The Two G's of Summer - Gardens and Garage Sales!

Hi, friends!  I cannot believe how difficult it is to post entries these days.  Between play dates, trying to stay cool at the splash pad or beach, garage sales, gardening/landscaping, and all of the fun BBQ's and festivals of the season, we all seem to collapse into bed totally exhausted (but happy) each night.  I figure you're all doing much of the same, so like me, you probably aren't keeping up on reading all of the wonderful blogs entries either!

Here are a few highlights of the two G's that dominate summer - gardens and garage sales.

Gardens... When we moved into our home 6 years ago there were no gardens or landscape to speak of.  The prior owners had 5 kids and understandably had their focus elsewhere.  Here is what our backyard looked like. 

We started slowly, as we'd never done this sort of thing before, and added a few things.  We put in some pavers for our fire pit, mulched the area where no grass would grow and our dogs use for their "business", and transplanted some hosta.  Here are the pics a year later.  The white string is for the fence that was about to be installed to keep said doggies safe.

Over the years we've experimented with this and that, but were still not sure what we wanted to do with our space.  We knew mowing the hill at the back of our property was tough so we wanted to limit that.  Also, we'd talked with the city about the RIVER that rages through our yard due to the slope and the engineer's suggestion was a dry riverbed to direct the water and give it a place to flow in the spring and during heavy rains.  So last year we paid a friend-of-a-friend to provide some consulting.  He owns a successful landscape business and had some wonderful ideas for us! 

The result is a plan to incorporate some larger rocks and "planting pockets" into the dry river bed to naturalize it.  Plant perennials on the hill that don't require much maintenance or water and mulch them so there's no mowing.  Plant some trailing vines and creeping plants to cascade over the rocks and hills.  We started this work last summer and got to this point. 

My wonderful hubby has started digging the dry river bed and filling it with rock we dug out of the front last year (we pulled out ancient, overgrown arborvitae and rock, planting perennials, yews, and blue spruce in their place and mulching.)  Last weekend we went out to my dad's and loaded up larger rocks from a farmer's rock pile so we could start on the planting pockets.  We finished the first one last night, yippee!  Here it is, along with our progress to date. 

There is so much satisfaction in a project like this for me.  Do any of you feel the same way?  Knowing that I get to enjoy the beauty and cultivate the growth/maturity of our efforts is particularly rewarding.  Not to mention that I love working together with my husband (it isn't always rosy, but it's a great opportunity to work through some of our communication glitches and enforce our compromise skills - even practice concession occasionally!)  Thanks for letting me share our landscape journey - it's near and dear to us and we'd welcome your reactions and suggestions.

I do believe this post is long enough, so we'll have to save the other G (garage sale) for tomorrow.  I have some fab finds we've incorporated into our home and I am excited to share with you!  Enjoy your day, my friends.  ~J

Cuttings from my garden and fresh bread

Just the title of this one gets me smilin'!!  After going to bed thinking about my last post and how happy our little piece of nature makes me, I woke up excited to replace last week's cut flowers. 

The storm on Friday night damaged a lot of ferns in the backyard, so I have a pile of fronds waiting to be put into a large, square, cut glass vase.  Meanwhile, here are some other cuttings I took this morning and arranged into a couple of my favorite thrifted bud vases.  Since they're from my yard, they're FREE FREE FREE.  And wait, it gets better, add a cup of coffee, a hard boiled egg (mashed warm with butter and salt,) a piece of home made french bread, and you'll get why I'm smilin'!!  A delicious breakfast and cut flowers make for a wonderful beginning to this Monday. 

The homemade french bread is from our dinner last night.  My good friend Jen, who inspires me in too many ways to count, gave me her simple bread machine recipe.  I've always been scared to bake with yeast, sticking instead to boxed mixes, but I made both raisin bread and french bread with success, so call me converted!! 

One of my hopes for summer, now that regular work is out of my life, is to eat better.  The homemade bread is one piece of the puzzle.  Pairing it last night with grilled, lean, pork chops I'd marinated in sesame ginger sauce, and fresh peaches was the rest.  Making my own bread (when I can) is appealing because, #1 - it tastes fantastic and #2 - it gives me control over what goes into it; only a handful of simple ingredients and no preservatives.  Since the bread machine does most of the work, it's actually pretty simple. 

Here it is, my first french loaf!  

While I'm thinking about food... With 4th of July just around the corner I've been clipping new recipes like mad!  The July/August issue of Food Network magazine has Chorizo-Potato Tacos; Savoy, Lime and Cilantro Coleslaw; and Bourbon Peach Cobbler.  Mmmmmmm....  The poor friend who gets this month's copy of the magazine will have to look past, or maybe look through (ha, ha, ha), some pretty large holes.  These recipes look like keepers!  One last idea was to put crushed, blue, pop rock candy on the rim of a glass of red beverage (thanks, Tyler Florence.)  Now THAT brings me back.  I LOVED those little candies, how fun!? 

