Will Work for Chocolate and Plants
a.
b.
a.
I recently designed a very important grad-school paper for my friend Sarah who is getting a masters degree in saving the world. In exchange she sent me some amazing homemade peanut butter cups (24 peanut butter cups, to be specific, that I ate in about 2 days flat) and this really neat tiny sea urchin air plant. Sometimes I stare at it for a while and sing "Part of this World" to myself.
b.
We have seriously slacked on landscaping for the last year. I was starting to feel like that bad neighbor with the worst yard on the block. So Jeremy and I spent an evening pulling weeds and cleaning up the front lawn. I was thinking that I wanted to plant some Hosta in our front planters but was doubting my decision based on how much sun they would get and the fact that I know almost NOTHING about plants and landscaping. That's when my neighbor walked by and said "You should plant some Hosta there." This neighbor is a single, matter-of-fact, older woman who takes her dog, Otto, on a walk at least twice a day. She's not particularly cheerful and mostly keeps to herself. So when she told me I should plant Hosta I took it as a sign. I immediately went out and bought 8 of them. I felt like such a good neighbor and homeowner as I transplanted them from their little plastic pots into the earth.
Next up is getting our veggie garden back in order. We haven't had a chance to get a good start on it but I'm thinking I'll stick to tomatoes and herbs this year.
Are you guys tackling any fun landscaping or veggie garden projects?
Yes I do have my garden started...I have two quite large raised beds and have planted tomatoes, onions, peppers, lettuce, radishes, rosemary, cilantro and basil...maybe more that I cant think of right now..
I love hostas..They dont like a lot of hot sun. They mostly like a little light and more shade. They will come back each year.
I had an air plant when I was younger, they are so cool (read: easy to take care of).
We haven't done any gardening this year, moving puts us in a major transition right when we'd normally be planting and getting things going. Maybe we'll plant a few things for Fall...
Melinda - The hostas get some morning sun but then quite a bit of shade from a big tree in our front yard during the hot afternoon. I'm hoping they make it through this hot Oklahoma summer.
Jes - We've been in our house for 3 years and this is really the first bit of landscaping we've done on our own. It took us a bit of time to get around to it.
We're getting our gardens ready for the long weekend -- container gardens, since our soil is ultra rocky. Very excited!
YAY! All we do at our house is yard work. You can ask Liz. We have the best yard on the street. In fact, the interior of our house gets far less attention than the exterior. But we are awfully proud of the yard (particularly the husband's sacred GRASS), and we have hostas + lenten rose all over the place. I am super lucky because my MIL is a master gardener and prefers to work in our yard as opposed to her own (since her yard is pretty established since they've lived there for 20 years). We get a lot of shade, so I'm in the process of figuring out where we get morning sun so I can get some colorful plants back there, too. Our deck gets full sun, so I've got strawberry pots and planters full of nasturtium, sweet william (the husband's name), and hens + chicks.
I should be better about documenting our yard projects on the blog... thanks for sharing!
Lauren / Naurnie - YOU HAVE CHICKENS!?
And figuring out where my yard gets sun used to BLOW my mind. Like - how the hell would I know!? But since being freelance for a year I know exactly which areas of the yard get sun / shade at any given time of the day. I should probably use this knowledge for good.
Aw, HELL NO. I was begging for chickens but the husband says no. (He says this because I'm scared of birds. Pish posh. If they were my chickens, I'd be fine).
Hens + chicks are succulent type plants. The "hen" is the big plant, and then it reproduces and spreads to make little baby plants, or "chicks".
See? http://goo.gl/2FK0K
Lauren - Bwahaha! I want some chickens too. But now I want hens + chicks too. Those are fantastic.
Yes. We both need both kinds of hens + chicks. You need to get some of those plants in a sunny spot. They look adorbz in a strawberry pot!
I love Hosta! I found some on sale at the Lowes on May but I too know very little about planting. I'm confused about the whole perrenial/annual thing. I'm afraid if I plant anything that it will die in the Winter and I'll be stuck spending an arm and leg next year on new plants. i think maybe I just need to save up and hire a company to plant some great stuff in the front that won't die. lol
don't feel bad, our yard looks like Jurassic Park right now, and I'm afraid to touch anything without my mom's direction.
P.S. Divide your hostas every year (fall, I think), because after a while they grow HUGE and instead of cute adorable colourful bushes, they become The Godzilla Hosta That Ate My Garden. The deer eat ours about two seconds after they grow huge, so we don't bother dividing, but I've seen it elsewhere.
I've got hostas and herbs in the same bed - for some reason whatever I plant in my front flower bed does great! Not sure if it's the dirt or the amount of sun it gets. About a third of it gets sun pretty much all day, the other 2/3rds gets sun and then mostly shade. A good thing to plant is an acuba japonica and of course nandinas. They are both beautiful pretty much year round.
I have those too- but we call them "hens and bitties"... funny. They were trasnplanted from my grandmas yard.
We've also started our herb and veggie gardens for the year. Tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, squash, and cucumbers. So not too much and hoping for better luck this year.
our front *visible* yard is doing ok, but ugh - our back 'yard' is a dirt pile
we really really WANT to tend to and grow things, but it just hasn't been a doable thing the past couple of years - our summers have been record setters for triple digit heat and drought - any plants would require more time, attention (and water) than we can afford right now
I am thinking of doing a smaller potted herb selection - I so very very miss my basil.....
Landscaping....um no. I do have a lot of dog poop to clean up tho!
I LOVE Hostas! They're maintenance free and they come back bigger and better every year. After five years of planting and rearranging my garden, I finally feel like it's coming together. Keep at it. Your patience and determination will be rewarded.
Diggin the sea urchin plant. The pot is interesting...kind of nipple-ee-ish? :)
Oh, and to answer your question!...we just built a couple of "planter boxes" on the front of our deck that I blogged about. Also, my husband built and prepped a garden area for me to plant herbs and veggies of my choosing...which I have yet to do. Perhaps this weekend?
We have a couple of hay bales that we are going to re-test planting a few tomato plants in to see if hay bales are better than gardens. I'll probably blog about that too.
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