My New Roommate

Posted on May 2, 2013 by Merridee

I wrote about how Lily dog came to visit over Christmas when friends Shirley and Tyler went back east for the holiday. Well Tyler’s sister was getting married in the middle of April and Lily came to visit again — this time with some VERY heavy hinting that she should become a permanent resident. Don’t miss understand — Tyler adopted her years ago and has liked her as much as his somewhat short attention span can. And Shirley has always considered Lily her ally and special girl. But they have a toddler and he is a rough and tumble boy. Lily is old and doesn’t enjoy the bother of having her hair pulled, etc . And they Tyler decided he wanted a “guard dog,” which Lily apparently is failing at in her elderly years. So they adopted Merlin — also a collie but kind of dumb and spastic. Lily was not impressed. In fact, she was increasingly becoming distressed, to the point of stress grooming big holes in her fur on her arms.

So she came to visit at my house while Tyler and Shirley went to Georgia. I said that I would consider keeping her and we would call it a test run. I confess I am nervous — I am responsible enough for her? Will taking her for walks be too much of a bother? Will she hate being left alone for 10 hours while I am at work? She is old and could get sick. Am I walking into a money pit shrouded in my love? Is this really best for her? Hem-haw.

Turns out she needs me and I need her and that is that. And she is here to stay. She makes me be responsible and helps me feel loved. She is the best thing in my life. I love my Lily-girl.

So many rugs to sit and shed on.

Her favorite trick is to rest her chin on the side of my bed and whine when she thinks I should get up. She HATES it when I read in bed before getting up in the morning.

She loves to be outside with me. Depending on the time of day, she will sit in the sun or the shade and watch me work. I always have to be in sight, unless she is getting into mischief such as pooping in the neighbor’s yard or meeting a dog friend on a walk in the front yard.

Pow-pow Power Tools

Posted on April 22, 2013 by Merridee

After my little jaunt to Whidbey, I quickly got the majority of my haul from Mom in the ground and things were looking promising.

Things in the ground but need some time to grow. Plum tree is looking great!

Some of the things from the old house were bigger and helped make the new plantings not look so sparse.

The existing iris and snap dragons stayed put. Also Mom brought me some japanese iris and peonies and they were doing great!

Front yard well on its way, time to think about the back yard and the garden. I decided on raised beds for the garden, partly because that is sort of the trendy thing to do and partly because I am weary of digging out sod. I found a website to help me plan what I wanted to grow …

Site helped me map out how much space all of the things I was hoping to grow would take.

Now to build the beds. Hello power tools!

Lowes cut down the long boards for me but I had to cut the 4x4s myself. And then I got to screw them all together. The back bed has a bean trellis made from a 2×2 and leftover mesh fencing from the old house. Sturdy and super awesome looking!

Now time to get some dirt and let the growing begin!

Shopping Spree

Posted on April 8, 2013 by Merridee

I inherited my love of gardening from my mom (and my love of overalls from my dad). In fact most of my phone calls with my mom consist of: “How are you?” “Fine.” “How are you?” “Fine.” “But the deer and slugs are wrecking the south bed.” “I know, slugs are trashing my hostas. But my lilies are being fantastic.” Etc. It can go on for hours. My siblings think we are both weird.

So digging all of these new flower beds, I knew it was going to be crazy expensive to get plants to fill them. But my parents have an lovely 5-acre spread up on Whidbey Island and I knew that Mom would have a ton of stuff that she could give me that would just end up in her compost pile if I didn’t go up and fetch it. So I planned a trip — get plants and have a nice visit with my folks. Perfect. But I needed to go sooner than later because they were going on a cruise for most of the month of May. After juggling my work schedule, the dates were set. Then by cosmic chance, I found out that most of my aunts and uncles would be there at the same time — a nice surprise since I only get to see them every few years. This is all working out swimmingly!

I headed up on Monday morning early and met Mom, aunts and uncles in La Conner — a cute little town known for its annual tulip festival. We spent the afternoon wandering around town and then went to see the flowers — one of my favorite little adventures.

Aunt Debby, Uncle Al, Aunt Linda, Uncle Larry in the tulips in La Conner

Tulip fields in La Conner. The lines of blooms is one of my favorite things.

Mom as a tulip angel — quite fitting, I think!

The next day, Mom and I got to work. She basically let me go shopping in her yard, which was great for her too since I was basically helping her clean out some of her beds.

This is the house they built a few years ago. It has an amazing view across the Skaggit Bay over to the Cascades and Mount Baker.

