work in the garden a lot this month too. We finally got the weeds cleared out - well, to be honest, my Lovie did that for me, AND he added 3 yards of mulch to all the gardens, both front and back, to help keep the weeds at bay.  After that was done I consulted with my friend down the street who has GORGEOUS gardens (I am going to try to take some pics of her gardens, because they are soooo beautiful!) and she helped me figure out what to do with my garden. With her generosity and help, we moved some shrubs and plants around, and she donated some new perennials to the cause. I also bought a few plants from the local garden centers.


Yesterday, Mykaela performed at Music in the Streets; an annual music festival put on by the local music school.  All the students, of all ages, who attend the school have the opportunity to participate in the event if they want.  There are "band stands" set up up and down the streets of town with simultaneous performances going on all day.  It's a wonderful way to show off everything they've learned all year and it gives them a taste of what it's like to perform live in front of an audience.