Foxglove Hill

Spring cleanup

2010-03-21T20:43:00.000-07:00

The north-east side of our house is a solid wall, uninterrupted by doors or windows. It is also the side least public (away from the driveway or the back deck area). When we moved to the house, 4 good-sized boxwood shrubs were planted along that wall and at the time we appreciated how they broke up the tall expanse of cream and visually grounded the house a little. I moved one of the 4 shrubs early on, to make a little more room to plant along the fence. The remaining 3 shrubs grew and prospered, I pruned them back but tried to leave them their natural shape (no hedge clippers here). A shade bed was installed in front of the boxwood and for about 2 seasons all was well.

Those shrubs are big. The grow deep into the shade bed. They need a severe pruning. DH suggested the possibility of taking them out entirely, I wasn't sure (after all, mature shrubs are a good thing, right?). This winter delivered several heavy snowfalls, the result of which were severely damaged Lorapetalums. A decision was made to move some and eliminate some others and to replace them with something else (more on that as it develops).

We had two arbovitae flanking the front steps. Bag worms took one and were working on the second one. The first one was removed last fall, the other one will be out of there within days. All of this re-landscaping is going to make it much easier to place the ladder for the desperately needed repainting of the window frames and the replacement of the shutters. A house washing seemed in order (and is long overdue to be perfectly honest).

All in all, it seemed like the perfect opportunity to get rid of the boxwoods after all, have full access to that side of the house for washing (and possible maintenance) and reconfigure the foundation plantings. The shade bed is now roughly 5-6' deeper than before and my mind is already plotting how to rearrange things. I was worried that we might end up regretting our decision, but it already looks so much nicer (though very bare and still with stumps, they will be removed before long) that I can't believe we didn't think of it sooner. Of course I didn't take pictures yet (too tired yesterday, after all of the fun), but I will try to get some over the course of the week and post them.

Do what you can, where you are

2010-03-16T06:39:00.001-07:00

I find myself with an unexpected day off today. One of my co-workers needed to have Friday off and we switched. Of course a switch means that I will be working the same number of hours and days as I usually do, just shuffled around a bit. I don't know what it is about such a switch that makes me feel as if I am getting extra time. I feel energized and ready to DO something. There are things to do in the garden, of course, but after the severe rains we have had for the past few days, that may have to wait until tomorrow, so the ground has a little more time to drain away the deluge.

My instincts for "Spring cleaning" usually kick in in February, since to me that is the emotional beginning of my year (mine and DH's birthdays are only 2 days apart) and it fits well in the gardening year (not too much going on yet in the earlier parts of February. Of course this year there was the SNOW (everybody around here still refers to it in all caps, and rightfully so, it was something to be experienced). Well, it looks as if we have caught up with ourselves after the snow, so now is the time for all good (wo)men to come to the aid of their house.

I think this morning I will treat myself to an hour or two in the sewing room. I doubt I will do any sewing, in fact that is the last thing on my list, but I should be able to right some wrongs in there and maybe tomorrow, I can make use of it for an hour. I should take pictures to cheer myself on (and to provide something for the sewing blog that hasn't seen any attention since November).

Stuff and such

2010-03-15T19:58:00.000-07:00

Work is very very busy lately and I seem to never get a moment (even on my weekends) to blog, but at least I am still tracking with my 365 project. I am actually very excited about that, I love my new camera and am starting to get more and more into the mindset of taking pictures much and often.

Taking pictures more regularly is slowly building a habit of looking at things as "picture opportunities". Recently, the same thing happened about blogging. DH had to go to the VA hospital in Richmond, VA for an appointment and I came along for company. The entire experience was just a collection of little episodes that positively cried out for a bog entry. I am not going to go into it, DH can do it better justice than I can, but the entire episode was a string of "are you serious?" moments (i.e. the hospital can not be found via GPS, nor via road signs, which stop right before the critical turn; while there is free valet parking, there are no restrooms in the lower area, unless you go into a ward; etc). The people were very nice and helpful, though.

On the way back we ran some errands and then had to stall a bit, since DH was expecting a call on his cell, which he would have missed had we gone home (poor reception there). We decided to take a look at a truck that had caught our attention earlier, on our way through to the other end of town. We used to have an S-10, but donated it last year (poor thing was on it's last leg). We knew we wanted/needed to get another truck, but the size and power we were looking for came with a corresponding price tag. I could not see us spending that kind of money, period, and especially not on the "extra" vehicle. I should mention, that I am the truck person in the family, much more so than DH, and that I looove big trucks. So we took a look at the aforementioned truck and, well, we bought it.

