Hostas Hostas Everywhere

I'm slowly chipping away at the stuff that needs to be done outside. I removed the dog kennel poles last weekend and my basil garden has taken off, but I haven't spent that much time with the yard. I hate wasting water on the lawn, so our grass is patchy and brown; I don't really care about having a well-manicured, green grass. To avoid my apathy toward grass in general, my goal is to have as many plants tastefully filling the yard as possible. Of course, this will take some time and effort, but I much rather have perennials that are easy to maintain, while helping to increase our house's curb appeal.

That being said, I've started working on the terrace in the backyard. I plan to move my way forward to the dog kennel, with a sidewalk (maybe) by the end of the fall. As you can see, the back terrace has some real potential; I'm just having trouble envisioning what I really want back there.

The area is well-shaded, so plants requiring a lot of sun are out. My mom recommended using hostas. According to her, they're shade loving and almost impossible to kill (two bonuses). She also gave me two of her hosta plats as a house warming gift. On top of that, our flower bed along the front of the house has some hostas that were extraordinarily out of control, for not having anything done to them. I was quite happy because they're expensive little plants. After digging out three from the frontyard and planting my mom's, here's what the second terrace looks like now with the hostas.

There are still more weeds and over growth than intentional planting. I still have a long way to go, but it's a start. The previous owners had left three bags of radiant black mulch as well. It works pretty well, and I will probably go to a gardening store to buy some more bags, giving the second level a much more even look. 

Because the plants were sitting in a bucket of water for over week, they're looking pretty rough, but I expect them to do all right for the rest of the summer. In the mean time, I have a coworker who has offered some of her hostas, so I plan to have the entire second terrace filled with the plants. The next step will be tearing out all of the weeds and dead bushes on the main terrace. It should prove a challenge, I'm sure.

Herb Gardening (shrunken)

One of my dreams since I graduated from school was having my own garden. I remember my childhood summers spent in the garden with my mom and brothers, hoeing the soil, canning vegetables, selling some to neighbors, etcs. So having a garden in the new house was a no-brainer, but because we moved into the house in mid-June, it was a bit too late to set up a full-fledged garden.

I decided a  good option this year was to create a micro-herb garden with three of my favorites: basil, parsley, and green onion (I know, the last isn't technically an herb). Taking a $3 ice bucket from Bed Bath and Beyond, I simply popped some holes underneath to let excess water escape, laid rock along the bottom, and fill it with soil.

A garden in a bucket

I've had the micro-garden for about two weeks now, and the herbs are already starting to sprout.

Basil and green onions are already sprouting

We should have some great, fresh options for pasta sauce ready to go by mid-August, I hope. Moreover, this is the perfect option to curb my desire for a garden this year. 

In the Dog-House No More

Today after I got home from work, I was feeling very ambitious, so, much to my wife's chagrin, I went ahead and started to tear the dog kennel out from the side of the garage. Remember that thing?

Though I'm sure a dog kennel can come in very handy in some situations, we're both people who just don't see ourselves owning a large dog that would justify something like that. So two blisters, a sweaty shirt, and an hour later, I was able to tear out all of the fencing. 

Now my next big feat is going to be tearing out the cemented poles. I may need to get a hacksaw.

You may be asking yourself, Cameron, what are you going to do about that giant slab of cement that is clearly connected to the garage? And that's a great question, one I was thinking about most of the time I was tearing the fencing out. 

I think we're going to leave the slab where it's at and create a raised flower bed that covers the cement and acts as a guide for a sidewalk I'll be building from the driveway to the garden shed. Bordering it off with some fancy bricks that are 16" high or so. I have a hard time foreseeing what some things will look like, and I know my description is doing a disservice to my imagination, but I think this will work. I'll try finding a software program online that will better visualize what I'm talking about. 

In the mean time, phase 2.1 is complete!

Mowing for Reel

Homeownership normally comes with owning some sort of yard, and something we didn't even think about as we bought our house was needing lawn tools. Thankfully, because Steph's aunt and uncle had recently moved into a condo where their lawn was taken care of, they were super generous and lent us some of the basics we needed, namely a lawn mower, weed eater, a couple of rakes, and a wheel barrow. Though all of these tools are fantastic, I was having some trouble with starting up the lawn mower.

Lawn-Boy II

I spent the better part of a morning starting the mower up, letting it run for a couple of minutes, and continually trying and retrying to mow all for it to die on me over and over again. It was quite exasperating, and instead of trying to figure out what was mechanically wrong with the mower, we decided to drop some extra cash and buy a new one. 

With me being technically and mechanically deficient, I was leaning toward buying an electric mower that required little upkeep, but many of the reviews I read said that many of the cheaper electric mowers that required either an extension cord or a battery were either cumbersome or lacked sufficient "umph" power.  The one mower that did catch my eye, however, was a push reel mower; the kind that have been in use for well over one-hundred years.

Both Steph and I were skeptical at first, but the price seemed right and most reel mowers I searched for online generally came with positive reviews. I thought it was worth a shot, and if it didn't work, we could always return the thing. 

After two weeks of mowing with the new mower, I'm convinced it was the right purchase. It's extremely light, quiet, portable, and actually does a good job. It does have some flaws where it can jam up on the smallest of twigs and will sometimes miss small chunks of grass. In this case I treat it like a vacuum cleaner and go back and forth to dislodge debris and go over missed spots. Nonetheless, I don't have to spend a dime on gas and the only upkeep is sharpening the blades every summer.

In other words, it's the perfect, pretentious tool for the mechanically deficient.

Steph's Seal of Approval for Outstanding Products

Progress???

Over the weekend we started to organize our guest room (aka the colossal junk room). A couple of years ago, I inherited a number of musical instruments and electronic equipment from my father-in-law, and all of that stuff has found a temporary home in the spare room until we figure out what to do with most of it.  In addition to musical stuff, we've got exercise equipment, spare bedding, and probably a portal to some netherworld.

The room as the previous owners had it

And our embarrassment

The picture doesn't do justice to how big of a mess the room was before we "cleaned it up" and set up the bed. I still can't figure out how we managed to fit most of this stuff into a one bedroom apartment. In any case the spare bedroom is the iwillputitinhereforthetimebeing room and will take some time to get into living condition.

And just so I don't feel like a total failure, I wanted to show the not-so-glamorous compost bin I "constructed." And by constructed, I mean I laid down a tarp, found a bunch of cinderblocks out by the back shed, and built a couple of walls.

A compost heap is something I've been lusting after since I graduated from college, and I'm really happy to finally have one. 

And the best part is that it's already doing its job with the various grass clippings, strawberry tops, old leaves, and twigs I've collected from around the yard. It will be perfect  and ready-to-go for our garden next spring.