mbvirtue's Blog

Aaargh...Chipmunks!
Jun 30, 2007 | 2:19 PM PST
Tag: chipmunks
The chippies are coming, the chippies are coming...forget it, they're here.  Clearing out under the back porch today and found two holes leading to two chewed-thru sections of the lattice!  Grrrrrr...Went looking in GG to find out how to discourage them, and came up with  coffee grounds.  So off I go now to scatter grounds 'round the ground!  (Sorry, couldn't help myself)

There Was Dirt!
Jun 30, 2007 | 5:09 AM PST
Tags: perennial , bed , dirt , house

Just to sum things up for members who happen to wander in here, I was a gardener from the time I was old enough to understand that you could put a seed in the ground, water and wait, and up would come a huge plant, much bigger than the seed.  I remember being amazed at that, watching as they broke ground and struggled to survive.

From about college (1988 Univ. WI grad) until 1997, we lived in FL and I didn't have dirt...very sad.  Lotsa poor attempts at houseplants, but they never did well.  Then in '97 we moved back to WI, and THERE WAS DIRT!  At first, it was only in containers as we were renting a townhouse with a beautiful south exposure.  In '01, the prospective sale of the townhouse fell through and we moved here to our current 'burb, renting a TINY apartment so we could save up for a downpayment on a house.  I continued my dirt passion as best I could, since we only had one south window (son's room), and a north-facing patio with trees and a huge hill.  Not much sunlight at all. 

Found this place by accident, hubby looking online said "hmmm this looks nice, let's go look".  Went, looked, liked, applied, approved, offered, sold!  It literally took 1 week from first look to offer accepted, contract written.  I've taken more time buying shoes, for pete's sake.

So...here we are.  When it's growing season, I'm generally too busy outside to get much done inside, but that's why we do spring and fall cleaning, right?  Ya only gotta clean when it's dirty.  Our house sits on a corner lot, right in the middle of the property. As a result, there's things going on every side of the house.  On top of that, the house was built to include a haircutting salon, so it has two front yards!  We're on the parade route (Memorial and Labor Day), so there's absolutely no way I can let anything slide there.

A picture's worth a thousand words, so please feel free to look at the photos, I'll get some more up today and get 'em captionned so they make some sense.  In a nutshell, there are 7 different places I can be at any one time, not forgetting the 2 apple and 1 peach trees.  There's the front perennial bed with lotsa hostas,  the "other" front bulb bed with tulips, (hopefully next year) daisies, and blackeyed susans.  Then the stuff that changes every year on the west side of the house:  garage garden (still on the front, has to look at least alive), tomato garden (don't know what it is about the location, even the volunteers come back), back garden (this is where I can experiment, as only the retirees next door can really see it), and the newly established (I hope) sunflower/dog garden.  This last is a patch where my Rott/Black Lab mutt tends to graze on the longer grasses as his salad, which I hope to get edged next weekend with pavers from my MIL, who's given up on her grass and is going concrete.  Gonna get hostas from her this fall, too.  Although now that I think about it, I divided mine last summer, just dug 'em up, hacked 'em in chunks, stuck 'em back in the ground.  They did better than the ones I bought!

Whew, that's a lot to read.  Sorry, had to start somewhere.  Future entries won't be this cumbersome, as I'll be able to refer to things and not have to explain in detail.  My hubby says I ramble on, he tunes out after the first sentence!  I tell him women are like that, we tend to overexplain so there's less chance for misunderstandings. 

Thanks for your patience and stop back by, you never know what's growing (or cooking, or being read)....

In The Begining...
Jun 30, 2007 | 4:36 AM PST
Tag: random facts

First of all, I've been tagged, so here goes:

#1:  I played oboe for 15 years.

#2:  Horses are my passion.

#3:  Anything with chocolate is my friend.

#4:  Blackberries are hard to kill, but I've accomplished that.

#5:  When I'm not gardening, I'm usually reading...anything.

#6:  Don't like fireworks.

#7:  LOVE the fact that I CAN play in the dirt, and that I have dirt to play in!