Strange Days

Life is still full and has been... interesting lately. I haven't done any enameling work since my last big push before I had to send everything down for the show. I ran out of flux in the process and since starting to use it again and do everything right, I'm not about to waste materials and time on an inferior result. I find myself missing it even though it's been stressful.
It's been nice though, I worked long hours at home to finish everything in the past couple months and to make time recently for gardening, house cleaning and general sittin'-on-ass has been wonderful.

Things that have also been wonderful in the past week:

1. The change of seasons. Fall equinox came and went and somehow in North Central Florida, this meant an instant change in weather. The breezes are cooler, the evenings are mild and this morning I had to wear a sweater because it was 56 degrees out. This is particularly awesome because it was the exact same weather pattern the year before for our wedding weekend. How coincidental for our anniversary to come each year with the most glorious weather imaginable.

2. Collin and I planned and installed an invisible trellis for our flowering vines on the backyard fence. The passionflower is still growing like crazy but ran out of room in its little corner and started to spill over into the neighbors yards. Woops. Hey, at least it's pretty. We've been meaning to help out our little yard for weeks now but with working on the show pieces and the incredible heat it just wasn't happening. Pictures soon, although it's "invisible" so they're not as awesome as you might imagine.

3. Also fixed up the front yard some more and replaced some of the boxwoods and flowers that had died since putting them in this spring. Thank you Lowe's for having a 1 year return policy on potted plants. I will never pay for one again this year.

4. Because it is so nice out we were able to walk Early down to the Northeast dog park this week. She and Smokey had a blast and it was fun to see more of our neighborhood that I had yet to discover. Something that makes me want to stay here forever. I need to take a photo tour of our area and show off the picturesque homes we have.

5. Cooking up a storm for Collin and myself. First it was the need to get in the last of the late summer meals. The bbq and burgers and salads (like we won't be eating that kind of thing all winter or something). Now I'm suddenly struck with the urge to bake casseroles and roast pork loin and winter squash. I can feel the knit sweaters and hot cocoa now.

6. Kara came to town! I was able to see one of my best friends (even if just for a few hours) meet her sweet boyfriend whom she's been dating for a year now and catch up. Something about our wedding - Anna and TJ, Kara and Ben and Meggan and Ben all started dating just before then and are still going strong, Rachel and Nick are engaged even. Am I some kind of good luck in love charm or what? We had good times at The Top and a delicious brunch at a new place in town. It's not close to our house but it's right by the interstate which will make for a nice meet up spot with the family in the future.

There were a few things this week that weren't so good.

1. Timmy, the beloved cat of our neighbors at the Fat Tuscan Cafe, was hit by a car and killed this past Saturday morning. This was the same little boy kitty we found and were feeding under our house. I'll never forget the first day we met him and coaxed him into a carrier with some wet food. Man he was pissed. I was crying with laughter at his pitiful little growls he was trying to make while still eating. Grrrnomnomnomrrrnom. So cute. It shouldn't have happened - but it did - and in many ways the situation unfolded in the best ways possible. Whoever hit him was kind enough to move him over to the grass near Eve's driveway. She also was out of town that week. This kept her and Timmy's owners from having to see him first thing that morning or lying there in the road, worse off. Collin and I were able to move him onto an old towel and cover him up (we were already wearing gloves and working in the yard) before getting and telling his owners. I took his collar off for her too, that way if she didn't want to look at him, she would know for sure who it was. This was... hard. I haven't had a reason to cry like this in so long. Collin had the hardest parts of moving Timmy onto the towel and going to tell his owner. I couldn't thank him enough for being strong that day.

2. While we were in the front yard later, working to keep our minds off of it all, our upstairs neighbors cat escaped and sprinted past us into the next door neighbors yard. OMFG are you kidding me? Right after we are emotionally drained by sad kitty issues, we're chasing a cat around a giant yard hoping he hasn't found any of Timmy's pass-throughs. Now I don't mean to brag, but I was the one who was finally able to sprint and catch him - half his body already over the fence - by the tail and the scruff. I carried him back to his home and he was so scared! This one is definitely not an outdoor kitty, and after seeing Timmy that morning and the stress of chasing his own little one around outside, our neighbor has no plans to let him live outdoors.

3. Our new landlord is awesome and helping us in a million ways by fixing up every problem we have with our place and then some. She is however starting to rub me slightly the wrong way over little things like storing items in the garage that we - not she - cleaned out. So we can store our stuff in there. It's silly, and I can't imagine it would ever be a real issue, but Eve and I were talking last night and both were a bit taken back by how she seemed to think that it's in any way cluttered at the moment. Maybe I need to show her some photos of what cluttered really looks like.

