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.