Ooooo, that wascally wabbit

Monday, March 30, 2009 at 7:20 pm (Heavy Clay)
Tags: , ,

Don’t you hate it when happy bun in the sun…

bunnyinthesunny

…equals vicious nips on the ‘lips?

nippedlip

Yes, I get the irony of entertaining thoughts of wabbit hunting so close to Easter. But I knew this was coming when I saw that the biggest-wild-rabbit-I-have-ever-seen had moved in under the shed (perhaps kicking out last year’s groundhog in the process). And I suspect the only treats this bunny will be leaving are of the variety I’ve already had to dodge in the yard.

He/She/Mother-to-be doesn’t seem to grasp that an entire house, yard, tumbledown shed, and pool enclosure filled with lovely hiding places and tasty vegetation is just next door with no one in sight (the sheriff’s sale having been postponed until May). Nope, very content to settle down in our little slice of heaven and munch on our hors d’oeuvres (that’s French for “hours of labor.” Not really, but it should be.)

Had I been faster on the shutter, I could have also displayed a picture of the gorgeous red-tailed hawk that startled me when it flew by my window a few days ago and landed briefly in the neighbor’s tree. (And has since conjured all sorts of Fudd-worthy fantasies.)

Hmmmm, bunny my dear, perhaps you and any little ones that might be forthcoming would be happier in a new neighborhood? (Just a suggestion from your concerned caterer.)

Shhhh. Be vewy, vewy qwiet. I’m hunting wabbits.

~ Elmer Fudd

Leave a Comment

The bloom is on the wort!

Thursday, March 19, 2009 at 9:53 am (Heavy Clay)
Tags: , , ,

pulmonaria

I got a nice hunk of pulmonaria (lungwort) from my neighbor last year and am amazed to find it’s already blooming, well before the foliage fully transforms into its lovely, speckled self. (My sister and I have joked that we need to have a “wort” garden, just because it’s funny to say.)

And check this out: daffies! Already!

daffies

Makes me a little worried — too warm too soon? Will everything get zapped when we get the inevitable April snowstorm? Doesn’t bode well for the magnolia out front.

Just look at the buds on this lilac — a poor little guy we rescued from overgrown viburnum and privet. It hasn’t bloomed since we moved it two years ago, so I hope this will be the year — white blooms.

lilacbuds

Sad to see a few things didn’t survive. I can never resist taking a chance on an unfamiliar “find” at the garden center, but they never seem to work for me. This was, of course, lovely when I bought it — blue flowers (another something I can’t resist). No tag, and I can’t remember what it was called. I had such high hopes of it trailing over the new wall.

sad-ground-cover

At least the lemon thyme seems to have survived (though some other varieties haven’t), and the tricolor sedum is pinking up nicely — it’s never this pink in summer.

lemonthyme

sedum

But, not so fortunate inside. Just like every year, the rosemary I try to overwinter does fine until just before I can put it outside again. Then it channels Charlie Brown’s Christmas tree and it’s all over. I’m always starting from scratch with these.

sad-rosemary

Oh, I know it’s not good to be wishing life away, but March can’t be over soon enough. There’s so much hope to be found in April, especially because we’ve planted so much. I just went through and did a quick count of my beloved plant tags — 50 shrubs (not counting multiples of the same kind, like boxwood) and 75 perennials. Of course, not all have survived, but even so, spring is pretty exciting.

I look around, though, and see just how much more there is to do and to fill in. Makes me admire “real” gardens and gardeners even more. (You’ll notice all of my garden pictures show a lot of mulch — of course the goal is that you see something growing everywhere, shoulder to shoulder, instead of boring brown bark. Give us 10 years or so for that…)

And yes, last year I was speculating whether April really is the cruellest month…what a difference 12 months make, bringing much perspective and enough progress to make the eternal warm-weather DIY fixer-upper projects a bit less daunting.

It’s spring fever. That is what the name of it is.
And when you’ve got it, you want — oh, you don’t
quite know what it is you do want, but it just
fairly makes your heart ache, you want it so!
~ Mark Twain

2 Comments

The house next door

Friday, February 13, 2009 at 4:13 pm (Cottage Industry, Heavy Clay)
Tags: , , , ,

It’s for sale. Sheriff’s sale. Since the owners up and abandoned it last spring, Mike and I have been alternately rejoicing they took their smelly dog enclosure with them (nothing like the scent of dog doo wafting over the shade garden) and worrying what would become of the place.

According to our neighbor, the house was nothing to look at 40 years ago when she was a kid and occasionally played with the kids who lived there then. Surely it’s gone downhill after a series of negligent owners. We fought mosquitoes all last summer because they left their above-ground pool full and water collected in the cover and was a nasty West Nile soup.

It’s an odd little house — yellow stucco — and may have been charming at one time. (Although more appropriate for the neighborhood known as “Spanish Villa” across the highway from us.) Now it’s just scary, complete with dangling icicle lights from Christmases past, plastic wrap on the windows, mold and branches on the roof (surely it leaks), and giant, poison ivy-infested evergreens all around. Not to mention a tumbledown shed, and that pool, wrapped in a large lattice-y deck/fence thing.

Even before it was abandoned, Mike and I made several forays across the property line to clean up fallen branches and prune overgrown trees and shrubs that were spoiling our view. I ruthlessly sprayed heavy-duty Round-Up on all the poison ivy I saw — which was considerable. We never interacted with (or really even saw) the owners, save for a couple encounters with their kids, whom I always felt sorry for. It was from one of the boys that I learned “We might be moving…” and crossed my fingers.

It’s been nice not having such negligent neighbors, but we’re worried about what might happen now that it’s up for sheriff’s sale in a few weeks. We’d love to have the property — our 50-foot-wide lot is so confining — but certainly don’t have the cash to blow on buying it and then having to worry about tearing down the house (I can’t imagine it could/should be saved). Plus the grounds are a disaster — even mowing the giant, sloping front yard (the house sits far back from ours) would be a challenge. Plus there’s no garage, which would have been a real selling point since ours is so inadequate, and only a LONG gravel driveway that washes down on the road all the time.

But, that frivolous right brain of mine can’t help but imagine what could be if we had the money and weren’t totally consumed with all the half-finished DIY projects on this side of the property line. How nice it would be to double the size of our lot — plant trees, fence it in, build a combination potting shed/garage with a studio above (hey, a girl can dream), design our own “secret garden.” A very Western PA version of A Year in Provence or Under the Tuscan Sun. (Yeah, we’d probably fly a Steeler flag somewhere, too.)

I long ago picked out the perfect spot to “connect” the two yards — a grand arbor or something right between these two trees…

thegateway

Instead, we have to wait and see. Hope some good people buy the place and not gypsies, tramps, or thieves. Hope we don’t rue the day we didn’t take out a second mortgage to buy it ourselves. 

Oh, did I mention scenario #173? The one in which she opens a charming B&B that becomes a smashing success and pays for itself and lets her stop having to hack for hire and instead hack write purely for fun?

Right brain is nothing if not imaginative…

the-wreck

There’s a long, long trail a-winding into the land of my dreams. 
                                                                ~ Stoddard King, Jr.

4 Comments

« Older entries Newer entries »