4. I took photos of all the last pieces I made for the show and promptly forgot to load them on the computer. By the time I noticed, Collin's sister had already taken her camera home and erased half of them. Boo. My fault entirely, but I hope she can find them in her recycle folder!!


Tomorrow marks the start of October and it means I need to boogie down and get some Halloween plans started. I want to decorate the house and porch this year, carve pumpkins and figure out a costume that requires minimal effort and money. And one I can easily eat/drink in and doesn't require a wig or face paint. I'm thinking we may make animal masks or costumes and wear them with our regular clothes. Eh?
October will kick off this weekend with a wonderful start.
Thursday night is Ladies Night and then Islands are playing at 1982. Done.
Friday Collin and I are going to the salon to get his hair cut and my nails done. My yearly manicure - what a treat! Then we'll drive with Early Girl down to Sarasota for the gallery reception and hanging out with our friends Matt and Janelle and their dog Toby.
Saturday we have plans to go to the dog beach for Early's first visit with dinner later that evening to celebrate the one-year anniversaries in the family. Also that night, more catching up with old friends and visiting our favorite Sarasota eateries. Including Muncheez 420 Cafe - a spot close to the bars that was recently featured on the Sarasota episode of Man vs. Food.
Sunday we'll pick up freezer goodies from Granny on our way out of town before driving back for a quiet evening on our real anniversary. Maybe a movie in with some popcorn and, weather permitting, a cozy fire.
Then, it's back to the grind. If only it were like last year and I had next week off and we were looking towards vacation in Savannah.

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Project Backyard : One Month

This is the story of our back yard.

When we moved in, the house and yard looked very different. Most of that difference was the garbage all over the place. It took little time to get the inside of the house and the front porch comfortable. Two years later and I'm still just now making plans to give us more storage and simplify our life.
The back yard was always just a dirt patch with weeds. All kinds of weeds you can imagine, I'm sure.

Just about one month later, our hard work in making the yard as enjoyable as the rest of the house is paying off. I dug up a photo of the yard from last summer when we put in the pool. I wish I'd taken a photo before we cleared enough weeds to set it up, but I think I can sum up the amount by saying that they were EVERYWHERE.

One summer of fun in the pool was followed by a few months of upkeep and cleaning even though it was too cold to swim. Then the winter happened and we just let it go. The water was too cold to clean properly and we kind of gave up. Out of sight, out of mind. Had the pool (or yard) been a size that allowed us to walk all the way around it, we may have kept things going. But it was not. So the pool had to go.
This yard we have now is quiet and clean. It's brimming with the possibility of vegetables to eat. Let's follow along.

Day 7:

Grass seedlings are sprouting. I really thought they'd take longer than this to show themselves. Proof that lawn repair kits work really well when you use them to start lawns from scratch.
Future sunflowers! I sprinked (way too many) sunflower seeds that my mom sent me from her own flowers in Tennessee. They are almost 3 feet tall by now.
This purple ballerina angel trumpet was a variety I'd never seen before this one. I'm sure they're pretty common (I bought this one at Lowe's, right?) but I'm only familiar with the cream or peach drop variety. All of them are lovely, but something about the double-petal and upward bloom caught my eye. These have been flowering every day since part way through the first week. The blooms don't last long, but they're so beautiful.
The variegated jasmine trained on the root trellis. This one has bloomed since day one, the confederate jasmine is slower but more robust. It has bloomed a little but I think it's working on sending out vines more.
Day 14:

Look, real grass. Almost a lawn we can enjoy! Things were still really patchy at this point and I think this is around the time I sprinkled some more grass seed on things and evened them out. Fire ants were still coming up even though we'd been treating that little area of yard for almost a year (since we put in the damn pool). I finally gave in and bought another product that you attach to the hose and spray over the whole yard. It has worked wonders. Good thing is that it also kills fleas (and a million other things) so when we get that doggy he/she will have a safe place to play, free of pests.Day 19:

A panoramic shot to show just how much things have grown so far. The squash and zucchini (under the jasmine arch) are good indicators of the explosive growth that has taken place.

Day 27:

One month (pretty much) from the planting date and we have such good growth - the flowers tell me that the plants are happy.

Here are those sunflowers from seed, BIG DIFFERENCE.

