Have this week off so have lots of plans to get as much squared away in the house and yard as possible. Saturday hubby and friend replaced the hot water heater. The old one had given us 25 years of good service. I planted some new pots of pink cala lilies, and pansies. Moved a few more starts of phlox around, and potted up some day lilies i am not sure what to do with. Did a bit of painting. Painted a homemade dolls dresser a more manly color that fits perfectly in the smoke shack. It will house lighters, etc in the drawers and the iPod speakers and plant on top. I also gave a new coat of paint to a couple of little metal tables used as side tables in the seating areas outside. Saturday I had stopped at the Goodwill and they had a skudgy metal bistro table cheap so I brought it home, sanded and painted it too. It is sitting over by the barbecue. We needed a place to set food and cooking stuff. Sunday the kitchen faucet decided to drip from the hot water side so it too got a replacement. While hubby replaced the faucet I built a small section of picket fencing to connect the privet hedge protecting the garden from the dogs. This hole was left when we removed the Alberta spruce that had out grown the spot. Today I will be on my own to set some fence posts to support the picket fence. I have some landscaping bricks that I will make a housing for the electric fencer, (the great blue heron is back daily now). We really need to get the fencer running. I am getting tired of chasing it away. Have decided to use some of the landscaping bricks for a base for the garden sink. Will also be setting those up and cutting and piecing together a little counter from scrap wood. When hubby gets home we will move the glass table top. That piece of glass weighs about 50 pounds. I have decided to use it for a tomato roof/cold frame. I will level and raise the table base and put the glass back on top. Being outside in the frost and rain most of the pattern is removed. Have had terrible luck with tomatoes the last two years since it was cold and rainy both summers. Maybe a little protection will warm up the ground for the tomatoes. Hope to get a few bricks pull from the patio and the trellis up along the west side of the smoke shack. Will be planting scarlet runners to shade the inside of the shack if we get more sun like the last two days. We are already 3 1/2 inches behind in rainfall. Anything is possible with the weather, but this will be great rotation of crops. Don't suppose I will get to my potting area. Maybe an evening spent planning a lean-to structure. Everything is covered in needles and leaves from the trees overhead so needs a good sweeping if I want an area to work in. It needs a good deal of reorganization also. So little time and so much to do.
Phew you've already achieved so much!! You're going to be wishing you had another week off to recover from all the hard work at this rate!! I hope you give yourself at least one day of rest and relaxation.
I need an afternoon nap. I got tired just by reading what you've been up to. Please have some R&R. I hope the weather will co-operate with you. Oh, I quite forgot: photos! Please show what you've been up to.
Boy I wish I could have been doing half of what you had been up to. All I can do is sit in my house and look out our windows and watch the snow melt. The drifts covering the front flower garden is so tall it won't be gone until the end of April. Same for the drifts out in our front ditch.
Jewell you certainly have the spring bug,..its all go,.. and so i see is the Blue Heron,..they always know the garden with tasty morsels.
Well, I will be lucky to get half of the things finished that I wanted to get accomplished. I keep getting distracted with weeds, pots, and plants. Got two small beds and five large to medium pots planted. Have been moving perennials around. Have lost a couple of the echinacea to shade and over crowding by the heather in the front yard. Dug them but am not sure where I moved them but they aren't where they were. I just hope I didn't bury them in mulch :-? There were a couple of other plants in the front yard that would add color to the back yard. The pink flowering dead nettle is now in a pot. I seem to have lost the lavender flowering variety. Also took some black-eyed Susan starts for a backyard bed. In the back yard phlox had started to smother some of the other perennials and other plants had moved into the walkways. They are where the huge sword ferns were. Picked up a couple of 4-packs of annuals to add to the pots and put in a couple of beds. Need to finish spreading bark, and think that and weeding will be about all I can get done before the rains come again. Perennial bed, new section of fencing and sink with pots in background ( photo / image / picture from Jewell's Garden ) Outdoor sink ( photo / image / picture from Jewell's Garden ) So much to do...relaxation . Is número uno.
Looking awfully good, Jewell. The sink and fence looks like they BELONG there. That fence like you have is a common sight here and the folks paint the shafts dark green and the "arrowhead" at the top of the shafts white. I enjoy seeing them so much. Where does the water go when it drains out of the sink? All-in-all, that corner looks really cosy. Chapeau!
Sjoerd, thought about painting the fence white, but natural is a lot less work, and matches the rest of the unpainted cedar. You green and white fences sound lovely. The sink will only be used for washing veggies and cutting flowers, so maybe just a bucket. I think I might plant inpatients in the area underneath and water them with the run-off. Am still thinking about the prospects.
Sounds like a good plan to me. Where I have my water point, I dug a very deep hole and filled it 2/3 with gravel, then with pebbles and sand for drainage. Your set-up is much nicer than mine. it's a beaut!
