Fall flowers

There’s just something wonderful about coming home and having flowers growing.  I love it.  This weekend we spent a little bit of time working in the front yard to trim the grass, pull a few weeds and replace the dead margiolds in the planter on the steps (at left).  N decided to try spraying beer on the lawn as a type of fertilizer because he’d heard this worked.  (I’m not sure where he heard it, or if it works.  I’ll have to report back on that.)

Anyways…the flowers in the planter and the neatly trimmed lawn make me smile every night when I get home and see them there.

Now if I could just get the backyard looking nice.  I went anti-organic and did some sort of Scott’s Weed-n-Seed to try and get rid of all the horrible weeds back there.  I would have gone a more organic route, but we have poison ivy growing in the yard, and I heard that stuff is supposed to kill it.  Meanwhile, I’m also trying to grow grass seed.  Hopefully I’ll have something nice to show on that soon.  Keep your fingers crossed.

Backyard beginner

One of the reasons I wanted to move from my old house to the new one is that I wanted more space for the dogs. However, my backyard turned out to need a lot more work than I originally figured it would, and the dogs and I haven’t been able to do much enjoying yet. (Isn’t that always the case with every house project?) I’ve only lived in the new house since March, and already I’ve had to:

1. Prune the 65′ mulberry tree (Turns out tree pruning is expensive!)
2. Deal with the poison ivy growing in the lawn
3. Get the outdoor drain unclogged due to silt draining into it and causing an impasse.
4. Throw down grass seed to try and get aforementioned silt from running off into the drain.

All this and I still can barely even use it. So the next big thing I’m going to be doing is ripping down the rotten deck. It’s going to be an exciting 4th of July. But why wait, you ask? Why not start tonight? (Actually I did.) However, N’s dad is letting us borrow his truck to haul away all the debris so this weekend makes most sense. It should be interesting. Hopefully soon it will be nice enough to actually spend some time back there.

DIY project: Faux stone pavers

I just saw this post over at Charles & Hudson, and am in LOVE. I’ve always had a serious fondness for brick walkways, stone streets, etc. Unfortunately neither in my new place (or my old one) do I have a place to use this idea. It doesn’t matter though because I’m totally in love with it.  I’m going to have to store this one away for my future cottage home in the woods.  Hopefully you’ll be able to use this idea NOW. 

Go here to buy the mold.

Project: Cookie Jar Terrarium

Today while at work the topic of plants came up. I have a dismal brown thumb, and as we discussed how I manage to kill all plantlife, one of the guys(!) I work with mentioned he liked to create terrariums in old glass cookie jars. He claims it’s very easy to maintain them and keep them alive… So seeing as how it sounded like a cool idea, I decided to do a little bit of google searching and found this step-by-step over at PBS. It looks like it could be just the right kind of gardening I’ll be good at!

terrarium, originally uploaded by mygothlaundry.