Family, Home and History
The front garden has come a long way in just one year. Last year we dug out grass, weeds and a stunted cedar tree to create a flower garden in the front of the house.
This is a picture of the construction of the garden in July, 2007.
The following are pictures of the front garden from various angles taken today.
This is a twofer. I got Bonnie a new point and shoot digital camera today. It is a Kodak 883, 8 megapixel, SD Card memory, 38 - 114mm zoom with facial recognition software and the ability to charge the battery from any USB device. It was on sale at the Exchange for $90. While it’s not a Cannon or Nikon, it shoots pretty good pictures for a P&S. Of course it’s red.
The Lupines are bee and humming bird magnets. The clematis climbing the rose has flowers almost the size of dinner plates this year.
We’ve planted our tomatoes in Topsy Turvy Brand hanging planters that have the plants hanging out the bottom. No staking. No tying.
It was amazing to watch how rapidly the plants started turning their leaves over to capture the sun. We’ve planted Sweet Millions, Sweethearts, Momotaro and Fantasic.
All photos in the Blog have been replaced and minor editing of spelling and formatting have been accomplished. I was able to do it in about 3 hours. Windows Live Writer saved the day. I was able to fix everything without having to go to the WordPress Dashboard.
As I ALWAYS chided customers: Back up everything before attempting a software upgrade. Do as I say, not as I do.
Mea Culpa. Mea Culpa. Mea Maxima Culpa
During an upgrade of WordPress, I did the penultimate stupid thing. I didn’t back up all appropriate files/folders on the server. As a result, all my uploaded images were vaporized.
Bear with me while I reconstruct all the images for the last three years.
SOB!
When we bought the house the stone wall between us and the neighbor to the north was totally overgrown with English Ivy. The top of the wall was littered with lumber, junk wood and “stuff” the previous owners apparently used for firewood. For those who don’t know English Ivy, it will destroy masonry, brick or stone walls and buildings. When we started the wall looked like below.
It took two years and approximately 5 gallons of Roundup to finally kill the ivy. Once removed from the wall, it had cracked stones, destroyed mortar and invaded just about every joint in the wall. Once I chisel out the remaining dead stems, we’ll have to redo the mortar and replace some stones. If you examine the picture of the wall, the damage and remaining dead stems are visible.
The top of the wall has been redone with stepping stones and Mother of Thyme ground cover. Once the ground cover fills in, it will look 1000% better.
Yesterday we and Sarah, Jake and Monica (Sarah’s long time friend from Alaska) had brunch at Cafe’ Nola (http://www.cafenola.com/) in Winslow, Bainbridge Island followed by a tour of Bloedel Reserve. The reserve (http://www.bloedelreserve.org/) was a wealthy family’s “weekend cottage” that has become a beautiful garden with a slice of Pacific Northwest wilderness.
Even though Cafe’ Nola is an upscale yuppie dive, they had some of the best chicken fried steak I’ve ever had; below Bonnie’s of course. The swan was sleeping on the path next to a pond and was totally unconcerned with the noisy humans tramping by.
Spring finally decided to give us a taste of summer. Today is clear with a forecast high of 84. Tomorrow and Sunday will also be nice. All the early spring flowering plants such as peonies, lavender, lilac, bleeding heart and azalea have started to put on a great show. All the early bulbs such as tulips and crocus have pretty much peaked and are on the way out. These are from the front garden and look great from the street.