We filled the wheel barrow up with all sorts of fun for my yard.

After some other fun with the relatives that night, I left Wednesday morning. But I snagged a cuddle shot of them first.

My Mom and Dad — aren’t they cute. Even with the raspberry on Dad’s head from falling over. He needs to stop doing that.

Made it home with all of my bounty without any drama — not single pot tipped on the ride. Hurray for not driving like a yayhoo — as my dad would say! Thanks for the lovely little weekend, Mom and Dad!

There is a whole lot of cute packed into the back of my truck.

A Little Side Project

Posted on April 1, 2013 by Merridee

There is a massive road construction project going on at my work, The Columbian. One Wednesday, we on the desk were going about our business when one of the ladies in Advertising strolled by and mentioned that the landscaping in the west parking lot was being ripped out the following morning and all of the plants were up for grabs. Several of the desk members have thumbs as green as mine and we jumped at the chance. So during our dinner break, Bob, Romana and I went out to loot. Romana had a shovel in her car (that is a true gardener!) and I was thankful I had a pair of gloves in mine. My bounty was pretty awesome — several little variegated shrubs, 6 giant clumps of tall aster things (thought they were shasta daisies), a little tree and a ton of periwinkle. Loaded my share into the back of my truck and went back to work, sweaty but satisfied.

So now that I had all of this free booty, I needed to figure out where to put it. I knew I didn’t want shrubs in the new front yard bed and I didn’t really have a game plan worked out for the back. However, the front side area was screaming for something low maintenance but cute. The two draggly roses needed some friends.

2 leggy rose bushes and current home to the mulch removed from the front porch. yuck.

Another blank canvass to play with. So my next day off, a few hours of work transformed it.

Dug out a little bed. Plunked in the bushes, some davidii and asters, spread some of the mulch.

Looks much better. Sorry I about the poor photography and shadows. But you get the gist.

New Wall Stacks Up to Hard Work

Posted on March 30, 2013 by Merridee

The guys who work in the garden center at Lowes officially think I’m crazy. Also I don’t do the maths.

The retaining wall in the south west corner of the yard had basically crumbled and while rebuilding it I thought I could make a cool raised bed. I laid it out and did all kinds of crazy math and figured out how many stones I would need. Then I had to take into consideration how many the truck could carry (had a few tense moments buying pavers in the yellow car and didn’t want to bottom out or wreck my shocks). My plan in hand, I head to Lowes to get what I hoped would be enough for half of the project. They were eager to help and got a load of stones into the truck. I get home, bust out the wheel burrow and haul them around back. The stones don’t even cover a single layer and I know now that I will need at least 4 layers. Fail. 3 trips later, the lowes guys automatically pull on their gloves when they see me coming and ask how many this time.

Beginning of day 2 — Still totally underestimated the number I would need.

Completely worth all of the drama and hard work! Looks great. But I’m going to need a lot more dirt.

Black Death

Posted on March 15, 2013 by Merridee

I really prefer English cottage style gardens with tons of flowers and tangles of color vs. structure and boring. And I love regency novels where proper ladies spend their mornings cutting flowers and arranging them (or having a maid or house keeper, etc. take care of that part). I also like to cook, so having a fully stocked herb garden close by sounded like a good plan. So I envisioned a lush little area with stone paths lining a mix of herbs and edible flowers, throw in some strawberry and blueberries to stop and nibble on framing my little back patio. I’d spend summer evenings surrounded by the smell of sun-warmed herbs and flowers, bees buzzing, while I grilled or relaxed with a beverage after a long day of work. Heavenly!

What I don’t love is mowing the lawn. And my new lawn is HUGE! So kill two birds with one stone by making a new bed around the back patio that will be primarily for herbs and maybe some cutting flowers — but I want everything to be edible.

But First I have to get rid of the grass. After digging out the new beds in the front yard, I knew that trying to remove that quantity of sod by hand would officially kill me. So I welcomed the Black Death.

I laid black plastic to kill the grass and put all of my pots I moved from the other house and random bricks for the crumbled retaining wall to keep it in place.

Now hurry up and wait — which is challenging since some of the plants in the pots are going to want permeant homes soon.

Planning the Foundations

Posted on March 10, 2013 by Merridee

The major consequence of February’s tree planting adventure was that it gave me a serious hankering to get back into the yard and start planning this year’s projects. So I mopped up my major work undertaking of restructuring the Copy Desk and officially shelved my ambition of teaching myself Java Script and pulled out the graph paper. Out came the gardening books and I started making lists of plants I had brought with me and what I knew I wanted to buy for this yard. Having a fresh canvas was exciting but I knew that could get in over my head in a hurry. So I limited this year’s project to just a few beds, the garden and few foundational plantings (aka more trees). I had a week off in the middle of March and started digging.