It is a 2003 Chevy Avalanche in prime condition. It had one owner, who has kept meticulous records and has, I am certain, has never taken that dear truck off the tarmac. It's all snazzy inside and has all the little features that I would like to have, but will not spend the extra oomty-something thousand dollars to get (such as fog lights and a really nice sound system). So last Saturday, when DH was at drill, I took the new truck for a few errands, grinning like a fool the entire time.

I guess I should feel slighly guilty, but I don't

2010-03-01T19:42:00.000-08:00

The post I totally blanked out on yesterday came back to me this morning, so here it goes:

I live in the country about 20 minute from a lovely small town in Virginia. Recently, a few new consignment stores have opened around town, but I have not had an opportunity to go check them out. One of the stores is on a main traffic routs so I drive by there about once a week and get to see their changing window display. They had a very nice sweater in the window that called to me, so last Thursday, I stopped by to check if it might be the right size. I think it might fit, but label wise it's too small, so I didn't ask the nice lady to take her display apart on the unlikely chance that the sweater might fit. Still, while I was there I took a look around.

Then I tried a few things on and eventually I took several of those items to the checkout. It was then that I discovered that they had a store wide 50% off sale to make room for their spring clothes. 2 sweaters, 2 long-sleeved tees, a Chanel-esque jacket and a three-piece suit for $26 and change. It is almost obscene! I should feel guilty, but I can't. Not only that, but I am going back in the next week or so, to check on those spring clothes (of course I will have to pay FULL PRICE, so I don't know....)

No wonder

2010-02-28T19:23:00.000-08:00

The fact that I struggle to blog with anything even resembling consistency or regularity is obvious. I have never really been able to figure this out, after all, I think about things, I have stuff to say, why don't I blog about it? Over the past hour I thought of about 2 post, possibly three, one of which I was tempted to do tonight. I thought I'd wait, so I would have a post for tomorrow, after having posted already today.

It is gone. Totally. Completely. Gone. I no longer even remotely remember the topic I was so enchanted with mere minutes ago, it is completely wiped from my mind. Bother! I don't think it's age or CRS, I think it just is a sign of the times, dump anything that isn't immediately required, to avoid overload. But really...no wonder I never blog.

Next time I think of a blog post, I will at least make myself a note.

Just because it's late, doesn't make it less true

2010-02-28T15:26:00.000-08:00

I have carried the seeds for this post with me for a few weeks now, but until now have not had, or made the time to actually commit it to a post. A few weeks ago the Virginia, DC, Maryland section of the country was buried under about 20 inches of snow that mere weeks later were followed by two back-to-back winter storms. The government closed for almost a week, drivers were encouraged to stay off the roads and even the Washington transit system came to a grinding halt due to snow.

We were lucky in that we both made it home before the weather hit and therefore were safe. We did, however, lose power. For 5 days. Our house is all electric, so no power means no water, no heat, no nothing. We were not unprepared, we keep some camping gear in the house, so we were able to cook and we had back-up lights. We do have a small propane heater, but it is designed to heat a small tent, not a house. We have a fairly well stocked pantry with food and water stores, as well as candles, paper products and some additional pet supplies. We knew there were two big items still missing from the emergency preparedness plan, an emergency radio and supplemental heat. We had wisely left the cars on the bottom of the hill, so after two days, we managed to drive to town and arrange for a propane heater and the radio. Overall, I give us good marks for preparedness. We will improve a few things in case of future problems, but the start is made.

What really came out of this experience though, was a reaffirmation that my husband and I are very well suited to each other and make an excellent team. Neither one of us got frustrated, whiny or pissed and quite frankly we had a pretty good time throughout the whole experience. We worked together, made things as comfortable as possible, played games, read and did our chores. I'm not sure I'd want to repeat the experience anytime soon, but it is good to confirm yet again that my life partner and I are one the same frequency.

