Part Of My Yard

Happy May Day!

Busy weeding my acre this time of year in-between 12 hour split shifts at work and the wonderful April weather.

As you can see, Rusty, who is on better pain meds, helps supervise.

 I weeded half of this bed surrounding our patio. Then gave up moved onto another place that needed attention. I have to cut back the tulips and grab the artillery weeds. The blue on the left is lithospermum.

The house is on the left with the airplane hangar (doors closed) straight ahead.
I've lived on my acre for 26 years. Plants die. Plants get too big. Plants are amazing. We have fairly mild winters here in the Willamette Valley, but once every six years or so, we get hard freezes, ice, and significant snow. (No snow this winter except for one morning). Two years ago, the Lithospermum completely died back but I saw some green shoots near the base and babied it and here it is, lush as ever.

 Stepping back a few paces, this is the pergola with clematis (montana) climbing it. The clematis shades us in the summers and you can sit outside and not get too wet during summer showers.
These clematis rotted off at the rootstock one winter - oh, 7 years ago, but they are now almost where they were before - coverage-wise.

We use our patio most of the year. There is a swing set that needs new cushions sewn. Has anyone noticed that replacement cushions are thinner on the foam? The ones that came with the swing were very comfy. We cook outside on the barbecue and watch the planes take off in the evenings.

Most readers know I live on an airpark. The runway adjoins our acre and runs mostly north-south.    Bucolic.   Anyone use that old-fashioned word lately?

You need patience to garden well. Plants are a tad unruly, not always listening to your mindset of how they should behave. That's okay.

 
 

 I still need to pot up my hanging baskets. I'm slow this year. I am waiting on the high school plant sale for the little extras plants that go into the baskets (excuseexcuseexcuse).

Tomorrow is my day off and it's forecast to be 80', so this job jumped to priority one.

My upright green japanese maple on the other side of the house sends forth babies that I pot up for the patio. These babies don't seem to grow as tall. I have done some bonsai with them, twisted the 'stems' into circles, played with them a bit. These are getting quite root-bound so I will either give these away at the end of this growing year or compost them and start fresh with some new babies.

Looking left from the patio is my side yard. This is the yard I look at from my kitchen window.
The curve of the beds is lovely. The beds on the left used to be shaded by 40 year old fir trees but we had a little leaning problem and rather then buy a new house for the neighbors, we elected to cut them down.
 

So this bed went from shady perennials to a very sunny, needs to be edited still bed. I have replanted some taller trees for the bird habitat but also as a living fence between us and the neighbors.  It is very difficult to edit my plants. I've known them for years and someday's I can't be ruthless enough. I tend to let the columbines live.

 I tried a panoramic shot looking at the house.
All it did was give the house and hangar a decidedly weird curve.
That's the grass runway to the far right.

My kitchen window on the right. Just in front is my bird feeder and hummingbird feeder (empty again?). That's hubby there doing something.

 Looking southeast towards the taxi-way, aka our street.

 Another view of looking out my kitchen window.
My living fence is filling out nicely this April. 
My goal is to not see that house there.

Those are my hostas there in front which amazingly took to the sun from being in the shade prior.

 And from the street end, looking towards the grass runway -- past the fir trees we left growing taller.
 
Serous hummingbird habitat up there in the firs along with owls and other birds. (not to mention the bats). We had an eagle thinking about setting up housekeeping two autumns  ago.

Another panoramic - the entire side length of the yard - about 300 yards?

Strawberries blooming for June.
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***This is just my side yard. If you got this far - serious congratulations. This was a good place to put these photos for my reference.

Wonder Pockets

 This is my practice buttonhole. #34 on my pfaff. 
Notes for next time. There's a hinged place on my pfaff for the IDT buttonholer which also has room for some sample buttonholes. This one is rounded at one end which reminds me of the Singer buttonhole cams that I grew up with.

 I love the buttonholes on this machine. So easy and quick plus they look nice. I can get up to a 9mm width with this machine - reason #5 for buying this machine.  I went around twice for durability.

 These are work shorts, very utilitarian.
Elastic knit waist band for comfort with repeated bending.

I definitely will not be entering these into my county fair (two weeks!).
Nice sewing but I'm not going to waste time with my seam ripper getting it perfect.

 Pocket flaps. 

I serge the top edge. I sew them to the shorts upside down with that serged edge just above the pocket. Flip the flap down and give it a quick press, then top-stitch down - which conveniently hides the serged edge. Not couture sewing - just down and dirty quick sewing.

