the jungle that is our garden

gardening is hard work. many days lately i feel like all of nature's creatures are engaged in a circle of life that is working for everyone but me...

basil - it's just never looked right this year, no idea why

spider mite damage? what the heck bothers mint??

oregano pale and covered with mite damage

not sure what's going on here, and i forget what this flower is called...but it doesn't look fantastic, does it?

attack of the rose slug

rose slug again?

too much rain for yarrow

too much rain for thyme

that white residue, my friends...that white residue is slime mold, which pops up after every rain now

our eastern red cedar dropped lovely galls like this one on the flagstone path for a week

tent caterpillars?

i wasn't thorough enough killing the grass before planting our backyard privacy grove, and now i keep having to re-smother and re-mulch...can't keep up with that darn zoysia!

can you make out the white bumps that look like lint on the hosta flower stalks? wooly aphids EVERYWHERE

spider web perfectly positioned to feast on wooly aphids - nice.

and always...always...the chameleon plant grows and flourishes despite my constant sprayings with poison ivy killer.


but then there are sights like the following that keep me in the game.

day lilies

brake lights red yucca - 2 more are blooming. must get a whole cluster next year, they bloom for weeks!

day lilies, nandina, red twig dogwood and baby blue spruce all flourishing

that's fragrant pathways gardenia in the black planter - smells delicious on the way in to the screen porch 

just finished weeding...for 5 minutes

love this corner of the yard

more foundation garden loveliness

front path

in love with that hydrangea that's bigger than our shed

revived herb garden with marigolds to help keep bugs away

love this blue hydrangea

lenten rose

home.

caladium

screen porch floor

our carport-turned-screen porch is complete!
right after the construction finished i painted the floor with chalk paint, and it was an improvement but having lived with the space for a while now, we still wanted to add concrete pavers. partly to make a warmer, cozier floor but also to fill a gap left between the foundation and the walls of the porch (can't put the wood directly on the concrete for moisture concerns). we were getting wayyyy too many bugs in what is supposed to be our bug-free outdoor oasis.

old carport floor - before chalk paint and after chalk paint

so a couple of weeks ago i bought 400 pavers from home depot, laid them out with some help from my good friend anne (thanks anne!) and phil cut the odd pieces for corners and edges...then i spent about a day pouring and sweeping polymeric sand into the joints, cleaning the concrete surfaces and and spritzing with water until the sand was saturated. it took about a week for the sand to dry and harden fully in this humid weather, but we started walking on it right away. no harm done.

wetting the polymeric sand - did this about 10 times at 10 minute intervals

tada! diy paver floor

diy paver floor overlay

rustic floor with pavers

so yes that's right.
we laid pavers DIRECTLY on the old concrete foundation of the carport. i couldn't see how a sand bed would work since our screen porch is on floor level already, and it all just sounded like way more work than necessary. the concrete's been there since '55, and now it's covered with a couple inches more of concrete - not sure what moisture problems that could create since the whole thing is porous. guess we'll find out! in the meantime it was cheap, easy and looks sooooo much cozier than that old slab.

'front porch' by sherwin williams

just finished painting the little bedroom, as we call our guest room. i love this color! it was the perfect background to the dresser i painted in annie sloan chalk paint - a gorgeous rich yellow called 'arles.'

sw 'front porch'

'front porch' by sherwin williams

rain barrels

finally got my rain barrels installed! they filled up with only half an inch of rain so i need to design a better overflow system than the short tubes that came in the box. also, the water pressure is pretty low so they probably need better (higher) platforms at some point. but they work!

rain barrel from woodlanddirect.com

rain barrel hiding behind plants

 we got rain barrels for the 3 downspouts furthest from our water spigot so i don't have to keep fighting with 150' of hose each time that side of the garden needs watering. these barrels came with all the parts i needed except for the flexible downspout elbows and platforms (i just used cinderblocks) and they were only $109 with free shipping - a steal compared to the $199 home depot wanted for the same model!
this is my fav barrel because it's so hidden, the others need some camo and beautifying. but they're the ones on the back of the house...so no rush :)

and here's a photographic garden update for your viewing pleasure....

