| Jak3 Posted on Wednesday, April 30, 2008 - 06:51 pm: |   
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I am so upset with myself. For about five years I raised Phalenopsis Orchids. I have a special window for them and I had a routine that really worked for them. I won several prizes last year at the Ontario Horticultural Society Division II show, and the judge told me that she had to choose one plant from the whole show as Best In Show, and it was a toss-up between me and a potted Desert Rose. She gave it to the Desert Rose as they are a bit harder to grow. So I was very pleased. The one difficulty I was having was that, until the trees leaf out, the Spring sun is strong in my window. I usually open the window about an inch at the top and run a fan to keep the temperature down until the trees leaf out - but this can be a pain. So in my wisdom, I decided to put some embroidered bridge table cloth between the screen and the glass to cut down the light. So I did that, and watered and fertilized according to my regular schedule. Guess what - they all died off - every single one. I guess they needed the light to grow and use the moisture that I had provided. What a disaster! There is still some green wrinkled leaves but I had to remove all of the flower spikes and the plants are looking very sad. I will take them downstairs and put them under the lights and bring my seedlings upstairs and put them in the window. *sigh* When the weather is more reasonable (read: not snowing and hailing like today) I will take them outside and repot in the shed. I might leave them in there as I have a nice large window there, that opens and closes, and is screened and somewhat shaded by the trees. The fresh air might help.
Disaster number Two: last night I was watching t.v. at about 10:30 with all of the lights off, and I saw four great big deer mosey past the front window on my lawn and garden. Of course I moved quickly and they ran away. This morning I checked the front garden: all is well. Then I checked the back. The toll: all the Trilliums - so they are done for - the Campanula, both the blue and the white, four hostas in various stages of growth, and a large Autumn Joy Sedum.Tonight I went out and sprayed my homemade Deer and Rabbit repellant on everything, front, back and both sides. I have a lot of plants that I truly enjoy and although I think the deer are beautiful, they can go and be beautiful in the bush behind the houses across the street.
Just in case anybody reads this, here is the recipe:
One litre of Water
One capful of YELLOW mouthwash (the deer like the flavour of the other colours)
Two tablespoons of Murphy's Oil Soap.
Spray weekly and after every rain. Silly recipe but it seems to work. I should have started in March when the snow was still four feet deep!
Off to water the seedlings under the lights now.
Kay gets her house tomorrow so I will be going there and staying over Friday to help her clean and get ready to move her stuff in on Saturday. She didn't realize that she would have to book her van weeks in advance so is now scrambling madly to find something to transport her stuff. The biggest problem will be the piano. Duh!
And I just finished the task of paying bills. Another wonderful experience to add to my already perfect day. |
| Jak3 Posted on Friday, June 06, 2008 - 12:00 am: |
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After having lots of rain and cold weather, finally a pretty warm and kinda sunny day! Adrian at school, Brendan at work, Don on the golf course = a day to myself!! Went out at 9:30 and cut the lawns,did a little weeding, checked and watered/fertilised all of the pots, planted the rest of the veggie garden, including Adrian's as he has had the seeds for two weeks and hasn't gotten around to it. Finished the brickwork on Ken and Bev's side for the climbing hydrangea and mini hosta - it looks great! I am making great strides in edging all of the gardens with brick given away by the Anotnio Way construction site...what a find! I must thank Karen again for putting me onto this source of free stuff! Tomorrow I will try to do the other edge on that side so the space between the two houses will look really good. I hope they find a seller soon - they are moving out tomorrow! I hate to see them go, they have been dear neighbours. And they are leaving lovely gardens. Karen will look after lawn and gardens until sold, I guess.
I have been feeling a bit sad, anxious, or whatever this last little while. the $$$ are leaving as fast as they come in - pension day is called "money transfer day" in our house as the cheques are direct deposited and the bills are direct debited. *sigh* .We have decided that Adrian will not have a pool, not this year anyway, The easy set-up pools are very affordable, but the fencing that the town requires is pricey, and this is not a large property either. And his music teacher has suggested that he needs a better instrument for next fall. He can take swimming at the town pool, and have a play pool here I guess, and be perfectly happy. He will get to spend a week at soccer camp this summer anyway. This is not a problem, but I guess I just want him to have what our kids had. But he is doing so well! His Terrific Kid award, his music recital, his school work, and even his swimming and soccer (although an athlete he is not) are all such happy things in his life right now! And we are very proud of his efforts, he knows this.
