Hi…drangea…

I have this problem.  Well it’s not so much of a problem as it is an annoyance.  So I live in a townhouse…and I LOVE my townhouse…but living in a townhome means you have to deal with neighbors that share walls, and yards, and sometimes views that you don’t want.  And don’t get me wrong…I LOVE my neighbors…on one side.  The other side…not so much.  I’m sorry but I’m being honest.  And if you’re my neighbor and you read my blog, I’m sorry you had to find out this way.  Hopefully we can still be cordial.
So I have this space between my yard and theirs that is a teeny little strip and a little bare…but a perfect spot to create some sort of , border, if you will.

Yes it’s a little ugly…but totally fixable.  You can see I tried to block the patio a but with our grill…but it still didn’t prevent people from coming over…or my view of things like this

Alright…I’m not the perfect neighbor by a long shot…I mean look at my weeds.  But the last thing I need is MY kids seeing a pool full of 3 day old water and jumping right in.  So whatever.  I decided that I need a little barrier, one quick and easy and did not have to be approved by the HOA.  Enter my Easter Hydrangea that was in desperate need of planting anyway.

It’s small now…but I have big plans for this baby to get BIG.  And it’s a little hint to the neighbors to mind your own bees wax and stay off my patio.  You know?  Just one lone plant.  Yes I may seem like a little beachy…but it’s all the little things that add up to make me do one little act of non neighborliness.  BUT…I did need a little planting there anyway, right?    So there’s my little baby, ready to take a hit for me if situations get sticky.  HA!  I’m hiding behind a plant….

(PS:  notice the pool is gone in the above picture.  I believe that they looked out the window and saw me cleaning up this area and planting and they came out and took care of the pool.  That’s right..see…’Drangea is working her magic already!)

Springy Springy!

Remember this post from September about me planting bulbs for the first time?

It was almost too easy to a point where I really didn’t think that anything was going to happen.  It was literally just dig, drop, done….which is fittingly the name of the company where I got the bulbs.  Well guess what just made an appearance?

YAY!  Look at how cute my first little fleur is!!!  This was actually taken the last week of February…so I was just THRILLED that we had mild enough weather for our little babies to start popping up!  I can’t wait because I have a feeling in a week or two all of them will be coming up and my yard will be a-bloom in beautiful…well…blooms!  That is…if the mild weather continues and we don’t get some freak snow storm in March.  It’s been known to happen.  I can’t wait for more warm weather and to get outdoors and get to sprucing up our outdoor space! 

Dig, Drop, DONE!

This is kind of an anticlimactic post because I won’t even know if anything worked until about 6 months from now!   First of all….I’m am a horrible gardener.  I don’t have a black thumb, but I definitely don’t have a green thumb.  It’s probably close to like a mossy, muddy, brownish close to baby poop green.  I mean…check out this years endeavors.  First we have my sad, patchy grass


I would just like to say that we de-fungused, thatched, and re-seeded…and things are starting to turn around for our sad little lawn.  So that is all good news!  But then we have my mum…which was on the complete opposite end of the grass…this thing took steroids and just didn’t quit!

That there be one gigantic bush!!  And yes, apparently I be talkin’ like a pirate.  You can tell which show the kids are watching by how I’m talking…so right now it’s Jake and the Neverland Pirates.  Argh.  Oh!  But you can kind of see in this pic how our lawn has turned around a bit! Huzzah!
Anyway, so being the not-so-good-but-trying-to-get-better gardener that I am, I decided that I really wanted to try and plant some bulbs this year.  Hopefully to come up in the spring!  I recently bought this book (for 8 cents mind you) on Amazon (check the link…used ones are only 23 cents!)

