How is it August Already?

I didn't mean to only do gardening posts for three whole months. I have so many things to share but I'm lacking in photos. I need to take some photos, but I've been so busy doing and running from one thing to the next, photos fall to the bottom of the priority list. Life has been extra-extra busy. In the spring it was my day job + managing a surge of colds during allergy season (a double whammy that was hard on my asthmatic kids), a double baseball season because Matt started farm league instead of t-ball, Oliver earned his black belt, our family had our crazy but wonderful birthday season (one birthday after another!), and we were trying to cram an entire school year of activities into the final two months of school (which is an extra challenge sitting on the PTA board). We went away to the Catskills in June for a long weekend to celebrate my birthday and our anniversary. This summer has been a wonderful but exhausting nonstop rotation of camp pickups and drop offs, play dates and birthday parties and pool trips and cleaning our own pool and watering the garden and swim lessons and more play dates... it's been crazy and wonderful and exhausting. 

I completed my first big furniture reupholstery project! My sister had her first baby and one of her baby gifts was my mother's rocking chair, reupholstered with love in sage green velvet. I've never reupholstered anything before, it was a bit intimidating! With the help of YouTube tutorials and a very helpful lady at the fabric shop, I learned all about jute webbing, stretching, foam, etc. The original chair frame was in really good shape, it just needed cleaning and polishing. The 1980's gold velvet though was sagging and withered. I chose sage velvet to coordinate with my sister's chosen nursery color, and the sage and gold trim is a homage to the original chair choice. Mike had to help me with the stretching and stapling - it was a two person job - but I'm really happy with how it turned out. 

My nephew has since arrived and it was magical to be a part of the baby's first few days (officially I was "helping out" when really I was hogging as much baby time as possible). I was exhausted afterwards though - we are definitely done with the baby years at our house. 

On the home front, I'm working on so many projects! The dining room was repainted woodland white and the color is perfect. The living room is a soft silver. The trim is sparkling white and I REALLY need to photograph it before chocolatey fingerprints start building up again. Oliver has a new desk in his room, Matt has a new (to him) desk in his. I need to take photos of all these things - taking indoor photos is challenging in the best circumstances, and these days my time has been lacking. 

I found a desk for Oliver's room! It's the perfect size but it needed a fresh finish. I wasn't a bit fan of the yellow oak stain either so I sanded it and refinished it to a nice dark espresso. 

Both boys also need new art in their room, which is supposed to be my summer project... but then again WHY do I think I have time for summer projects in the summer? The summer always seems to be our busiest time! I also want to paint the stairwell to coordinate with the living room color. The kitchen walls and ceiling need some love. 

But it's progress! I'm making so much progress. Outside the garden and yard is now in maintenance mode (which is still a lot of work). Flower pots, flower beds (front and back) planted with dahlias and annuals. Every day I have to block off time to water the gardens, pick the gardens and clean the pool. Not a hardship by any means but they take time. 

The battle with the chipmunks has been time consuming as well. We escalated to rubber snakes (which worked for 2 days until they figured out they were fake) and traps (which they learned to avoid). Then finally, weather was cooler last week, so we finally had a chance to replace the deterrent netting with wire mesh. We knew they couldn't chew through that. And the bigger chipmunks can't get in. So what did they do? THEY SENT IN THE TINY ONES. I almost lost it. So then we had to add in hardware cloth along the bottom too. It's just out of control. 

This year I planted extra flowers in the front garden beds of the house. Last year it looked SO nice with all the dalinovas, I realized I should plant flowers all the way across the shrubs with more variety. This year it's a mix of snapdragons, dalinovas and lantanas, with a couple of taller dahlias in the open space next to the new shrub that needs to grow. It's a rainbow of color and I'm really happy about it. 

I cleaned up the greenhouse finally. It was such a mess from the winter and spring. Now it's a clean slate for working in here and eventually bringing things back in during the fall. 

I'm also trying to make time for little hobbies. First and foremost, my little flower farm has filled our house with bouquets regularly. Every time they fade, it's time for another harvest.

I even pressed a bunch of flowers again this year. I have a thing for pressed flowers. Overall I think the ones I pressed back in 2020 were better, but from this year's batch, the calendula and geraniums came out even better than I hoped. The cosmos came out as expected, but the rest of the flowers turned out more brown than I wanted. Several of them were experiments, and I've learned that yarrow and astilbe are much prettier and more colorful dried than pressed. A few things I pressed that worked before just turned moldy. Maybe it's that I used a different pressing method this time? 

I'm on a syrup kick this year. Every year I seem to get into something new in the summer kitchen. It started with lavender syrup (with dried lavender from the garden) to make lavender lattes and lavender cold brews. Next was blueberry syrup with the last meyer lemon from our tree which is weirdly good for lattes/cold brew and of course amazing for cocktails, waffles, seltzer... basically anything you want to add blueberry citrus to. Both taste like you're drinking summer. I'm so limited in my food consumption these days, these really brighten up my routine.