As blessed as I am, this is definitely not the retirement that we planned. And yet - this is a happy time for us. I hope our health holds out and we can stay here for a long time. I still look back with a twinge of regret that we left our Merrickville house - the greenhouse and gardens were my pride and joy. I would hate to pull up stakes again now that this house is coming along so nicely. But about 75% of the work falls to me and sometimes I just don't want to do anymore. I call "the boys" on lots of stuff now - hanging up jackets, taking off shoes, putting away their "toys" etc. I tell them we can't afford maid service! They are responding really well - they just haven't been thinking.
Maybe I will try to get some sleep - it's 1:30 A.M. I haven't gotten much sleep tonight.
Maybe I'll search the classifieds for a piano for Adrian....
Maybe I should try to find the camera so I can take some photos of the gardens as they look so nice now. Kay and I hope to take an introduction to Photography course this winter. |
| Jak3 Posted on Sunday, June 22, 2008 - 07:45 am: |
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Yesterday I sat as a volunteer guide in a garden on a garden tour. I had asked to placed right in town so of course I was way,way out in the country. I brought a book because I thought no-one would venture out so far, but I was run off my feet all day! The garden I had was built on a husge expanse of bedrock. The owners told me thay had nop earth and no water, so they used what they had. The whole property was sone with rocks. In between the huge retaining wasll stones were thousands fo hens-and-chicks of various types. everywhere there was a little cleft in the rock, they had put in some earth and planted drought-tolerant grasses. They had large swaths of sedums and some thyme also. Their largest plant was a Pagoda Dogwood that they had been able to plant in a dip inthe rock. They aalos own the land next to the rocky area, and it is a march because off of the water drains there. As a result they have a resident black rat snake and a resident garter snake near the house, and many varieties of turtles walking around their lawn from the marsh. For about three hours of the time I was there, three extremely large deer lolled on the fringe of the property in the shade. This was certainly different from the lush flowers that you usually see on tours! These people really worked with their natural surroundings! We were all tired out by the end of the day - a couple of hundred people, at least, were personally escorted over the property! Interesting experience! It made me think of Greth, who has pretty adverse conditions to work with also! |
That sounds really amazing. Were you able to take any pics of that? It reminds me of something I saw or read on something like Better Homes and Gardens. Some couple had created a rock garden because that was about all they had to work with, and had managed to plant a tree in the one depression they had found. LOL.
That's interesting. After I finished planting my rock garden this morning, the first thing I thought was that I should plant some pretty grasses around it.
The whole thing sounds like a great way to spend the day, even if it was way farther out than you had wanted to go. |
| Jak3 Posted on Friday, July 11, 2008 - 08:57 am: |
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Yesterday I was able to spend a lot of time in the garden. For once it was not pouring rain or horrifyingly hot. DS was at work all day, DH was on the golf course (where else!) and DGS had been allowed to rent a video game because he had completed some summer reading; his friends came over and they sat in front of the screen all day, something I don't usually allow, but we all needed a break!
