Winter 2017

Well, just as we thought we would escape any significant snow, we got slammed with a 17-inch blizzard.

The table on the deck.

Christmas lights under snow.

Mrs. Cardinal

This was February 9th, my sister's birthday.  We had a whopper of a blizzard on her birthday five years ago.  I believe she was born during a blizzard as well.  Then last Sunday we had an ice/sleet/rain/snow storm, but only got about three inches, thankfully.  We were sort of worried about ice dams with this much snow staying on the roof.  But this weekend it was in the 50's, with warm weather predicted for later in the week.

Come, Spring, come!

2016 Gardening Season

I went a little crazy buying plants, like maybe over 80?  I paid off the porch renovation so I had some extra dough.  It was a HOT and droughty summer.  I decided to renovate the back garden, which entailed much transplanting and new planting.  The watering was never-ending.

Back garden - bought four Green Mountain boxwood, Bagatelle Japanese barberry, baptisia, three Royal Candles veronica, Hansa rugosa rose, Jacob Cline echinacea; transplanted daisies to new patio garden; moved peach daylily, dark red peony, iris; threw out many irises and gave some to neighbors; moved Krossa Regal hosta from front border to in front of F. J. Grootendorst rose; moved plain hostas to woods or gave them to neighbors (can't remember).

Shade garden - bought a variegated Solomon's Seal, three Golden Japanese forest grasses, Jack Frost brunnera, three blue creeping phlox, Gold Heart bleeding heart; moved yellow hosta to woods; transplanted a portion of the mock orange from the front border (where it was crowding a white peony).

Love this garden!

New front extended garden

New patio garden

Various other changes include transplanting a seedling wisteria from the porch garden to atop the stone wall above the new patio garden, near the birdhouse.  I also transplanted a Russian sage from the back garden next to the wisteria.

My Latest New Garden

I decided the front yard look lopsided so I extended the garden all the way to the driveway.  I transplanted a plain hosta, daisies and phlox and bought an Orange Rocket barberry, Autumn Joy sedum, Hillside Black Beauty cimicifuga and Paul's Glory hosta.

Here's the beautiful barberry in her fall dress.

This garden was tough to finish due to the extreme heat, and sod removal.  I spread the composted leaf bags left over from the back, so I'm really excited to see this garden pop up in a few short months.

Merry Holiday Season!

Hope you're all simply having a wonderful Christmastime!

The question of late is "How did you get that tree in the house?"  It took all my strength.  I thought I had lost strength due to aging because I've never had a tree that was so heavy.  I think I paid $45 at Johnny Appleseed's.  It's a very thick balsam fir.

My decorating this year is somewhat scaled down.  I don't have bows and ribbons.  As you can see I can't commit to either colored or white.  I'm just impressed that this year the tree was up the second week in December.  Last year I think I got a tree on the 23rd.  Choices are greatly limited by then.

I hosted Christmas dinner.  I guess my sister told us six months ago or so that she had to work (she started a new job), as if we would remember.  So I scrambled and got everything together at the last minute.  I've been baking a lot - homemade caramels, turtle candies and toffee.  Also a lot of pies.  I've regained my ability to make a proper crust.  When it's the right consistency you can make fancy lattice tops like so:

Outside I went with a blue theme.  I credit my friend Tina, who's a style icon around these parts.  She had these pretty net lights, but they don't twinkle like mine do!

With flash.

Without flash.

Happy Halloween!

I've gone pumpkin-crazy this year to make up for all the years I didn't buy them.  Plus there are such beautiful, funky, colorful ones available now!

I took this with my new I-phone.  In the urns are ornamental cabbage and kale.  My pumpkins are already rotting.  I've never been able to keep them until Thanksgiving like I want to.  Maybe it's the extraordinarily warm weather we've been having.  Oh.  Except for two inches of snow we got last Thursday, almost on the anniversary of the dreadful October Nor'easter.

