Monthly Archives: May 2009

Vegetable Garden in progress

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We dreamed about a vegetable garden all winter and we actually made it happen!

We believe there used to be a garden of some sort on the south side of our house so we brought it back to life. Well. First death. Now life.

We painstakingly hoed all the vegetation (grass, dandelions, parsley, and daisies) off and then framed in an area about 12×10 feet. I thought that would be huge for a garden!!

We bought 10 bags of top soil and 10 bags of sheep manure to improve the soil. That barely covered the area so we went back and bought 15 more bags of each.

Today we spontaneously stopped by the greenhouse in town. Everyone has been telling us we “aren’t allowed” to plant any vegetables until after the first full moon in June. Well, there were other people buying vegetables today, and I will be away next weekend, so we dove in and bought a few started plants.

Jeff busied himself with wrapping the garden with chicken wire (after all, it would be a shame to plant a vegetable garden just to allow the deer and bunnies to snack in it).

Once we started reading the tags on the plants we realized our garden is WAY WAY WAY too small! Most of the plants said they had to be planted 36 inches apart, OR MORE! Good grief! We couldn’t even plant all the plants that we had. So that huge mental list of vegetables that we planned to grow was for naught – but there is always next year – (or next month after a frost kills off these ones). So what did we plant? As row of herbs – oregano, chives, rosemary. 2 kinds of green pepper, jalapeno, 2 kinds of tomatos, PLUS cherry tomatos, 2 squash plants, cucumbers, and 2 kinds of lettuce. Looks like we’ll be having salsa and a side salad this year :)

Because they are so far apart, and some of these little starter plants barely had roots, we popped two shoots in one hole a few times.

Vegetable Garden

Vegetable Garden

Vegetable Garden

New Laundry Machines!

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We’ve been waiting, watching prices, driving the saleswoman at Sears crazy for over a year now, and last week we took the leap! New laundry machines!

Old machines:

Laundry Machines

New Machines!

Claimed by Zeus immediately – he has to conquer all the heights in the house:

Laundry Machines

Trooper was mildly interested.

Laundry Machines

The dryer took the longest to set up and level.

Laundry Machines

And we love them! Now we can sit (on the can) and watch the clothes to around. I don’t know where it is putting all of the dog hair, but the washing machine seems to be taking off all the hair. The dryer’s lint trap is practically empty each time, and the clothes are so clean, and hair free.

Laundry Machines

We skipped on the steam feature, but this set does have a sanitary super hot setting so we can cook the stink out of the dog beds :)

Bird Species spotted here this month

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Indigo bunting
Rose-breasted grosbeak
Canada goose
Bald eagle
Mourning dove
Downy woodpecker
Red-breasted nuthatch
White-breasted nuthatch
Ruby-throated hummingbird
Blue jay
American crow
Black-capped Chickadee
American Robin
European Starling
Yellow-rumped warbler
Chipping sparrow
White-throated sparrow
Dark-eyed junco
Common Grackle
Purple finch
American goldfinch
Evening grosbeak
Yellow warbler
+sparrows & gulls we haven’t identified

Some pictures from last weekend, taken by me, Jeff, and Dad:

birdies

birdies

birdies

birdies

birdies

birdies

Dad’s Visit

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Dad visited for the long weekend. I had a GREAT weekend! We did so much, and hopefully I will get a chance to post specific stories and photos.

What we did:
-visited Peggy’s Cove
-visited ThatDuchmen’s Cheese store and bought some gouda
-attempted to reach White Hill, Nova Scotia’s highest point
-planned our next attempt to reach White Hill
-attended to our wounds, sunburns, broken muscles (not so much mine – I bailed out of the adventure early)
-played a lively game of Trivial Pursuit
-enjoyed lobster, fish & chips, bbq’d chicken, bbq’d shrimp, bbq’d steak, Jeff’s smoked salmon, and not mussels
-visited a couple more lighthouses
-planned our garage
-met with the county’s building inspector
-saw 4 moose
-saw 100 dead porcupines (more or less)
-shocked Dad with the price of fresh produce out here (I’m not talking about the porcupines anymore)
-patched Dad’s flat tire
-drove all around to Pictou, Wreck Cove, Antigonish, Sherbrooke, Peggy’s Cove, Halifax, Lower Economy, Cape George, and Arasaig
-watched countless hours of Cottage Day on HGTV in front of our warmish fireplace while it poured outside

Shrub removal and replacement

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Jeff cut down the gigantic, overgrown juniper at the driveway corner of the front of the house. It was huge and over grown and ugly. He also cut down the umbrella shaped tree in the garden in the middle of the lawn. I don’t know what it was but it never flowered, barely grew many leaves, and its branches were really thick and uncomfortable to duck underneath to weed.

Today we went to the local nursery and bought 3 new shrubs. For the middle of the yard we bought a Dwarf Burning Bush (Fusain aile nain). It is “an excellent compact grower, its brilliant fall colour and dwarf habit makes it a popular shrub in the border of the foundation planting”. I hope it grows well in the middle of the yard. We don’t want a tree there because we’re assuming it is on top of the weeping bed.

In the front of the house, on the driveway side (in front of my office window) we replaced the gigantic juniper with a Silver Spirea (Spiraea nipponica ‘Halwards Silver’) and a really neat little bush called a “Dwarf Hinoka False Cypress”.

We’ve been looking for a bird bath for years now and we finally found what we were looking for – the kind that look like a tree stump with a big ground shallow top to hold the water. We found one and have placed it in the middle garden between the new Burning Bush and the small evergreen shrub that the bunnies have been hiding under (and oddly enough, sitting on top of).

We hope to eventually put a porch all along the front of the house. Probably just 18 inches or so off the ground – not too high. There won’t be an overhang, and hopefully not even a railing. Then we’ll have to dig up our front shrubs. It is probably a plan for next year or the next year. Garage is first!