I was able to finish edging the side garden with bricks and transplant the Lamb's Ears from the front to the side. I weeded the front beds, tied up the Lady's Mantle, fertilized the pots, tidied up the grass along the front bricks, cut back all of the Iris', watered and then used two big bags of cedar mulch to finally complete the bed between the rock and the patio. It looks great, but will look even better when things fill in over the next couple of years. Still no sign of blooms on the blue Hydrangea. I must have cut off the buds when pruning last year, or maybe the critters ate them, as they did a lot of damage in the front last winter. This year I will cage and mulch it heavily without pruning to see if I get anything next year. If I don't get blooms, I will replace it with a blue Endless Summer. I will be taking out the Peony in front of the rock this fall as I don't have much garden space and I can't justify it taking up so much room for so little bloom time. I have already found a home for it down the street, so that will be good. The Hostas there are monsters, so I will be splitting those up and replanting them there also. The splits will go to DD, who now has a large property (for the city), lots of shade, and nothing in her proposed gardens. I need to rethink what to replace the Peony with; I need something showy there, but I want longer colour. Today it is wet and rainy, so it is a good time to top dress the weak lawn in the bck where DGS's pool was last year, and reseed. Then I guess I will be entertaining DD and friend who are bicycing here from their campsite, and small boys who are coming over for the afternoon. Life is good!! |
| Jak3 Posted on Monday, July 14, 2008 - 10:56 pm: |
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DH and I took the little guy to soccer camp this morning. On the way home a train was going by and we didn't want to sit and idle the car forever, so we went to a trendy kind of coffee shop and had a cup and read the paper. What a nice start to the day! I went straight out to the rock garden when we got home. It has been untended for two years and so is a big mess, with the little guy away I can concentrate great areas of time to cleaning it up. In many cases I had to dig out clumps of plants, painstakingly remove the intertwined grass and weeds and then replant. I had to lift up some of the rocks to get at weedy roots....it's a good thing we will have nice weather this week as it will probably take me all week to fix this up. DH is so sweet - he went out to a golf lesson and came home with four large bags of natural cedar mulch for me...it was on sale half price and he thought I could use some extra! This will really help finish the edges of the rock bed....Nothing works like a little encouragement! All of the other gardens look great. I am so pleased that the Durandii clematis is happy in its new home. Last year, which should have been its creep year, it grew one teensy stem and one little flower; this year on an old bed frame in the veggie box it still only has one stem but it is very vigourous and has several lovely blooms. I guess the combination of richer soil, more sun, lots of water and just plain care and attention have paid off. I need to take better care of my clems.I'm going to keep working on the rock bed today.
Yesterday I made the mistake of letting Ajax off his rope to sniff around the rock garden - he sneakily sniffed along to the farthest edge, and then bolted! I swear there isn't a faster dog than a Boston! He was gone in a flash, straight down the middle of the road at top speed. A car came up behind him and slowed down so he veered from one side to the other and then when the car was by, he chased it like crazy. I was running down the road yelling "Ajax" Come!" at the top of my lungs, and then I twisted my ankle and fell down on the street. Once down, I called "Ajax! TReats!" and he reversed at top speed amd ran all the way back. I ended up sitting in the middle of the street with one finger hooked in his collar. I was finally able to get up and hobble home carrying a thoroughly delighted squirming 20 pounds of dog - I was , to say the least, not amused. I was terrified that he would be hit by a car, or lost in the bush around here, and annoyed that he didn't come when I called him, and my ankle hurt,,,DH was waiting on the deck with glass of wine and a big smile - said it looked like something out of a movie. Hmm. |
| Jak3 Posted on Wednesday, August 27, 2008 - 05:27 am: |
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Fall is upon us. Adrian starts school next week, grade two already! I have been very busy with him the last two weeks as he is entering 12 items in the Perth fall fair. The biggest project is a loaf of bread in the bread machine - making the bread is easy for him as we do it all the time: the hard part is him printing out the recipe. That child cannot write to save his life! He is doing one line each day just to get through it. His other entries are: a paper mache apple, a large zucchini, some huge snake beans, a Rice Krispy apple with worms, a huge sunflower, a picture of an owl with apple print eyes, bugs made out of candies, and a person made out of garden vegetables. The prize money for the kids section is about three times what it is for the adults as the town wants to encourage youngsters to participate. Sounds like a good idea to me!
I am fed up with my garden now. The deer massacred half of the front garden so I didn't get the effect I had hoped for. I put the Monarda in a pot in the ground, and so didn't get the big display like last year. I had hoped to edge with bricks, got the bricks free in May, but the men didn't cut them for me so they had been sitting there all summer. DH cut them for me yesterday, but I can't start the work until Adrian is at school. I am spending about an hour each day now just trimming etc. Again this year I will need to dig up a large portion of the back garden and redesign it - it's a mess! And the veggie boxes are ridiculous! Huge sunflowers in Adrian's garden, huge snake bean vines also, these block the sun for the rest of the box, huge chard that we didn't eat - I won't be planting it next year; pathetic carrots and beets - I'll do better with those next year - and the tomatoes have blight so the plants look just miserable. The Big Beef didn't produce much this year but the mini yellows were a landslide! Last year I started the Big Beef indoors really early and they were monsters by the time I put them out, so I had to trench and lay them down to put them in the garden. Maybe that is why they were so wonderful - they had an absolutely huge root system all along the stems to get mourished with. I think I'll try that again....