What did we do before WONDER CLIPS and Sewline Chalk pencils?
That's my top-stitching lines above, done with the Sewline Chalk Pencil. Pencil Girl made me buy one - hence her screen name. One of my favorite notions.

All the seams have double top-stitching as well as down the middle of the pockets which are then sewn on with double top stitching.

Note the use of the mini-clapper, aka Wonder Clip. This 45' angle on the pocket has more bulk and it's difficult to make it stay flat after ironing. I remember the last time I sewed these shorts, I had to use more pins to make the edges lie flat ('cuz wonder clips weren't invented yet). This time - right after ironing, I used a wonder clip and it eliminated the fiddly nature on this angled pocket.

I've finished the first pair except for sewing on the buttons. Cutting out the second pair is next on my sewing agenda. Possibly someone can snap some photos tomorrow.

 I had my son over yesterday for baby back ribs. We sat out on the patio in 100+ degree weather with the clematis shading the top of the pergola and the misters on. It was very comfortable with those misters on. Probably in the 80's under the pergola??   And - oddly enough - the fine mist kept the flies and yellow jackets away from the baby back ribs and fresh corn on the cob and Hermiston Watermelon.

Daughter is home from Ketchikan for a quick wedding weekend. I'll try to grab her to take pretty photos.  Still gonna be hot tomorrow.

Blessed am I to see  both my kids in one weekend.

Summer Time And The Living Is Easy

I have had a love affair with this exotic canna lily for years. I don't take them out of the pots for the winter and every so often they freeze to mush. I just buy more. I adore their red & ruby striped leaves and then about now, they pop into huge orange blossoms.

This is our back patio with the pergola above and the hanging baskets. We sit out here in the shade (clematis (montana) above), sip our gin & tonics, eat dinners out here.
When we built the house many moons ago, we wanted something beyond the concrete slab. I checked out all the gardening structure books from the library and we had Bill & Ted (our excellent builders!) put up this 'open to the sky' pergola. When the clematis covers it, you don't even get drips on misty rainy days.
There is room for the BBQ, patio table, swing, and, at the time, also room for the kids to ride their bikes past without banging into us.
A great place for entertaining.

This is a hydrangea that jumped into my cart a few years back that is conical in shape. It used to be more ruby red but in my soil, its more white with pink. I need to add something like epsom salts - or whatever(?), to see if I can get the ruby red color back.

Another new flower (dang - forgot name) that is stunning in a patio pot. I have a pink candy striped geranium, ruby diascia, and a coral coleus in there too. Beautiful pot.

Looking towards runway on left, covered blueberry (still producing).
We had some terrific freezes last winter and as a result, no aphids on my stunning fuscia ( pot on bench by the first post).

It's behaving.
I don't know about you, but if I forget to water a fuscia one lousy day, its covered in aphids the next and it's all downhill from there.



This is trio of pots leading up to patio door on left. The sidewalk angles in here.
Need more Cannas!


Probably my favorite hanging basket this year. The peach Million Bells next to the deep purple verbena. Mmmm.

I gave myself permission NOT to have a garden this year. Keeping up with my acre, and my always increasing workload, I decided it was okay that my tomatoes are 'thriving' in their 4" pots.

Left hand side of the patio door.

I like my baskets to last well into the fall, so I make them myself. When you buy an already blooming hanging basket in May, it's already root-bound. This means you have to water it twice a day and its pretty much gone by mid-July. I bought these rubbermaid hanging basket pots over 20 years ago. They have a water reservoir at the bottom - if you forget to water, there's still some by the roots.
On our hot July & August days in the Willamette Valley (very little rain), these pots allow me to water once a day or even, every other day.
Most other plastic pots get brittle under the sun's UV rays.
I change out the soil every year and I use Osmocote or other time-release fertilizer in them.

I'm not one of those people who matchy-match everything. My happy dance revolves around happy accidents. Look at this peppermint impatient and the ruby diascia. There's a deep red coleus in there too but the impatients are keeping him checked.
I buy plants that I like and then put them together but without an overall theme.
I might buy fabric that way too.

A trip of pots containing a Japanese green maple, hanging Ivy geranium basket that never got hung, and the new flowers on the right which I already forgot the name of but have been blooming their heads off since May. and show no signs of stopping.


GEORGE GERSHWIN
– SUMMERTIME LYRICS

Summertime, And the livin' is easy
Fish are jumpin'  And the cotton is high
Oh, Your daddy's rich, And your mamma's good lookin'
So hush little baby, now Don't you cry.

One of these mornings, You're going to rise up singing,
Then you'll spread your wings, And you'll take to the sky.
But until that morning, There's a'nothing can harm you,
With your daddy and mammy,  standing by.