The late hummingbird feeder by bettina · 365 Project

2010-01-27T10:07:00.000-08:00

The late hummingbird feeder by bettina · 365 Project

Camera-derie

2010-01-27T08:36:00.000-08:00

We are a Nikon family. My DH has used Nikons for probably going on 30 years and I have had mine for almost 25. I started with a Nikon N2000. I bought it at a photo store in Massachusetts, when the original owner traded it in after 2 weeks to get a slightly bigger model. Because of that, I started out with a Nikkor 50mm 1:1.8 as well as an Underground 28mm 1:2.8. Fairly soon thereafter I saved all my pennies and picked up a Vivitar 35-200mm 1:3.0-4.5, which became my all around, every purpose lens from then on.

I had a decent eye, but technically, I was never really good. I compensated for lack of understanding with decent instinct, but over time the hassle, the weight of the gear and the long-windedness of the process (shoot, develop, evaluate, discard or reprint, repeat) caused me to use the gear less and less.

Then came digital photography and for a good long time, nothing changed. DH and I both love gadgets and technology, but the digital bandwagon was eyed suspiciously for a fairly long time. Eventually, we bought a point-and-shoot to try it out. This camera, to my knowledge the only non-Nikon interloper in the family, a Canon Powershot A620, has served us well and after DH upgraded to a D80, the Canon was mine to use pretty much exclusively.

I have to admit, I started to have DSLR envy. I love pulling things in real close, especially architectural elements and plants (I'm not good at portraits), so the somewhat limited zoom capability of the point-and-shoot niggled me. However, I hadn't taken pictures in a while and didn't seem to exhibit the level of commitment to the hobby that I would have liked to see to justify the investment of a DSLR. Also, I had pretty specific ideas of what I wanted and it wasn't really anything that was available yet. Basically I wanted an entry level DSLR that any photo-moron could use, but one with enough oomph to last me trough the growth towards a possible later upgrade, but at a good price.

When I initially saw the D5000 I got pretty excited. It looked pretty much like the camera I "ordered", except that it still had features I didn't want or need (video, for example) and the price was still not where I wanted it. I continued to ponder...

When I realized there was now also a D3000 I started to research it and read the reviews and I realized that this was exactly what I had been looking for. Last Saturday DH and I exchanged our birthday presents (3 weeks early, but we knew we'd have time to play with them then, so why not) and I got my new baby.

I got the kit with the 18-55mm 1:3.5-5.6 Nikkor lens and I am probably going to add the other lens often available in the kit (a 55-120mm I believe) fairly soon. My old lenses work, of course, except that I have to figure out how to use them (they are manual lenses). Since practice is supposed to increase skill, I am going to try to participate in my own little 365 project. who knows, it may actually prime the pump and get me back into photography the way I hope it will.

Things to strive for

2009-11-08T20:04:00.000-08:00

Living with the seasons, making more with less, cooking more meals from scratch, all of these are goals I am trying to incorporate into my life. Actually, these are goals I have been trying to incorporate into my life for years now.

I work in the IT field, 70-ish miles from home in a 24/7 environment. My work schedule makes it a challenge at times to pursue my own goals.

I try to do what I can. Over the past three years, my DH was deployed twice. To make room for the extra responsibilities that left me with, I "outsourced" some of my life. While I have always been an affirmed ironer of shirts (I know, I am weird), I have sent most of my shirt to the dry cleaners. I neither liked the results, nor the expense, but I had clean shirts, so it was a good investment. DH is back for now and currently I iron my own stuff again, but come January, when I take another class towards my next degree, the dry cleaner will be there to pick up my slack if I need it.

I got help cleaning my house. Once a week or every two weeks, 2 wonderful ladies buzz through my home and dust, scrub, vacuum and sweep everything and then some. Sometimes I am lazy and use the time to relax, a lot of times I sew and often I take the time to work on some sorting/purging project. We have made a lot of progress towards a comfortable home over the past few years, but there is still a lot to do. If I need to, I will reduce the frequency of the visits, but I will try to keep them in the budget, not just for the clean house, but for the friendship as well.

Pretty much the first thing we did when we moved into our home was to establish a pantry. DH and I both love our pantry. It is nice sized and lovely. It is not as well organized as I would like and until a few weeks ago it held some small appliances etc that took up valuable shelf space. We finally made a space for those things in what we (somewhat tongue-in-cheek) refer to as our "butler's pantry". The bp consists of several sturdy shelves (think commercial kitchen style chrome wire shelves) in a cupboard under the stairs. In addition to the small appliances mentioned above, that space now also holds extra dishes, large platters and serving dishes, the silver flatware etc. The space will still need some tweaking, but it is already developing quite nicely.