We have decided to move the deck steps over to where the pond is, and put the pond where the steps are now, and then design a patio with the pond as an integral part. Then DH may be able to screen in the deck so we can sit out longer without the bugs - maybe eat out there, and move the mosquito Zapper down to the patio. We had considered just extending the deck, but this town ups your taxes if you sneeze! We aren't certain that David ever got a permit to build the deck in the first place, and if not, then we would have to pay for that permit and get the tax hit. Our neighbour wanted to take off her deck and build a sunroom - there was no permit for the deck in the first place so she had to pay for that permit, then pay for a demolition permit to take it off, and then get a permit for the sunroom, and on top of that, her yard isn't very big so she had to apply for a variance hearing before her application was approved. It took her a whole year - just to take off the deck and stick up a screened porch. Beurocracy at it's finest....
After looking at Deannart's pots, I think that's what I will do on my new patio next year! |
| Jak3 Posted on Wednesday, September 03, 2008 - 07:52 am: |
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Finally school has started and Adrian is happily off. I have neglected all of my gardens for the last three weeks as he and I prepared many entries for the Perth Fair. Adrian is thrilled to have won First place for Junior baking with Fleishman's yeast. He made white bread in the bread machine (this was the name of the category). He had no trouble making the bread on his own as he and we have done that many times. The hard part was writing out the recipe - he is only six and the laborious printing took him two weeks! But he was so well rewarded! A huge pleated red ribbon, ten dollars, his picture and recipe sent on to Fleischman's for possible inclusion in a kid's cook book - what a thrill for a six year old (and his Nana!). He also won a Second for a bouquet, a Third for making a person out of vegetables, and a Fourth for growing Giant Beans. All told he brought home several ribbons and $37.00. He tells me he is DEFINITELY going to enter every single category next year!
I also did well, First for Begonia and for Salsa, Second for Geranium, African Violets, Hostas, and Foliage plant (Hoya); Third for Bread and Butter Pickles. I came home with $30.00 and a gift certificate from a local decorating store for winning the most things for a first time competitor. I,too, will enter as much as possible next year - we had so much fun!
Now down to business - the house and the gardens need my attention. I did windows yesterday, floors today. Yesterday I worked on my front garden - removed the raggy Allysum, cut back the Artemesia, ripped out the Jacob's Ladder which blooms for about five minutes each Spring; cut back Adrian's "Wiggy the Wigelia"; made the patch of Caitlin's Giant Ajuga a bit smaller, and started to edge the lane. Today I hope to plant the Monarda in the ground instead of in the buried pot - I didn't get much of a show from it, so I want to make it happier - and finish edging the lane. Tomorrow, I will slightly enlarge the front bed so I can start putting in the bricks as edging. And this is only the front - both sides of the house need a little work, and the back is just abysmal. My property isn't large and I hope to have things back in shape by the end of September. Then the inside work begins..... |
GOOD JOB, ADRIAN!
HOORAY, JULIE!
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| Nibbs Posted on Thursday, September 04, 2008 - 12:21 pm: |
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Wonderful, Julie, and congratulations to both of you! Good for you, Adrian! I wish I could see your vegetable person!!!
It sounds like you were both very busy coming up to the fair, and so well rewarded. (It's been a long time since I made bread and butter pickles. Sounds like a good idea!)
My sister has her garden edged with bricks, Julie, and I love the look! I hope you'll show us the garden when you're done! |
| Flowerfreak Posted on Thursday, September 04, 2008 - 01:08 pm: |
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Congratulations Adrian & Julie! It sounds like that was a lot of fun. I agree with Diane, I'd like to see the vegetable person :-0
Good luck on the cookbook entry! |
| Jak3 Posted on Friday, September 05, 2008 - 07:48 am: |
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O.K. guys, check the Social forum for the Veggie Person!
I can't believe that, finally, I've managed to find a photo program that I can actually figure out - so I can transfer from the camera to the computer, I can find the photos, I can fix the photos, and I can post the photos. Maybe I will buy a decent camera ..... |
LOL. It IS very addictive. |