It is seriously the best resource for a beginner gardener that I have ever come across.  I appreciate all the tips and tricks I find online…but being as green (ha-ha) as I am to gardening, I feel like I always have additional questions, like WHEN do you plant a climbing hydrangea? What is the best time to re-seed your lawn for maximum results and how do you exactly do it?  If I plant X-Y-Z plant…when does it bloom?  These are just some questions I have when researching different plants that I might like to have that I can never seem to find on the internet.  So this book separates everything into categories (annuals, perennials, lawns, ground cover, bulbs, etc.) and additionally separates those categories into a month by month how to!  It’s amazing!  AND…it’s specifically written for NEW JERSEY….so every plant in there is one that will thrive in this specific region's climate.  Pretty much no guesswork on what zone and where and all the things that get my head spinning.
Ok…so after all that…back to the original subject of this post.  My book informed me that October was a great time to plant bulbs, and since this past weekend we had 80 degree temps, I forced Sonny to do some gardening with me!  I forgot to take a pic of the packages, but we got assorted color crocuses and pink chinodaxa.  They look something like this

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Pretty right?  I have to say I highly enjoyed planting bulbs because it was as easy as digging a ditch, plopping them in, and covering them back up!  Well…I should say HOPEFULLY it was that easy!  We’ll see in the spring!!

Good of Sonny to say “Hey, let me take pictures of you for your blog!”  Such a supportive hubs!  And apparently much better than I because he actually remembers that I need to take pictures of things! Soak in all this awesomeness. 

So as of right now…I’ve done my spring planting.  You’ll get an update in about 6 months!  I know you all will mark your calendars!

Flower Balls

Last year I planted annual mums…you know…the kind you get from the grocery store.  Nothing special.  I even planted them late and got slim pickings…because I’m a procrastinator like that.  So it was a HUGE surprise when my mums started to make a return this year.

Ah…pretty right?  But…and there’s a big butt…..they really look more like this…

Uhhh….yes…that is one bush on the left, and kind of a half of a bush on the right. One. One of those little potted mums that you get from the grocery store coming back with a vengeance and taking up my ENTIRE planting bed.  CRAZY! I had no idea how to take care of mums, so I did not know that I was supposed to pinch them every time they grew about 6 inches.  I know this now and will definitely take note for next year if they decide to make another appearance.  So nuts!

Since I had so many lovely mums, I decided that I would make something that I’ve been eyeing for awhile on Pinterest. Flower balls!  It was originally from Martha Stewart weddings….but who says you can’t have balls of flowers everyday?  Not me! I’m all for anything in ball form any time of day.  Wait, that didn’t come out right…

So let’s make this project free again, right?  I dug up some Styrofoam balls, some thin floral wire, chopped off some mums, from the back, of course, so you would see a big hole.  I suppose I could have just used that half a bush on the right, but the big one wasn’t missing her junk in the trunk.  If you want these balls to last for more than a couple days, you should also get some flower solution to dip the flower heads in before you attach them to the balls.  I wanted it to be free and didn’t have any, so c’est la vie.

If you plan on hanging your balls…I suggest creating a little cage around your ball with wire.  I didn’t know what I wanted to do with these…so I did it just in case I wanted to hang them.

Then you want to pinch off just the mum head, right where the stem meets the bottom.  Sorry, I should really get updated on my botanical terms. I know don’t know the stamen from the phalanges.  Then you take a small bit of your floral wire and bend it into a “U”.  Insert the 2 little wires through the middle of the flower and through the bottom.  Almost like you’re stapling it.

If you are using bigger balls and bigger flowers, a “U” like the one above is great.  But I found for the mums, the heads are so small and delicate that if you do this size you get this:

See those wires in there? Not cute!  So I ended up doing a lopsided “U”…a hook you might say, and a single side of the wire would come out.  It worked much better.

After about 50 little mum heads….I had this!

SOOOO CUUUTTTEEE!!! I am in love with the cuteness!!!  I decided to hang these from my dining room chandy for a couple reasons.  I love them and this is the first thing I will see coming down the stairs in the morning, they are small balls so they’d get lost if I hung them outside, and I was having people over for brunch so I wanted them right in their face so I could say “LOOK AT WHAT I DID!!!!  LOOK AT ME!!!  PAY ATTENTION TO ME!!!” Haha….I’m not really like that…I’m much worse.

And with a few spritzes of water every morning they have lasted 3 days, so far!  I know it’s not a lot, but I really thought they would shrivel up after a few hours!  I didn’t plan on having them around for long anyway since Halloween is about to take over my little nest, but they are doing a great job at keeping the fall spirit in the house!

Me & My Black Thumb

I am good at math. I've become a pretty good cook. I'm good at a lot of things...but not growing things. Well, I guess I can grow people pretty well... just not plants.

