The problem with blogs ...

... is that you're too busy doing things to write about the things you've been doing! "Blogger's guilt" must be a true existing condition right?

The house is coming along:
- Revamped the guest bathroom - new subfloor and tile, new vanity top and sink, new faucet on the vanity.
- Finally (after 5.5 yrs) put up real window treatments in the living room.
- New roof on the back porch
- New siding
- New windows (this was done with a 0% CT Energy energy loan)
- And to round out that little project - blown in triploymer foam insulation in the parts of the house that we hadn't put fiberglass in. This was not without it's difficulties - they tell you it will go into stud bays with existing fiberglass but when the sheathing came off to do the siding we could see that the tripolymer install had failed miserably. It's still in the bays but we got a refund from teh installer. When we strip the 1/4" plywood and replace with sheetrock we will deal with the tripolymer nastiness. Probably rip it out and replace with fiberglass.
- New A/C unit (we received a nice $1500 state energy rebate on this)
- Lights on the back porch and the removal of the ghastly 10'x10' platform that the previous owners had up. I took it apart and made it into two drop-in doors to cover the stair and still had lumber left over to build a compost holding bin and raised veg beds.
- Raised beds and productive veg growing in the back garden
- Hummingbird garden is flourishing and such fun to watch our two h-birds return!
- Stripped the wallpaper out of the 1/2 bath, painted but that's as far as that got.

So the big projects still to go:
- Master bath remodel (this might get done this year)
- Half bath makeover (constantly being stalled over due to the vent/duct that comes out half on the wall and half on the floor.) So the 1/2 bath project will be preceded by a little duct work project.
- Sheetrock the DR, office and back stairway.
- Repaint the LR (5 yrs on from buying it needs a refresh)
- Get rid of the clutter!!

Oh and my reason for posting today - "doing" the garden. Since taking the Brooklyn Botanic Gdn design class I've been doodling when time permitted but mostly garnering ideas and filing them away. Last week I stumbled on a person who I felt would be good to help me mold the garden to what I want and after that I had a break through on the main patio design so with that obstacle out of the way I called them up to have a chat about how we might work together.

She doesn't live down here but she has all the wildlife garden, design, natives knowledge and experience that I'm looking for. We chatted and decided that I would send up a package of drawings and photos and she would see if it was a project she could help with and we'd do it remotely.

We'll see. I'd like to have a nice garden to enjoy by the time I turn 50 (2014) and I had asked Bob for garden design/plant list help for this year's b'day prezzie.

What's Growing ...

A recent spell of 70 degree days in mid-March has set the garden going. Here's what's starting to grow.

Winter birds

So I signed up for Feederwatch and as I am not great at ID'ing birds so the idea was that would take some snapshots so that I could ID the ones I didn't know. I got some nice pics so then I was reading up on Photoshop, courtesy of thepioneerwoman.com and here's some of my visitors. I have to say I have a soft spot for the woodpeckers, the Red-bellied in particular. Although I am in awe of any bird with colour, U.S. birds are so much more colorful than U.K. birds, I find. These pics apart from the Nuthatch were taken during a snowstorm today as I was working from home.
All photos copyright me.

Fall clean-up

Phewf, have not got to a lot of Fall gardening due to racing bikes but sprung for a new leaf blower/mulcher this w/e and blew all the leaves in the front yard into a pile. Then I mulched them and but them back on the borders as mulch. No more leaves and free mulch. I did this last year and it works great, the leaves decay over the year adding to the soil. When I blew any debris and new leaves off the beds, I could see the good quality of the soil.

Now i have to tackle the back yard which is currently covered in about 6" or leaves and is about 75'x75' - bit more of a project than the front. I'll do the same with the borders but most of them get mulched and blown to the back of the yard and then i use them throughout the following year to augment the garden and especially to build new beds as my soil is quite rooty in places and stony in others.

Fall nursery clearance

Taking the garden design class at Brooklyn Botanical Garden really helped me not splurge on plants this year. It really taught me to plan and think and make lists and sketch. Then, with the arrival of October, I realised that it was time to go and visit my local garden nursery to see what they had on sale and were trying to get rid of. Choice is not always great but I find it's an excellent way to stretch my gardening dollar.