And the first tomato flower. Soon, you will be a fruit and I will eat you no matter what my doctor says about me eating tomatoes with GERD.
The first bell pepper flower. I am happy to be growing these in red and yellow. Or is it orange and yellow? Either way, it's not green, and those are the bell peppers I have yet to come to like. It's been quite some time since Collin and I met and I proudly exclaimed my hatred of peppers... looks like he's rubbed off on me some. It proves you can begin to like something if you prepare it enough for another person.
Zucchini explosion! The growth of these plants is seriously mind-boggling. These plants have gotten gigantic. I probably should have planted fewer things around them though because I've already had to relocate some basil and may need to move a marigold because they're just not getting sun anymore. These big broad leaves are protecting more blossoms than I can count. We are being very patient though and resisting the urge to pick off all the flowers and fry them up right now before they can give off fruit. It's hard, but we're waiting until the first round of veggies are up for harvest before we raid the plants for their blooms.
The biggest surprise of the garden so far has been the passion flowers. The only variety I've ever seen, and the variety on the tag of the plant we purchased had purple flowers. A pretty and softer palette. The first bloom on our vine happened to be a bright magenta! HOW AWESOME?! We've been back to the store to get supplies to clean up the front yard (another story for another time) and every passion flower at their store was in bloom, but none were this color. I think we're lucky to have gotten this by chance. The purple would have been nice, but this adds some real color to the corner.

The whole yard shot at one month. Grass is growing, veggies have started to flower and shrubs are happy and thriving.
Collin and I are both very genetically recessive. Blonde hair, blue eyes. When we have kids, they're nearly guaranteed to be the same. I like to think somewhere on that genetic code is the place where our parents handed down their green thumbs - looks like we got full sets of that one, too.
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Seeds of Love

This is a photo from last summer before we installed the pool. The yard had already been cleared most of the way by Collin's dad one afternoon when he was visiting and bored (thanks, Craig). Still, weeds weeds weeds everywhere.

This is a photo from a couple weekends ago after we took down the pool and started working on digging up the last of the weeds and roots. Potato vines are the worst; the thorns somehow get sharper and more numerous the deeper you go. Some of those ended up about 5 feet long but we dug out some other nuisance roots that were over 7 feet long! I've also been treating the yard for fire ants periodically over the past year and consistently for the past month or so. There are still ant hills that crop up here and there. Oh, and there was a nice surprise of swarming carpenter ants on the garage wall near the hose. I have no mercy for poisonous insects - they were promptly and thoroughly poisoned. We also have a hefty bucket full of rocks ranging in size from <1" to >15 lbs. Other inorganic items we found buried in the yard: a full size fast-food tray about half a foot deep, and old-school home made label from 1983, a t-shirt, several pieces of broken glass and bottles, a razor head, and lots of random plastic film.

This past Saturday, to celebrate 6-months-married (already?!), we finished the job. Our landlord is awesome and gave us a generous budget with which to purchase supplies for landscaping the yard. We still have plenty of money left to add more to the back and even re-do the front yard too. The front will have to wait a couple weeks but I'm excited for things to look good. Working on a project like this is so much better when we can do it together, we're a good team. And planting a garden together is, for me at least, pretty darn sweet.

I researched good plants for our area and walked around the Lowe's garden center taking notes on my favorite flowers and vines. I saw a lot of plants from my yard growing up and, naturally, quite a few wound up on our cart. I know these plants grow well in our hot, humid summers and the drought conditions that somehow combine with hurricane season. Things like angel trumpet flowers, jasmine, and liriope.

Here's collin raking in the good stuff before we plant the border. There are some really huge wild hibiscus plants along the back fence that we opted to keep. Mostly because it was going to be impossible to dig them out without some kind of power tool. They also are pretty. In the late summer they like to bloom bright red drop flowers. We cut them back so much a few weeks ago when we started working on things. They've already grown so much - I think we'll have a lot more trimming to do throughout the season.

This is the back fence line, where we planted flowers and shrubs exclusively. It was so bright when I took some of these, I doubt you can really make out the individual plants too well. On the left though, you can see the jessamine vine that will hopefully crawl all over the fence. That along with the passion flower vine and two kinds of jasmine! I was able to save the longest roots and tie them together to make natural arching trellis for all the vines.

The finished product, including fire pit. We reserved the left side of the fence for a few flowers and all the vegetables. The whole yard is bright, but I wanted to make sure that the little guys don't get burned this summer so the shadow created by the fence line should do the trick. In the ground are tomatoes, sweet bell peppers, yellow crooked-neck squash, zucchini, watermelons, basil, mint, and onions! We saved the jasmine for this side of the fence. I know it will get big eventually and once the veggies are done, or after we move on and they are neglected, the jasmine will keep that side beautiful. We also spread out grass seed on the lawn. I can't wait to see it start sprouting - really I can't wait to break out the lawn chair and get some sun with a bbq going and a cold drink in my hand.

So, who wants to come to the eventual garden party? This yard is going to be perfect for enjoying friends, cooking outside, and eventually playing with our new pup. The pup who was, in part, our motivation for landscaping the yard. We wanted to make sure the lawn and garden were well-established before letting a dog back there. Plus, we wanted a nice place for us to play together; one that wasn't full of thorny vines and fire ants and broken glass.
As sore as I still am, it was a wonderful day.

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