Sew Distracted

Summer Landscaping, Part Two

Much better already, don't you think?

Here is the front yard, ready for the next stage. If you look closely you can see that the tops of the stone have been cleaned up and we will have new stonework there to bring the walls up to level, much better than the random piles of stones we had before. The area at the base of the stone wall, between the stones and the driveway will be filled with gravel.

 

On the south end of the walkway, this old shade bed still had the original railroad ties that were there when I moved in.  I had dug out the bed and replanted but hadn't really changed any of the timbers, merely replaced rotted pieces with new ones as necessary.

 

The timbers have been pulled out and the area widened so that the bed will be framed with stone.  And a new gravel path, to be bordered with belgian block,  is also going in, which will add structure and definition to the yard as well.

 

You can get a much better overview of what is happening from my kitchen window, where I can look out over the entire front yard area.  The photo is kind of gray and shaded because it was taken through the screen, but I think you  will get the general idea now.  Even unfinished, I love looking out the kitchen window now.

 

Summer Landscaping, Part One

One of this summer's projects, the dominant project in fact, has been transforming my nice little haven in the woods into something more welcoming.    Here I present a little catch-up post showing progress so far. Some of these photos have already been posted elsewhere, so if this is a duplication, your patience is requested.

 

The overgrown front yard was really getting to me.  Granted some gardening work would have helped, and I was woefully behind, but more serious landscaping labors were also called for. Here is the before photo, dragged up from last year.  It actually looked even worse than this before work began.

 

It seemed to me that the house reflected my own inner chaos, and although I was pulling myself together, I couldn't get any further until my physical space was in order.

 

A sure sign that help was needed was that everything looked better almost immediately after cleanup, before any new work was done and it was all just clay.  I figure it was very telling that the front door was actually more easily accessible when there was no walkway, just packed clay, than it had been with the original walkway of slate set in clay, the walkway that came with the house.

Well, the packed clay was easier to walk on until it rained, that is.   Luckily for my construction projects, it rained little this summer, at least until last week, by which time the front walk was long since finished.

 

Here is the new bluestone walk, and the completion of phase one of the project, although as you can see work is still being done.  You've actually seen  the new front porch in the last couple of garment pics I have posted.

 

Of course, like any remodeling project, once you fix one thing, you see how bad everything else is around it.

 

I realized that I couldn't fix the plantings until I fixed the walls and did the rest of the hoped-for hard-scaping.  So we entered phase II, which is still in process, although in the middle of a brief interruption of work until mid-September.

After the walk, the mason started working on the north end of the house (the front walk is near the South).   One approaches the house coming down a hill on the north side.  The first thing one was faced was a pile of dirt and rocks with a fence to the pool enclosure behind it, but no landscaping or path leading to the pool gate.

 

This photo is the only one I have of the before scenario. Truthfully I avoided thinking about the area, or photographing it.

 

This next photo is taken from the driveway and shows the view one has of the north side of the house as you drive down my driveway.  The area now contained inside the stone bed is the area with the half buried tank shown in the first photo, and the front wall of the stone bed is the same location as the picket fence on the left side of the first photo.  The top of the stone wall is level with the bottom of the lattice fence behind it.

 

This wall is not complete, and eventually the bed contained within will be filled and planted, and there will be a gravel path and then a series of raised beds going up to the deck and the area in front of that stone wall will be cleaned up and filled with packed gravel leading up to the walkway and planting areas.  There will be no plantings in this area as it is also my primary winter snow repository.

 

Later in the week I will show how phase II is shaping up in the front yard, around that new front walkway.

And the Winner is

Thank you all for your comments and interest in the Marfy pattern.  

I entered you all into the drawing this morning and the winner is Aud!

Today, I must get out in the yard and start doing something to reclaim this piece of property after a few years of neglect.  And I do mean must, not just as an obligation because I live here and have a certain amount of pride, but because the warm sunshine of the last few days has me dreaming of plants and flowers and gardens and yes, vegetables too.  It is only March.  Our last frost date is still a couple of months away.  But garden I must.  I am looking forward to pulling things out of the ground and stamping around in the slushy mud that remains.  I am sure there must be some deeper meaning there, but I prefer not to contemplate it.

But first I must go hem a pair of jeans.  I will not go out digging and uprooting things in nice wool pants and heels.  More about that later.

A birthday gift to myself

As I was driving home from the hotel this morning I got a call from FedEx.  They wanted to deliver a package and a signature was required.

This is what came:

My birthday present to myself:  A Panton chair. 

I have been harboring the idea that I would get at least one of these as long as we have been working on the deck, probably longer.  Modern deck, modern furniture, no?