A few moons (I would say many moons ago, but that just makes me feel old and I don't like to torture myself...so it's just a few moons.) ago, I did a great job at my old apartment with weeding and planting in the tiny little "backyard" - it was a 8'x4' strip of grass with about the same size space of concrete. But sadly here in SoCal, that's actually considered a yard. I even put together cute little flower/tree arrangements in some big clay pots, all on a super awesome Ikea budget. I think I got 2 big pots and 2 little trees, and then went to Home Depot for some gerbera daisies and soil. Voila! Lovely, low budget, easily maintained plant life for your backyard/patio.

Then Hubby & I got engaged. I moved back in with my parents so we could save money for our fab wedding. I was too busy working & planning a wedding to keep anything alive. Ah...the good ol' single days.... My mom turned my barely alive "money tree" (picture to the right) into a thriving, super green tree. It's probably because she has more money than me....they say that a money tree reflects your financial situation... I've killed 2 since then. Could be why I only have $12 in my wallet. But really? It's because it's brighter in my mom's kitchen than anywhere in my old apartment. Plants need sunlight... who knew?

I have managed to keep 2 of my little old Ikea houseplants alive for a while now... Omg...could they be inching toward 10 years old?! Shut up! No way! Here are my little plant wonders still alive & kickin':

Oh wait... there's only one in that pic. Oh well, trust me. There are 2. Being the great gardener I am, I've found that Ikea plants are hard to kill... They need to be watered maybe once a month. Perfect timing for when I actually walk by for the 5 millionth time and go "Oh crap! I should probably water that!". Then when it starts to look a little droopy, I put it on my sunny kitchen window sill for a day or two. Ta-Da! Perky again! Not to mention they're easy on the bank account at a buck or two each.

After our quick little romp to Vegas, we stopped at our friend's new pad. We had to drop her off, & of course Lani & I needed to thoroughly investigate her new pad & improvements. We drooled over her fabulous new throw pillows, perfect shade of slate blue/gray on her bedroom walls, and new kitchen cabinets. Seriously, I was already making plans for her guest room (my future bedroom) and her office (Will's new room), or maybe scouring her neighborhood for a similar setup for... $12? That's all I've got! Anyways...upon investigating her lovely backyard, I noticed her basil plant as the centerpiece on her cute picnic table. The next day, I was at Henry's, and guess what I picked up! I'm so original... But at $2.99, I couldn't pass it up.

After about a week, it looked like this:

Yeah... I followed the directions it came with: 1/2" of water in a larger container with indirect sunlight. I even gave it daily doses of "Yeah! Basil! WOOO! You grow, girl!". Hubby looked at me like I was crazy, but I heard him whispering sweet nothings to her... Despite my best efforts, and a last ditch one to spruce her up by putting her outside with lots of sunshine and lots of water, she kicked the can. It was a sad day...

Until Will and I picked this up that after noon:

Really? At $2.99 a pop, it's not a huge loss. And so far, this one is still alive! I even see new buds coming in! I've been keeping her on the window sill in the kitchen with lots of water. She was outside for a bit at first, maybe that was a good jump start after being in a store...? I don't know. I've been debating on getting a little window box for a herb garden, but maybe I'll see how I do with Round 2 of the basil before get plant crazy...

Are you a grower or a killer? Any tips to help me and my awesome black thumb skills? Or any hearty, hard to kill plants? Do tell!

Weight Watching

I don't know why I torture myself...but I do it often.  I go through old pics...like pre-baby torturous skinny pics...pictures that show me the time I had to dedicate to working out before I went and had 2 kids.  And it's a reminder to me of how much time I DON'T take for myself now and how I've kind of let myself go.  Now granted...I'm not severely overweight...but I'd like to lose 20 lbs and those old pictures are just a reminder of that.  See?  Torture right?

Well I've made a promise to myself to start exercising regularly instead of just on a whim, and to eat better.  Part of that eating better is definitely growing in my back yard....check it out.

Look at my ripe juicy cherry tomatoes!!!  I'm so excited!  After the trip to the farmer's market and then me being able to grow these little beauties totally makes me motivated to eat well and get fit.  Seriously!  Why waste my homegrown veggies on eating Doritos right after? (Because they're delicious...that's why)  Stop it evil craving voice...how dare you intrude.