Whew, I have so much left to do - paint the house above the deck, paint the porch lattice, plant 100 daffodils (what was I thinking?), get new gutters for the porch and back of house, put away gardening and yard stuff.  Better get busy!

Always Remember

 Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one's life for one's friends. John 15:13 (New International Version)

Gardener Changes

I think my gardening style has grown up.  I initially loved cottage gardens, with their many colors, and crammed-in, higgledy-piggledy look.  Now I want more calm, more order, less chaos.  I've never liked plants that look tropical or flop over.  I also want to stay away from invasives or those that self-seed too readily.  I pulled out the beautiful obedient plant last year (it's actually way not obedient).  This year the phlox have seeded everywhere and I need to keep an eye on it.  I suppose I should deadhead it right away, but who can keep up with that?

As I get older I am concerned about the high-maintenance roses I have.  They require a lot of pruning, watering, deadheading and fertilizing.  I suppose I could just keep the knockouts and other shrub roses that don't really need a lot of fussing over.  For the past two years I've had five roses out back that barely flower, if at all.  Three of these are from the beginning, in 2006.  Maybe they're just worn out.  I don't know.  I'd like to pull them out and replace them with Lady Elsie May, which is an Energizer bunny of a rose, and huge.

Then I remember this:

The other problem is that because the side yard slopes severely, I can't easily bring mulch to the shade and back gardens.

That's little Lucy last year.

In concert with my new streamlined approach, I prefer the look of cedar mulch rather than leaf mold.  Hopefully, as the new gardens mature the plants will cover most of the ground.  In the original garden I now have four groundcovers - thyme, myrtle, ivy and plumbago.  This was my mother's sage advice because I wouldn't be able to maintain this large garden without them.

I've also become interested in extending the gardening season from its peak in mid-July.  I used to get a third flush of roses but not in recent years.  This year I've worked on the "bones" that will enhance the winter garden - the "transplanted" arbor and new boxwood.  I also decided to plant the new garden in front of the front porch (see below) as a winter and early spring garden, with a (transplanted) dwarf blue spruce, Alberta spruce, redtwig dogwood, possibly boxwood, and spring bulbs.

My favorite plants continue to be roses, hydrangeas, cranesbills, oriental ilies, hostas, barberries, peonies and foxgloves.  I tolerate the drooping peonies because who doesn't love their over-the-top beauty?  This year I actually staked them all in time, but alas, the April snowstorms took a toll on their blooms.

Gardening Changes Part II

I've been spending a lot of time in the backyard this summer while contemplating and implementing changes to my first garden.  As a result I decided I could no longer abide the 12-foot barberry next to the deck.  I chopped it all down (after waiting for the baby catbirds to leave the nest).  It had morphed into five separate "trees."  What was left was a stone wall and planting area below that I thought might look cute.

I have been enjoying sitting on the previously rarely used patio ever since I planted the shade garden on the north side of the house.  I really wanted to plant a tree or shrub on top of the stone wall, something smallish like a redbud, witch hazel or viburnum.  But there's really not enough room.  I could plant something below the wall, in the lawn, but that would close in my small yard.  So I decided on a row of four Green Mountain boxwood, with a Comtesse de Bouchard clematis climbing the deck post, and plants below the wall.

I transplanted a Graham Thomas rose, dwarf Hameln ornamental grass and daylilies from the front Heritage Garden.  They had all been crowded out.  I'm not sure what colors the daylilies are; the pieces got mixed up so it could be a combination of yellow, burgundy and orangey-red.  I'll probably have to move things around next summer.  I also transplanted pale yellow foxglove from the back garden.  I love them and it'll be a nice clump, next to the rose, which is a warm pale yellow.  I also transplanted a big clump of Shasta daisies from the back garden.  I did buy a Montauk daisy and Concorde Japanese barberry on sale.



Yellow foxgloves are on the lower left.

The grass had become even more dwarf due to crowding.

