Spring is Coming

The weather is warm and feels like spring outside these past couple days. It's almost time to start my garden seeds. I have a nice stack of garden catalogs with me to tide my garden-loving heart over so I don't start them too soon and end up with leggy plants. It all starts so quickly once the weather changes - seeds to be started, dahlia bulbs to pot up, mulch to be ordered soon. 

(While I'm drooling over the David Austin catalog, it does not mean I'm buying another rose anytime soon. To be honest the 4 I have are very high maintenance as it is)

I need to take some photos of our latest projects that took up our (limited) amount of free time this winter. We finally tackled the kitchen ceiling repairs and the basement reorganization. Both have been big projects we've really dragged our feet on for a long, long time. The last step is repainting the kitchen and we'll be able to check it off our list.

Reflections on Wintering

I know I've said this before, but I've never been a winter person. It's always been something to get through while we wait for spring. I don't like the cold, I don't like the dark, I don't like the days filled with gray. I'm not a winter sports person. Germ season still hits us hard and it's brutal (3 hospital visits this season).  January was long ago declared my nemesis month, even before kids. Mike has always said February feels endless (and today is leap day!). And now we still have March to tackle, in a state where we have far more late season snow storms than glimpses of early spring. 

A positive interaction with social media and the Evil Algorithm (that mostly leads to doom scrolling), introduced me to a couple of content creators with a series on "how to make friends with winter" and the concept of wintering. Color me intrigued. We've been following the more obvious advice for a few years now, like getting outside every day during daylight hours for a walk. And I already try to embrace hygge and do winter cozy. But there were additional ideas like building in extra rest during the winter without guilt, because we are meant to get extra rest just like the world outside and have family time together. Why we are drawn to fire. How to stay warmer on walks (the secret is wearing at least 2 pairs of pants!). 

I made a list of all the things I liked about winter. The occasional flowering plant or bulb from Trader Joe's for the table feels like such a luxury. Houseplants and plants in the greenhouse really shine when everything is gray. Having later sunrises means I'm awake to see them. Now that the kids are older, I feel safer lighting real candles again in various candle holders. I love being under a cozy blanket. Eucalyptus hanging in the shower. Fires in fire pit with magic fire in the backyard. Keeping the colorful holiday lights on the back deck railing ALL WINTER LONG. Paper stars on the back door. Drinking more hot tea in oversized mugs. Winter evenings are the ideal time to do yarn projects (I like to crochet). The hush when snow is falling. Bright sunshine on a walk. Finding new, bigger hills to sled on when there is a snow storm. 

I think it's made this winter season a lot more pleasant and easier to get through. I'm not quite friends with winter yet, but maybe someday we will be? As the signs of spring are starting to emerge and I'm counting down the weeks now to spring and seed starting, I know we are getting close. The sun is stronger and melting the ice, the feeling of hope and light are returning full force. 

Happy New Year!

 

Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween! We had a day full of spooky fun at school and at home. 

The night before Halloween we always watch a Halloween movie and carve our pumpkins - the boys have gotten really good at it as they get older. Matt's is at the top, then Mike's, Oliver's and mine. They looked great on Halloween night lit up on our porch! 

All the leaves fell off the tree right before Halloween, adding such a nice ambiance to the cemetery! 

The boys went scary for costumes this year - a zombie lab worker and a shadow. Very creepy. They went trick-or-treating in a big group of boys this year, it was hard to keep up. 

Happy Halloween! 

October Garden

October had a few surprises for me in the garden. Like more raspberries (WHAT?!). And the biggest dahlias bloom I've ever grown at over 10" wide. It's a Wynn's Moonlight Sonata in a peachy orange color.

I also had the biggest Belle of Barmera I've ever grown too - it was about 9" or so and the most beautiful shades of pink! 

There were figs from the fig tree until frost. 

The raspberries. We had multiple rounds of October raspberries. It was the strangest (and most wonderful!) thing. 

The morning glory bloomed on the trellis with pretty purple flowers. 

This was the garden at mid October: 

I cleaned out the green house, organized the piles of pots and tools. 

Towards the end of the month I began loading up the greenhouse with plants. The first ones in were the ones that prefer warmer weather. Then I started transferring herbs like rosemary and sage from the garden beds back to pots. I saved a lot less than last year. I decided I wanted more room for seeds, bulbs and that sort of thing in February than overwintering more plants. 

The garden is waning... but it's not over yet. A big hard freeze is coming soon (it's in the forecast for November 1st), but until my dahlias are nipped I'm going to enjoy more of this: 

Halloween Spooky Season

 Happy Friday the 13th! Feeling spooky? 👻

The house is decorated for Halloween. Not a lot of big changes, it's very similar to last year. 

However, new this year is decorating the bathroom with bloody handprint decals, I put them in the bathroom to surprise the boys. The decals have worn surprisingly well in a high traffic area, they are much nicer than I expected! 

The rest of the house is more cute spooky. 

Outside on the porch the skeleton family has been picked clean by a new giant spider (from my neighbor's garage sale). 

The graveyard is full of ghouls, evil clowns and bats. 

At night it looks super spooky right now - I love it!!! The orange porch light makes the skeleton family extra creepy. 

The graveyard has almost an ethereal glow in the pictures...

As always, we are looking forward to the big night! 