foundation garden is taking off...

flower carpet rose

brakelights red yucca - insanely pretty

nothing so rewarding as gathering a basket full of fresh flowers to arrange in little bouquets all over the house!

diy window muntins

i've been researching the best way to add some sort of grille design to our front windows, and stumbled on a few sites that suggested using pvc screen trim from home depot as it is cheap, durable, easy to cut and only 1/4 inch thick (so it won't interfere with the operation of the windows.)

the other day i suddenly decided i'd pondered enough. it was time to get some trim and silicone adhesive and see what happened. 

here was some of my inspiration from the Internet:

as you can see i wanted something different than the standard colonial style:

standard colonial muntins

here is our house before, with no window trim - just big dark windows.

first i tried doing only one piece of trim, but i didn't love this for our size/shape of window:

 so i went with two vertical pieces of trim, and here's the result!

this was one of my easiest projects - 10 minutes and a few bucks worth of trim. i love how the white trim balances the brick side of the house with the white screen porch. and unless you get your magnifying glass out, it's pretty hard to tell they aren't 'real' muntins.

freshly painted kitchen

what a week. i hate hate hated this project, but all that hate was worth it when i saw the result. i feel like we have a new kitchen. and including foam rollers, primer and some cabinet-specific paint called 'advance' i only gave benjamin moore eighty of my hard-earned dollars. not bad!

our petite kitchen was once filled with cherry cabinets - beautiful, solid 'plain & fancy' brand cabinets in a simple, modern style - just not our fav color.

pinterest and houzz.com had me craving a glossy white kitchen, and we figured that could only make the room look larger. so i read all the blogs and took myself to benjamin moore for what is supposedly the best cabinet paint ever - advance. i chose a white called 'chantilly lace' - bright enough to really pop off the wall color ('big bend beige' by benjamin moore.)

a lot of other blogs outline the process in detail, my favorite being young house love. but what surprised me was the 16 hour dry time between coats with this paint. it turns out that 16 hours is a really awkward amount of time, because it's hard to paint more than one coat per day without totally disrupting one's sleep schedule. but i'm hoping that all that extra drying time is just the price i paid for a rock-hard enamel surface that will stand the test of time....

here's the during....

the chaos of cabinet painting

progress

and here's the AFTER!

cabinets 'chantilly lace' by benjamin moore - view from dark gray mudroom

the white cabinets are so much more welcoming than the dark cherry wood - now the kitchen pulls you in from the darker rooms on either side. and i love the ceiling paint - same color as in the screen porch, 'hazel' by sherwin williams.

glossy white cabinets - check.

white cabinets looking spiffy from main room in 'sticks & stones' by sherwin williams

view into mudroom with chartreuse door. bright bright bright!

love how the white cabinetry sets off the granite. we didn't love it before, favoring white countertops as we do...now it looks pretty snazzy!

and since i was excited about phil's new kitchen (b/c even though i'm protective of the paint through its curing period, it is truly his kitchen) i went to home goods for an assortment of cheap drawer organizers and reorganized EVERYTHING...por ejemplo:

utensil drawer - no more mish mash

baking drawer

tupperware - neat and tidy, lids separate

and then that freshly painted bathroom got some love too...i tend to make a mess of my toiletries every morning so i'm hoping that the home goods organizers will be cute enough to make me slow down and put things in their places.

how long do you think this will last? fresh bathroom organization  - tomorrow's gonna be a good day

boom. organized.

next post will either concern the installment of 3 54-gallon rain barrels or the guest room, which is getting fresh wall paint (got a half gallon of  'big bend beige' still to burn after painting the kitchen and master bath) and the dresser is almost done becoming yellow - 'arles' by annie sloan....but for now, delicious scents are wafting out of that beautiful kitchen.  time to see what phil's up to.

bouquets this week