I had asked the neighbors to give me their bags of leaves, with the intent of shredding them with my new machine. Well, I never got around to it, but that's OK because when I opened the bags, I found they had mostly composted. I spread them over the garden, and it looks great. I think next year this will be the way to go with all my gardens. I can only imagine how huge all the plants will be.

Here are the sad looking plants post-transplanting.  You can see the circle created by the former barberry, with hostas surrounding it.

A before shot during a misguided "blue house" period.  I had chopped this bush down previously a few years ago when my co-worker, who had been laid off, thought he would build me stairs off the deck.

Sad Spring and Sad Summer

My mother and I came down with pneumonia around St. Patrick's Day.  I was sicker than she; I missed about 2 1/2 weeks of work.  It was a disaster going back; who knew I was that essential?

In April while sick we watched as two icy snowstorms hit our area.  It ruined the roses, azaleas, hydrangeas and possibly butterfly bushes.  So depressing because we wait all year for our lovely spring and summer, only to have our hopes dashed.  Now the drought is ruining plants; it's just too difficult to water everything every day.

I had to put down my beautiful baby girl Lucy two weeks ago.  The full impact is just hitting me because I am so very sad now.  Last week I went on vacation to Maine so this pain was slightly delayed.  She was 16 on April 19th and had just started to slow down this spring.  She was my great hunter and outdoorswoman, but she stopped wanting to go out and hadn't killed anything in awhile.  I think that's why I have so many chipmunks now.

Lucy was named for Lucille Ball, being that she was a redhead and all.  She was such a beautiful, affectionate, loving little girl.  She liked to sleep on my head or near my face and loved, nay, demanded, to be petted.  I'm pretty sure she had a really good life with me.  I got her when she was three from a no-kill shelter in North Haven.  I hadn't wanted another kitty after my previous little guy had been put down.  But two years later I decided I wanted an orange tabby girl.  I think it was because I was hanging out with people who loved cats, one of whom had seven.  My friend looked all over Connecticut for me.  We went to the shelter and saw Lucy (previously Jupiter), with her sister Carly (previously Snickers).  She was so affectionate, as was her chubby sister.  There was subtle pressure to not split them up, but I didn't want two kitties.  However, they won me over by their loving attention, even when I accidentally dropped Carly taking her out of the cage (I misjudged her girth; her weight has been harder to control than my own).  I brought them into my tiny condo and they promptly hid under my bed - for two days.  I remember telling my friend that my cats hated me!  Finally Lucy came out to see me in the living room.

Lucy was a scaredy-cat.  She would hide when people came over, except when she was super hungry.  I remember when I first moved to my house, my sister opened the front door, scared her and she went flying onto the deck and lept off two stories (she wasn't hurt)!  I was afraid at first to let them outside so I would only let them on the deck.  Well  . . . Miss Lucy figured out a way to climb down the side on the posts and would escape regularly.  They enjoyed being outside so much I relented and let them out.  The girls pretty much stayed in the yard and were terrified of people and cars so they would hide when either would approach.

Lucy liked her privacy more than Carly, who rarely leaves my side.  Lucy liked to sleep on cold days in one of two baskets I lined with quilts and placed near the radiator.  Sometimes she would lie on top of the radiator, I guess to warm her belly.  She loved to sleep and slept very deeply.

Now I'm so paranoid about Carly.  She cries all night.  I don't think she's in pain, maybe it's just dementia.  I'm taking her to the vet's tomorrow.

Lucy loved to garden - and ruin my catmint.

All tuckered out after hunting.

Always very fastidious, if not ladylike.

Taking a nap on the road!

The sisters.

Such a beautiful little face.

Always on the lookout for prey.

The girls hanging out in the front.

Streeeetching out on the front porch.

Guarding the backyard atop the stone wall.

OK, I'll stop boring you with my pretty kitty pictures. Our pets are so near and dear to us, aren't they? They really don't ask for much, and give so much in return. I try not to anthropomorphize them, but it's hard, you know? I don't have children so they definitely fulfill some of that for me. Do you think we will see pets in heaven? I know it's not biblical but just wonder sometimes.