The food pantry now has a surprising amount of free shelf space that I will have to ponder on and rearrange, possibly in the coming week (at least that's when I hope to get started on it). I think this will allow me to get a better grip on our stores and use them more wisely. Once I get things a bit more organized, I will try to use my price book and sales etc to replenish things.

We built 4 raised beds in the veggie garden this spring. Those crops did really well, the ones in the remaining garden beds not so much. We will add a few more raised beds next year and hopefully, little by little, we will have a larger selection of crops each year. With canning and dehydrating, we should be able to fill those pantry shelves in no time.

There are many things I would like to do better, but as long as we make progress towards our goals, I am happy.

Today's daily bread...

2009-11-04T17:04:00.001-08:00

Look what came out of the oven this morning:

This is the first time I've used the Artisan Bread Topping from King Arthur Flour (http://www.kingarthurflour.com/shop/items/artisan-bread-topping-8-oz) That stuff is terrific!

Goodies!

2008-05-17T18:40:00.000-07:00

Here are the wonderful things I found today:

As I mentioned in the last post, I found a great garden ornament at the Design House. The tall white rusted contraption to the right of the chair is it. The globe portion spins around the arrow. The height is fantastic, I can stick it in the back of the bed and it looks lovely (permanent place yet to be determined)

In the Community Center I picked this little goodness up. It's about 14 inches tall.

This came from the same booth as the dress form. I'm not entirely sure where I'll put it, but it is really pretty and it was very reasonable, so I decided to sort it out later.

Ah, cloches, I love them. This is actually my first one, although I do have a very nice short one, which is actually a cheese dome, so I guess that doesn't really count. There is some engraving on the bell, but it didn't show up very well in the pictures I took. Maybe once it's filled it'll be more visible.

After I left Lucketts and returned home, I "happened to be in the neighborhood" of Slindy's, our local treasure trove (sometimes more than others, of course)

This little picnic basket was mine for the bargain price of $1.99. Can't beat that and I already have a need for it next week when we have tickets for Wolftrap.

Also from Slindy's, for the great price of $1.50 is this little covered dish. I have a weakness for tureens, covered dishes and large bowls and if they are white porcelain or ironstone, I find it very hard to resist.

And finally, two aisles over, temptation loomed large. at $6, I didn't even try to resist.

A Fine Spring Day in Virginia

2008-05-17T18:04:00.001-07:00

Today was the first of two days of the Seventh Annual Lucketts Spring Antique Market. Until a few weeks ago, I had never even heard of Lucketts, let alone the market, but after a recommendation I found on a blog I enjoy (I'd love to give credit, but for the life of me I can't remember which blog I found it on, sorry) I looked Lucketts Store up on that interweb thingy and found out that they were about to have their Spring Market, so I marked the day on the calendar and went along my merry way. Turns out, DH is away for the weekend on Reserve business and the weather is great. Lucketts, the town, as well as the store, is a few miles north of Leesburg on 15N. There is a cluster of nifty little antique stores across the street from the Community Center, so the Market included all of the stores as well as booths in and around the community center. I took a few pictures and I wanted to share them with you all.

This is Design House, where I found a great garden ornament. I think I'll post all of my finds in a second post. Anyway, this is a lovely place with neat ideas and decorating items. The prices are quite reasonable and the staff is extremely nice.

This is a picture of the inside, just to give you an idea.

Once more on the outside of the Design House.

Some of the outside vendors in front of the community center. By this time I had my hands full with goodies, so the picture taking dropped of drastically : )

And another one...

How it all started

2008-05-10T15:21:00.000-07:00

I promised some before and now pictures and after a little bit of digging I found a few pictures that ought to work here.

This picture shows the right front side of the house. The fence encloses what is currently the vegetable garden, although we decided to let it lay fallow this year and just work on amendments and maybe some hardscaping. Instead, we are going to try a share with the local CSA this year.

Here is the same point of view this afternoon. The large shrub in the front of the house, between the windows is a Purple-leafed Plum. Everything else is a bit hard to see, due to the distance, but thats okay.

This picture must have been taken a few moths after we moved in, 5 years ago. The foundation plantings consisted of dwarf Burford hollies and some Rhododendrons.

Slightly different angle, but you can see, there have been lot of additions made to the foundation plantings, including a weeping cherry tree, a weeping atlas cedar and a Japanese maple.