I sat in one in San Francisco one year and absolutely love it.  It fits me perfectly:  back support in just the right place for my odd back.  That doesn't of course mean that anyone else would like it.  G thinks it is ok, but would not chose to sit in it.  The neighbors were over and they side with G on this one.  That is OK because it means there is no competition for this chair.  It is MINE, all MINE.  When I sit in this chair I feel like swinging my arms and legs and smiling, just like little grandson Owen does when he is in the swing.  I can see that much knitting, dreaming, reading, and just contemplating the Hudson will be done from this movable perch.

But why yellow?  The chair came in white (nah, too boring) and orange-red.  But I had some canvas fabric that was originally purchased for some long forgotten project and is now destined to be used to make new seats and backs for a collection of director's chairs that have been sitting around getting grubby while they were shoved out of the way during the construction process.

The yellows don't quite match.  But there is both red and orange in the stripe and I wasn't sure red-orange would match either.  Yellow will blend in, and G and I both love bright colors.  With a cool gray house and cool gray deck, a little color is not a bad thing.

So as you can see, I have yet more sewing to do, and I haven't even finished those one-seam pants yet.  Too much back and forth is going on here for me to ever catch up.

And now that the deck is almost done those directors chairs need to be cleaned up, sanded down, repainted, and have new covers made as well. 

The list goes on and on, but the temptation to sit in the chair and just stare at the river is also great: Even though there are fewer boats on the river, apparently due to the high price of fuel, the view is remains way to entrancing to ignore:

White

The accomplishments of the weekend are blue and white.  Unfortunately, no sewing was involved.

After the crew "cleaned" the pool there was still a fairly noticeable black ring or two.  We, the clients, were not happy.  I was told by the pool guy that he poured acid on it and scrubbed but it didn't come clean and that it would fade in time in the pool chemicals.  Well, that may be true, but I have had rings in the past that did not fade in pool chemicals.

  So of course I did it myself.  I didn't want to get taken off the list for water delivery, and I was afraid that we would be waiting for  these guys forever.

Besides, once I thought about it, it occurred to me that if the pool guy was right and the grime was caused by oil residue from the trains that go by several times a day, acid alone would do nothing, because you need an alkaline detergent to cut through oil residue. Although most household cleaners would probably do the trick, some one would require more elbow grease than others.

Luckily, although I am not one of those people who finds cleaning a pleasure, I do believe in keeping the appropriate tools in the house, including appropriate cleaning chemicals, and we have had many oil spills on the garage floor from G's leaky truck.

It is amazing how bright the inside of a white pool is in the sunlight. 

But the results are worth it:

 

In the Garden

Life seems to be slowly getting back to normal, or at least this weekend has been a perfect weekend in many ways, even though I didn't actually sew.

I did spend some time reading and that was a wonderful way to get myself motivated and focused once again.  I also got out in the garden a wee little bit -- today really was a perfect gardening day, sunny breezy and in the upper 60's.  I suppose if it were like this all season I woudl live outside.  I am finally coming terms with the fact that I don't like the heat, and the sun is not good for me, but I still like a garden. Truthfully however noone would know that looking at our place this year.  It is an overgrown mess from 3 years of workmen and repairs and construction and today was the first bit of gardening I have done this spring, and here it is nearly summer.

Oh well, I know there are more important things going on.  But getting out in the yard even for the hour I spent outside today really refreshed me and helped me get back into the normal groove of things.  Actual sewing, aside from the dreams of garments to be made and the fondling of fabric cannot be far behind.

As sewing progress is still fully imaginary, I shall instead show you a few tulips.  I adore tulip season, but this year even the tulips have sat out in the garden basically ignored, whereas I am usually filling vases and bowls by the armload.  They are a little short this year.  Remember they had started to come up in January, and I am sure that false start compromised their stature a little bit.  But the flowers are glorious:

Pink and Purple

Once upon a time I would have said I was not a pink kind of girl.  I thought I had "outgrown" that kind of thing.

I was wrong.

Pinks and Purples are definitely my thing.

From purple cauliflower:

To the varying shades of pink lilac and white in my garden:

It is obvious that I am definitely a "pink kind of girl".  My husband is grateful that I don't really like pink and purple decor in the house though.  My pinks are frivolous pinks, more for exuberant accents than for everyday practicality.

Still Working...

It always amazes me how life rolls around at its normal pace, seemingly under control, and then one small thing goes awry and it is as if a house of cards has tumbled down.

I am almost caught up.

But I did find time to spend in the yard Friday morning; it desperately needed help.  Friday afternoon's thunderstorms and rain probably did more good than I.

After weeks of rain and cool temperatures -- in the 70s mostly.  It turned hot just before we left for Knoxville, that triple summer threat, Hazy, Hot, and Humid.  Not a drop of rain in the sky.  Thunderstorms scattered all around us, but none ventured near this piece of property, as if we were protected by a giant, invisible, umbrella.  I would have liked the rain.  I knew there was a reason we don't normally travel much in the summer, aside from enjoying being home this time of year.