First chore: remove mulch and pave front patio so I could have somewhere to sit when it rains:

Mulch has to go. And repot tropical lily thing.

Replaced mulch with pavers. Added desk and chair. Potted up lily and added some primroses and snapdragons. Cute, cute, cute. And dry.

Next project was expanding and creating new beds in the front yard.

New bed between my property and neighbor Charles. Then planted a plum tree and put in stepping stones for the mailman.

Connected new side bed with the front porch bed, which I expanded out another 2 feet.

And since I was in a tree planting mood — I planted 2 fig trees and a cherry tree along the north edge of the back yard. Going to be so delicious!

Closest to house is a Desert King Fig, Cherry tree (5-kind hybird), and Brown Turkey Fig.

I moved the sod from the front bed around back, for the beginnings of the next project — the retaining wall.

By the time I was done with front beds, I had a pretty big pile of sod.

Best Tree Ever

Posted on February 20, 2013 by Merridee

Saturday I got to reprise one of my favorite adventures — planting trees with Friends of Trees. I’d like to say it was as awesome as the first time I did it a few years ago when I got the flame maples at the Rex, but sadly, not as awesome. They seemed much more unorganized this time and my team leader was annoying. He didn’t really tell people how to plant a tree and just wanted to pontificate about useless blather. And because no one else on my team had ever planted a tree beside me and blathery guy, I felt like I had to be either bossy or do all the work — my least favorite situation. And the lunch when we got back was really lacking — most of the food was gone and they would only let you have one little dab of your choice — bowl of soup, slice of pizza, hunk of sandwich — which is not cutting it folks. You work hard for 4 hours you want more than a little nibble. Disappointing.

But not disappointing was the tree in my yard! It is a tri-color beech and it is GORGEOUS! Was a beast to get in the ground because the hole wasn’t dug deep enough and apparently the soil in my parking stripe is basically asphalt chunks a few inches down. Totally worth it. BEST TREE EVER!

Awesome new tree

Guests for Christmas

Posted on December 25, 2012 by Merridee

By the beginning of December I felt like the house was put together enough that I could finally host a house-warming party. So I hung some lights outside, put up few decorations and my mini tree inside and called my friends. It was a lovely party and everyone loved my new house.

I framed the front porch in lights. Looked super festive!

Over the (college) Christmas break, I ended up with another unexpected visitor — Lily came to stay. Lily is my friends Shirley and Tyler’ boarder collie and she loves me more than anyone in the world. I basically feel the same way about her. She was here for 2 weeks while Tyler and Shirley were visiting family back East. It was nice to have company for Christmas since it felt like everyone else I know was out-of-town.

Lily was officially unimpressed with me putting this tie I got from my boss on her to help her feel festive. Didn’t work.

Napping on the floor

Pinterest is Flithy Liar

Posted on November 22, 2012 by Merridee

I consider myself to be artistic but not creative. By that I mean that I have a good eye for design and can usually make things look good but I am not great at coming up with original ideas. This is most evident in my job as a newspaper page designer. Once people give me the pieces or a concept, I will frequently put a page together and then when I am done, I will notice that I accidentally created a striking balance in the elements or will have natural flow for the eye to move its way down the page, etc. But when it comes to projects such as painting or drawing or even gardening, my intentions are nobel but execution somethings struggles — things just don’t look quite right sometimes. My mom is amazing at this kind of thing and I have a ton of art — mushroom toll paintings or embroidery — she did in the ’70s that I love.

Anyway, I needed some new art for my walls, particularly the living room. I nabbed up some cool stuff at an art festival when I was in Phoenix visiting my sister Gretchen and brother Kevin and his family. But I needed a big statement piece for over the couch. Big art can be expensive, and I am poor. To Pinterest I wandered. I found some cool canvasses that looked easy to make — simply lay silk flowers on a white canvas and spray paint. I can do that. WRONG. The paint bled through the silk and the canvasses just ended up being basically one color. Good thing I have all of that white ceiling paint hanging around. I took some and basically ended up painting the flowers in by hand. If you don’t look too closely, they look pretty good. But another classic example of things not turning out “quite right.” oh well.

Testing them out on the back of the couch to see if they will do. Seems fine. Sorry I am a lousy photographer.

Don’t look too closely, but from a distance they look ok.

I slide them all together to make them look like one piece.