I got so excited about these little guys that I couldn't help but pick one and eat it right then and there

MMMMM.....It was super sweet.  And my little helper in the background is diligently still watering the blueberry bush and the tomatoes.  He was all excited too.  He even tried one.  Still didn't like it....but at least he tried it!  There's a whole crop of them that are all at the same growing stage...so I think in a few weeks I'm going to get to make a delicious little caprese salad! 

So this kicks off my healthy eating to get back in shape...we'll see what gets me motivated to exercise!!  Haha!

Sweet Tomatoes!!

Hooray for the first little sprouts in my pot garden!!!  I had my cute little neighbor, Sawyer, be in charge of watering my first precious attempts at a little patio garden while we were gone, and he did such a good job that when we cam back we saw these little beauties!

Aren't they the cutest things you ever did see??  As well as these guys playing at the new water table....

Phew, it's a heat wave here in MAY!  Or June now....thank goodness next week will be in the 70's so I can take these guys out to the park.  Poor Jagger, he can't walk yet so he was trying to crawl around all over on the pavement and just wasn't having it...

Anyway, hooray for my first little buds of tomatoes!  They are sprouting up all over the plant!  And even my stick of a bluberry bush is sprouting some branches as well!  Wahoo! 

I'm so inspried that I'm definetely going out to get some herbs this weekend to create a little windowbox outside my kitchen!  Rosemary, basil, chives, hmmmm....maybe some parsley or something?  Yeah...I'm a gardening fool.  Hope I'm not counting my chickens before they hatch.....or harvesting my to-maters before they're ripe, as the case may be.....

The Beginnings of My Pot Garden

Should be interesting to see how many hits I get from Internet searches with that title....

It's a GARDEN IN POTS, people.  Anyway, after writing the post about our fabulously lazy Tuesday night grill fest (see it here), and staring at all those pics with mass amounts of weeds in them, I just had to do something.  Seriously....look at the right hand side of this pic

So gross!!!  That's supposed to be a lovely flower bed (or it will be soon) and it's just jam packed with weeds!  I had to do something about them....ARGH.  I almost didn't sleep Tuesday night because I was so obsessed with de-weeding.  So yesterday afternoon was me in the back yard full force to clean the place up.  As I needed a new little spade (because, gross....we had mushrooms too), the boys and I took a quick trip to the Home Depot.  On a whim I decided to pick up this junk too.

Ugh....The overexposure is killing me.  But, it's the start to my little garden of pots.  That's lettuce on the left, a blueberry bush, and a cherry tomato plant.  Now, I am not the greenest of green thumbs....so this may all turn out disastrous.  Especially since it was on a whim.  But...I kinda want to make this work!  I'm excited!  And clearly unprepared as after I planted the bloob bush and the ta-maters.....I had no room to plant the lettuce.  I was thinking I would cleverly use them as an underplanting....but again...no planning leads to severely underestimating the room you will have.

So after weeding the backyard (no picks as I was a frantic maniac pulling up those suckers) and planting the blueberry bush and the tomato plant, I enlisted the aid of my little helper, who happened to get a watering can in his Easter basket.

He was totally interested in knowing what each plant was.  Hoping this will get him to eat a cherry tomato.  No problems with the blueberries.  He kept telling me that there were no blueberries on the bush.  I'm not sure if he fully understands that you have to wait for it to grow.  Heck, he doesn't have the patience to wait for me to finish going to the bathroom to get him apple juice.  And note to self.  If you are going to give little helpers a watering can, because you know they love it....make sure you have a TON of plants for them to water so that they do not drown your impromptu garden and end up killing your whim.  Because then you tell him no more watering and you get water works....if you catch my drift

My plants may die from drowning...just because I couldn't resist

But then I let him jump in puddles and get gloriously wet.  I think he was OK with it.

So I'm hoping my little patio garden grows...and I'm thinking if all goes well I may add a few more pots here and there.  Good to know Hunter will always keep up with the watering.  And can't wait to make some blueberry banana bread with those suckers!!! Come on!!! GROW!!  Looks like Hunter gets his impatience from his mama.