Navy Blue Half Bath

We painted the half bathroom navy blue a few months ago and I never took pictures because this room is impossible to photograph. It's just way too small. I decided to just take a few quick pics to share here today though, because I figure a few snaps are better than nothing! I really like the dark blue for this space - it compliments the wallpaper nicely, coordinates with the navy blue couch in the living room and hides dirty handprints from the boys well (coming in from outside to wash their hands in here)!

We had lots of navy blue paint leftover after finally painting Matt's bedroom ceiling (photos coming soon). He wanted a dark blue night sky with glow-in-the-dark stars just like his big brother. The yellow walls were not in good shape, so this was an ideal solution. The color is Benjamin Moore's Historical Collection Hale Navy, just to keep things consistent around the house. 

The room needs some updating and fixes, but that's a project for another day. Just don't look too closely. The paint is good enough for now. 

September Garden

The garden is fading, as September gardens do. 

Gone are the tomatoes, the melon vines, the cucumber vines. The nasturtium has taken over an entire bed. The cosmos succumbed to blight, the zinnias continue to struggle. I'll enjoy the dahlias and snapdragons until the frost that will wipe out the dahlias once and for all at some point in October. I really felt like I found the right combination and balance in the garden this year. Even though not everything did well, I plan on repeating it next year and hoping for the best. 

Tomatoes (or where they used to be) 

The tomatoes were pulled up at the very end of August as I mentioned in last month's garden update. I was tired of feeding the chipmunks and there weren't many green tomatoes left either. Last year the tomatoes were overabundant, but this year, not so much. The pollinators love the marigolds and borage, so those will stay until frost. I think I'll repeat the same varieties next year (2 paste, 2 cherry sweet 100s, 1 tappy heritage, 1 early girl and 2 bushsteak hybrid) and hope for better results. 

Vines and Things

I pulled up the cucumber and melon vines mid-September. I picked the last of the cucumbers and the melons had already finished. Now the nasturtium has taken over and the chard is shining bright. The carrots will get pulled up in October. I skipped mini pumpkins in this bed this year and I missed them. I tried them elsewhere in the yard, but the vine was eaten. The garden is the safest place for them to grow, however they attract squash vine borers and I'm trying to break the cycle of infestation by skipping all squashes/pumpkins for a while. If I hold strong another year, it would help even more. But I wish we had grown some now that Autumn is here. 

Mixed Flowers

The snapdragons are producing less flowers as the month goes on, the cooler temps and shorter days signaling the season will soon wrap up. There are still blooms, but handfuls instead of bucketfuls. The cosmos withered away from blight, but there were lots of beautiful flowers all summer. The zinnias continue to limp along - these are usually my easiest flower to grow but this year wasn't their year. The globe amaranth did much better with a corner placement. Next year I will plant this bed exactly the same (hopefully with happier zinnias). 

Dahlias

This was a MUCH better year for dahlias that last year. I didn't have to spray anything with insecticidal soap or neem oil (which I really hated doing because it's bad for the pollinators). I had lots of gorgeous blooms. The plants are so tall now that they are snapping branches in our many heavy rainstorms. It's been a much needed good year - after last year's mite infestation I was ready to give up. This year has renewed my love of the flowers! 

Herbs and Strawberries

The herbs all did really well except for the basil, and that was probably weather related. The purple sunflower was a nice change of pace over the giant sunflowers I usually plant here, it kept blooming  through the summer. The oregano needs to be cut way back in the late fall/ early spring - it's trying to take over the bed again. 

The rosemary bush will be harvested and put into a pot in the green house. There are two lavenders in this bed, one I'll cage and cover with leaves, the other I'll dig up and overwinter in the greenhouse like I did last year. The sage will be harvested and transplanted into a greenhouse pot as well. The thyme, oregano and strawberries will be overwintered here. The chamomille, calendula, borage, dill and sunflowers will start fresh again next year from seed. 

Pots

The pots did well. The small snapdragons kept blooming on and off all season. The morning glory actually is doing better than previous years by far, I'm hoping to see blooms in early October. The hot peppers are the perfect level of spicy and abundant. The lemon balm was abundant. The only plant I had issues with was the patio tomato in a pot and that was mostly due to the chipmunks. Even the potted dahlias are blooming, which doesn't always happen because my dahlias have never been very happy in pots. 

Elsewhere in the Yard

September brought elderberries! A lot of elderberries, even though the birds love them too. I did not anticipate how difficult they are to get off the stems (which are apparently toxic, great). I read a tutorial to freeze them first, which did help make it easier for about 5-10 minutes... then the berries thawed! So they have to be done in small batches. Luckily they seem to only ripen a few bunches at a time, so as long as I don't let them pile up in the chest freezer we're good to go.

There are a lot of figs on the fig tree right now, but we've only had a few ripe ones. I have a feeling there will be quite a few in October as long as the frost holds off. Fingers crossed!

I had a surprise this week - a handful of raspberries hidden in the raspberry thicket in late September. I was looking for a lost ball and I've never seen this before, we usually get one big harvest in June and that's it! I'm surprised the birds found this before I did! 

Also I just need to share my dark pink anemone, because it is blooming right now in the back and it's GORGEOUS. This anemone is so polite compared to my light pink ones, compact and covered in blooms but doesn't try to take over.