This is the house from the open area (well, actually it's the drainfield). Not much there, except for the satellite dish and some very large boxwoods on the side of the house (north-east orientation).

Much greener! In front of the boxwoods, that you can't really see in this picture, since everything is growing in front of them, has grown up a nice shade bed. Forward and to the left is the main (oldest) sunny border. That border is very exciting this year, it is really starting to coe together and looking really good.

So that's the big picture, I'll talk about the detailed stuff soon.

Location, location, location

2008-05-07T09:57:00.000-07:00

So where is this garden I've been talking about? Well, it's in Virginia, about 75 miles south-west of the NOVA/DC cluster and about 40 miles north of Charlottesville. The USDA map puts me in a zone 6b, but my garden's micro climate is a little off, when compared to the neighboring yards. Our house is on an elevation and with the exception for the area that was cleared for the house, drive way and drainfield, most of the site is mixed, mature forest. All of this puts a few of my indicator plants (daffodils and forsythias for example) a week or so behind the same plants just a few hundred yards down the road. I don't know if that lag stays with me all year long, since I forget to keep track of it once the garden really gets going, but at least so far it still holds true for the bearded iris.

We are the second set of owners of the house. The POs, a couple with a small child, lived their for about years before we came along. They didn't make much of an impression on either the land or the house, so when we moved in we started with an almost blank slate. I have a few pictures of the "before" state of things and I thought I would share them, but I just realized that I don't have access to the garden portion of the picture right now, so it'll have to wait until tomorrow.

So it begins...

2008-05-02T12:21:00.000-07:00

I'm not a great believer in New Year's resolutions--I believe in making resolutions and setting goals, I just don't think that they should be made at the beginning of the calendar year. However, if I had made a New Year's resolution, it would have been to blog more. It makes sense: I read blogs, I enjoy blogs, I occasionally have things to talk about or share and I do like the ability to go back and see what I was doing a year or so ago. Still, blogging doesn't come easily to me. I second guess myself, I edit myself, I don't make the time to do it, in other words I share all of the common symptoms of non-bloggers.

Well, I've decided to give it another go. I am making this new beginning with a new (to me) tool and a more general format in mind. The idea is to talk about the house, the garden, the sort of bread recipes I am experimenting with at the moment and so on. There have been a ton of things I could have blogged about over the last 5 years (since we moved to this house), had I but taken the time. Fortunately, I have pictures of most of them, so I can (and will) go back and talk about them now.

For today, I am just going to post a few pictures of the garden as it is today, just a little something to limber up and learn about Blogger with. Enjoy and let me know if you like it!

This is the main perennial bed, which is to the front right of the house (out of the frame on the left). I the back, you can just see the garden shed/workshop. Not much is blooming yet, of course, a few Columbines are being very busy and the Dogwoods are in full bloom, too.

Same bed in the foreground, but from a different angle. The garden shed and herb garden, as well as the swing set (inherited from the PO) can be seen. The open, grassy area is the drain field for the house. It is a nice, large open area, bordered by a hardwood forest. Eventually, I want to work my way around this circle, turning the area between the woods and the lawn into mixed borders. I've made to the left post of the swing set so far and am going to prep another section for fall planting over the course of the summer.

A close up of the herb garden and perennial bed that I installed last spring in the leftover fill dirt we used to level out the site for the garden shed. I used all of the rocks I've dug up over the last few years, to edge the slope of this elevated bed. Over time, I will still have to fill the area in between the rocks with gravel, for now, I've just planted some sedums and some other rock garden plants. Babysteps.

Looking over the herb garden back to the house. The goal is to eventually fill the walk area (currently just local clay) with gravel. The large pot in the middle is the mint container. I have to replant some of the mints that have lost the battle last year. The Korean Mint and the Spearmint are the clear winners. My Lemonbalm disappeared entirely, but I have others (happily reseeded in years past) that I can transplant. The obelisk supports a Clematis that is (somewhat) protected from the mint invasion by a deep bottomless pot that surrounds it.

The Clematis is a "Miss Bateman", if I am not mistaken and is the first one blooming so far. Speaking of not being sure, I have been less than great labeling my plantings, so I am sometimes a little fuzzy on the cultivars in any given spot. This year, I have finally started to install some more sturdy labels, so hopefully I will do better in the future.

How do you label your plants?