Flowers in Bloom

Loving all the plants in bloom! and really loving all the flowers I have to put in vases.

the mulch was washed away at the edges with the torrential down pour Saturday night

Steve was tired of looking at all of the weeds growing in our planting strip.  He took out the old butterfly bush a month or two back and other than a few transplanted flowers and the elm, it was crazy weeds.  What a contrast form the rest of our garden.  Anyways, he took out all of the weeds and we hauled them off to yard waste on Saturday.  We came home with a yard of dark mulch and threw it down to keep the weeds at bay until we have the time to plant the strip.

 My dad stopped through last Wednesday night on his drive up to Alaska.  He is a crazy outdoors man and is driving to Alaska in order to canoe down the Yukon-a 2000 mile paddle!  He did it back in the 70s and is going for it again.  Not surprising after climbing Aconcagua a few years back and summiting Everest just 2 years ago!  Ben loves time with his grandpa!

The Yard coming into bloom

A couple weekends ago, Steve and I decided to fill in a few spots in our front yard that seemed sparse.  We felt that all of our plants have had enough time to grow in and that we have  good feel of what the yard looks like year round.  I think that we have the open areas because we did not lay out our plants right and follow our landscape plan quite right. 

we added a couple new grasses here

a new fern and some champagne colored Heucharas

a new lewisia to replace the one that died

a few new black mondo grasses, some varigated grasses and 2 champagne heucheras

Safety First!  You must wear your helmet while showing off your bee-boo (belly button) and helping plant

started the garden-mint, basil, chives

lettuce, cilantro, green onions (left from last year)

And here is the house just a week and a half later-everything has taken off!

This past weekend, we were lucky enough to enjoy a weekend on the Oregon coast-while the weather was less than awesome Friday morning, it was amazing the rest of the weekend.  We even saw a whole bunch of Seals and their pups swimming in the water as well as sunning on the sand-so cool.

Ruler Ben

Seals!

making some of the most sinful Ice Cream ever-Ben&Jerry's Coffee Heath Bar Crunch!

the clan-can you tell that Ben is two from this picture?

Bamboo

We got some bamboo!  and we really like it!  We are friend's with the couple over at Swanky & Chiang and after reading my post about researching bamboo, she e-mailed to say that they had loads (literally, over a truck load) of bamboo that they were looking to get rid of (or trying to off load on others).  So a couple weekends ago, Steve went off to their house (I stayed home as Ben was napping and boy, was a sad to miss that project) and helped Joe dig out all their short bamboo from the backyard as well as a portion of their tall bamboo from the front.  Wish I could tell you the variety but I have no idea, however, they are both clumping varieties, work for us and for the price of free-ninety-nine, the price is definitely right.  Well, Joe & Steve ended up having to saw-zaw the roots of the tall bamboo out while hacking at it with a shovel.  They got it out and Steve and I got to hack at a little more to fit the clumps into our pots (we decided that pots would work well just in case the bamboo decided that it wanted to take over our yard.  And, then we can move it around if we decide we don't care for it. 

the rig all loaded with bamboo coming back from the Swanky-Chiang house

pot placement in the back of the house-also provides a little window privacy & the window above happens to belong to Steve and my bedroom

I think this needs some compost to help out that fill dirt

again the area just below our window-Steve transplants some ferns from the side of our house here too; they are happy here with the exception of our Porter pup trampling them often

upside down, oops!  the other side of the deck-Steve sifting rocks out of the dirt in prep to put in the pots

south side of the deck

north side

leaning-gotta prop that up somehow

some of this bamboo does not look too happy but we'll see what happens-can you tell what Steve is working on-paint stripping!!!! o so fun!

 

 

 

 

 

short bamboo in the new Ben Pen on the south side of the house

camping at Timothy Lake last weekend

happy man gettin to work with his hammer!

happy 4th of July!

Yard in bloom

I took some time this weekend to plant a few flowers in our front yard pots.

 Also realized that watering plants in pots that are covered (therefore get no rain-ha) need to be watered-duh!

A few pix of our yard in bloom...it really is filling in well!

our mock orange is outta control!  gotta get that beast upright

our accolade elm has grown over 3' in a year...anxious to see what this awkward tween does this year

we thought the crepe myrtle had died but turns out it survived!  Just a few dead pieces we need to trim

we love the colors of the climbing rose and also are enjoying the surprise purple flowering plant in the right hand upper corner

path we hope to finish up this summer

you can barely see the bush beans sprouting up

luvin the peonies from our garden (they smell ah-maz-ing!) in the new (well new to me) Lonesomeville Pottery Chickadee vase (made in Portland) I nabbed from Found on Fremont this weekend...

I think this is an irregular vase due to the spots and slight color distortion on the bottom but I LURV it none-the-less