First stop was Hollandia Nursery in Bethel, CT. There was slim pickings but I managed to get:

3 Monarda didyma Jacob Cline (HB)

6 Agastache Blue Fortune (I had to remove the bees from these before putting them in the car) (HB)

2 flats of 10 Lobelia cardinalis (Cardinal flower) (HB)

2-3 Aster divericatus (white wood aster)

2 Heuchera "velvet night" (Coral Bells)

1 Aquilegia canadensis (Wild Columbine) (HB)

1 Aquilegia Ruby Port (HB)

1 Aquilegia (I forget the name) (HB)

This past weekend I hit up the local Agway - perenials and shrubs etc were 70% off. I admit I did go a little nutty but because I've spent most of the summer not buying but researching, planning and sketching, I was able to look through what they had on offer and buy things that I needed rather than things on a whim. So from Agway I got all the following 26 plants - some large well-established) for $100 (labelled prices added up to over $300)

2 large Nepeta subsellis 'Candy Cat'

2 large Nepeta faassenii Dropmore

2 Salvia sylvestris Blue Queen

2 large Salvia Endless Love (HB)

2 Deparia pycnosora (Big Brother Fern) (need to get the woodland area started)

1 Aster diveraticus (White Wood Aster)

1 mystery plant - I had no clue what Centaurea dealbata was other than I liked the leaf shape (it's a cornflower)

1 Oenothera fruticosa (Winter Primrose)

2 Heuchera Swirling Fantasy (Coral Bells)

1 Aruncus Misty Lace (Goatsbeard)

1 Solidago Sweety (dwarf goldenrod)

1 Veronica Darwin Blue (Speedwell) (HB)

4 Eupatorium dubium phantom (Dwarf Joe Pye Weed) (HB)

3 Aquilegia Nora Barlow (Columbine)

1 Aquilegia vulgaris Grandmother's Garden (Columbine)

I took Tuesday off work as Bob was home and while he worked I gardened and got the hummingbird garden (HB) established and structured, I moved the foxgloves that had self seeded in the wrong places around the yard and also moved and divided my Echinacea magnus (the 4ft high buggers) so there's some height at the back of the borders to. I'll take a pic shortly to show how its coming along. I also had plants for the partial shade perennial bed I am wanting to start in the back "garden" (euphemism).
I'd like to fill in some gaps I left in the HB garden with Salvia Coccinea, Lupinus perennis and also plant some Scarlet Runner Bean and Purple Hyacinth bean on the arbor in the front. I'll grow these guys from seed.

Humingbird garden

So it has begun. A south-facing area of the front garden has puzzled me for the longest time as to what to do with it. It is the area. When we viewed the house almost 4 years ago it looked like this - it's the area on the right hand side in front of the addition.


We very quickly ripped out the yew bushes and started over cutting back the depth of the border and enlarging the lawn. The depth of this one area made it hard to design. The hummingbird garden seemed to fall into place as I had also wanted to ring hte house with a 24" band of pea gravel for when we eventually have the siding replaced. I also had some very tall echinacea magnus (tall purple coneflower) hogging the front that had to be moved.


So the first step was digging out the gravel buffer and putting in the edging.


Then I laid landscape fabric and topped with gravel. I recently did my fall visit to local nurseries to see what they were clearing out so I've had lots to plant both here and elsewhere but I'll cover that in another post. Oh and I added a half barrel and liner so there will be a wee pond for them which also breaks up the area into more manageable borders.

Hummingbirds

I had been thinking more about my magic encounter with the hummingbird and started researching plants for them as I have an area of the garden that I have not really known what to do with. So I drew up lists (like you do) and acquainted myself with all the top hummingbird attractors. I also noticed that the landscaping at work had large areas of lobelia cardinalis (Cardinal Flower). I did not look for h-birds though.
About a week later I was walking to the cafe when I noticed that the landscapers had ripped out all the lobelia and put in 'Mums. Still I made no connection until I saw two women by the door, staring at the ground and then staring up. There were two hummingbirds on the ground by the door. One was dead and one was just sitting there. They thought they were baby birds that had fallen out of a nest. It was clear that they were RT Hummingbirds. I picked the dead one up and the other one flew off. Poor buggers suddenly had their mega-lobelia buffet disappear just like that.
The next day I went to the cafe and there was another dead h-bird lying in the same spot (the picture above). They really do weigh literally nothing - amazing to see them up close (in the photo you can actually see the long tongue sticking out to the left.

Now totally resolved to build a hummingbird garden.

Hmmm ...

Can't get the hummingbird that I saw at Earth Tone Natives off my mind. It was stunning. A female Ruby-Throated I think. I would love to do a small hummingbird garden but am concerned with the low fragrance of flowers they like that the deer would just eat their way through them all.