What will your Independence Day celebration entail?  Hopefully good friends, family, and good food.  Blessings to you and yours from me and mine.  ~Joy 

Summer Love Affair

The longest days of the year are here!  Hip, hip, hooray!  As I've blogged before, sunlight is a beloved thing in MN since we have such a shortage of it during the long, cold winters.  We've had a particularly rainy spring and summer, with rain for 13 of 14 days recently (I might as well move to Seattle at that rate, since I love that city even more than Minneapolis!)  Today, however, was a gorgeous day. 

I took the opportunity to plant the last of my flower pots and help my hubby clean up the yard after Friday's big storm.  I did some landscape maintenance and also began a new phase of our on-going landscape project in back.  It feels good to work hard, get dirty, and see something accomplished at the end of the day.  *big smile*

Here's a glimpse of our front door area; I found the tiered wire planter at a garage sale 2 years ago and bought the wire basket from my friend Cindy during our joint garage sale last summer!  (Yes, I actually have garage sales myself, I don't simply shop at them *wink, wink*.)  The chalkware dog was purchased from my friend Jen at our garage sale this year.  She was selling a portion of her collection, and the long-haired Chi had to come home with me!  The wooden planter has a crazy ponytail grass I love on the left and one of my favorite annuals on the right, "Cerveza 'N Lime" Plectranthus.  The soft, fuzzy leaves really smell like cerveza and lime - it's so VERY refreshing on a hot day!!  My sister even asked if you could eat it because it smelled so GOOD!!!  It is worth checking out if you're not familiar with this plant.

Looking toward the street from our front door is where I put the newly acquired garage sale plant stand and I couldn't be happier every time I open the door.  Ironically enough, the day after I found this one I was at my aunt and uncle's and saw that they have the same one on their deck!  Guess good taste runs in the family, ha!  I planted marigolds this year because I was in the mood for something traditional, but paired them with portulacas; I love the tissue paper-like flowers of this plant and the texture of the spiny greenery. 

Here are a couple of other photos from our front flower beds.  I am still crazy in love with the color of these deep wine asiatic lilies, and the bees are crazy in love with our bright gaillardia!  I guess this summer love affair with gardening explains why the arts and crafts room is piled high with incomplete projects and why my postings have been so few and far between!  For the love of the great outdoors...  Enjoy your week, my friends.  ~J.

Bored? NEVER!

I recall as a small child telling my mom, probably a little too often and in a voice a little too whiny, "I'm bored."  To which she'd respond with some wonderful idea like seeing how many 4-leaf clovers could be found in our yard or ironing my dad's shirts for $.25 a piece.  Now as an adult, I simply cannot fathom boredom.  The list of projects I want to tackle, crafts I want to sew, books I want to read, blogs I want to read, people I want to catch up with, yardwork and gardening I want to do and much, much more is simply endless! 

A few top items on my list are sewing some awesome placemats and maybe a table runner from my cool thrift store fabric finds, figuring out how to rearrange our space to accomodate 2 desks which will become a cutting/sewing table that I purchased from a friend who's moving, dividing the sedum along our fence line since it 'tis the season, installing edging around our newly created boat parking pad (thanks to Mike and his dad,) locating a Bakeri Blue Spruce and planting it at the front corner of our house (must be done in spring,) determining if I want to rehab another property in the coming months, seeking alternative employment opportunities, and more! 

My list of books is bordering on crazy - I had to return My French Life by Vicki Archer to the library before I could finish it, and I haven't yet begun Entre Nous: A Woman's Guide to Finding her Inner French Girl which is due back soon (probably because I've been skimming Sew Darn Cute, Button Girl, House Beautiful The Home Book, and the Finishing Touch book from House Beautiful in my so-called "spare time", HA!)  I have yet to finish Quiet Strength by Tony Dungy, despite really enjoying it, and Anthony Bourdain's The Nasty Bits (I managed to read Kitchen Confidential and loved it, being the ex-waitress I am!)

Me, bored?  NEVER!  You see, I think I inherited a gene that keeps me forever curious and motivated to try something new.  Life is simply too short not to reap all it has to offer. 

One of my favorite sayings from Curly Girl's Leigh Standley is "The world is full of people who will go their whole lives and not actually live one day.  She did not intend on being one of them."  (This is also the woman who came up with "I am fairly certain that given a cape and a nice tiara, I could save the world."  What's not to love?!) 

So tell us, friends, how will you keep from being bored in life?! 
Hugs to you this wonderful Saturday morning! ~J

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