The garden missed me.  Well, that is not exactly true; the vegetable garden missed me.  The new flower beds were fine.

The new stone bed under the kitchen window is blooming and looking wonderful.  Ignore the weeds outside the bed.  I have to dig up the entire expanse of packed clay that passes for the north end of my front yard. 

The planters also did fine:

This is the first planter you see coming down the driveway.

But in the vegetable garden things looked a little worse for wear.  The tomatoes were lying on the ground, limp and nearly lifeless -- not something I had expected.  I guess that they had not had enough time to get fully settled in yet.  I had planted them late, the first week of June.  It had just been too cold before that.  The eggplants did not look happy either, but they were better than the tomatoes.  The peppers were mostly OK and the kohlrabi seemed to have doubled in size in 4 days.

The little Thai eggplant and Turkish eggplants I had sown directly in the ground from seed died.  I knew I should have started them indoors first. I wonder if it is too late to try again.  I might as well plant more.  Even if they don't produce, I can watch them grow.

After watering and a day of heavy rain, about half the tomatoes resurrected themselves,  I lost one pepper and 3 eggplants.  It still surprises me, as these are plants I think of as hot weather plants -- but I suppose a sudden change is a shock to newly planted seedlings.

Oddly enough the fuchsias, which had been doing badly in the location I had kept them in for years, looked much better after the hot dry spell.  Throughout May they had been lush and gorgeous and then in early June they started dying back, dropping branches and looking very sad.  When I returned they were sending up new leaves and growth, whereas I had expected them to finish the dying process in my absence.  I suppose this means the front yard has gotten too shady for the fuchsias, and too damp.  Time to rearrange things a little bit. They will probably do well on the north side of the house, once the deck is finished; but where to put them in the meantime?

Meanwhile the ferns, which have seeded themselves from a very small patch, have taken over the southwest corner of the front yard by the front door:

You can hardly see the small stone flowerbed I rebuilt last year.  You certainly can't see the impatiens that are planted therein.  I am going to have to come up with something taller, but still tolerant of fairly dense shade for that spot.

Garden Catch Up

When I was a child my grandmother grew Moon-flower vines along the wall of her garage.  One year she gave me some seeds which I planted in a pot in my bedroom.  It grew vigorously.  It grew so fast that sometimes I would dream that I would wake up and find it strangling me.

There are times living in the wet Northeast that I feel the same way about my yard.  Everything is tall and lush and green here.  I love it.  The trees were my first love when I moved up here.  But sometimes I miss the open space of Texas and the ability to see for miles without vines and trees choking off the view. 

This week I feel like the greenery and the vines and the woods around our house are taking over the property, stealthily gaining ground each night, soon to surround us and overgrow the house.  Weeks of rain followed by a few days of heat have produced excessive growth.  I am behind on everything simply because there has been inadequate opportunity to get outside.

I have been able to spend some time in the former vegetable garden getting it cleared out.  It too is wildly overgrown and I regret that I did not get more of it torn up earlier in the season.  The whole thing still has to be rebuilt; the raised beds are falling apart and there are areas I want to expand.  A good bit of digging and carpentry work awaits.  But there are areas I can plant in the meantime.  After two days of labor I got about a 5 foot by 15 foot area cleared, including digging out what seemed like miles of wild raspberry roots and I have managed to get the peppers and kohlrabi out as well as 6 rather large heirloom dahlias I got from the gardens at the Morse estate.   The Dahlias are destined to go in the new sunny flower bed next to the new deck, sadly still on hold while the town figures out where we stand in reference to new zoning laws that were passed this past winter and spring.  The vegetable garden will be a perfect holding place from them, visible from our bedroom window.

By the time I have come inside the past two days I have been having trouble standing up straight and my hands have been protesting mightily.  My thumb and index finger joints are swollen and sore.  But generally the aches and pains feel good, like I have accomplished something significant.  I feel a certain pride at having beaten back the teeming hordes of invasive plants, and a sense of accomplishment at having imposed a bit of order on even a small piece of the world.

Needless to say my state of mind at the end of the day has been more vegetative than productive.  I did manage to enlarge the pattern for the ribbon organza coat, but I have not cut the fabric for the next muslin yet.  This is probably a good thing as I just decided that I should cut it about 2 inches longer.  The first muslin was the perfect length unhemmed, which of course means that I need to add a hem allowance.

Having finished one successful summer skirt, I also have visions of skirts dancing in my head.  They shall have to dance a little longer however, as the brain has been too numb to do the math and we leave bright and early tomorrow morning for Knoxville. 

Patchwork

Now this is my kind of patchwork!

Too bad it is still to early to plant them.  Like fabrics I love though, I just have to grab 'em when I see 'em.