Gardening before and after

Or at least before and most-of-the-way-through.

I've been wanting to do something with this garden for some time. It used to be a wildflower garden, but that was back when I couldn't tell the difference between a seedling and a weedling. OK, so not much has changed since then in my gardening abilities. I seeded most of the neighborhood with the collection of weeds that came out of that attempt and all I got out of it was a single purple cone flower that took hold and refused to be bullied by the weeds.

I have loved purple cone flower ever since.

(Click on the picture for a better look.)

After that, it became my bird feeding station. And it was a lovely spot for it right outside the bedroom window and right outside the sunroom window. We'd watch birds for hours. Unfortunately, that got to be a bit of an expensive hobby and we gave it up. The black oil sunflower, however, did not. Hence the sunflower mess. The pen is for the chickens. I gave them a section to tear up in preparation for my plans.

Here's a better picture of them for those of you who read often enough to remember what they looked like when we brought them home:


Anyway, I've wanted to do something with this garden for a long time. Then I fell in love with the free garden plans at Better Homes & Gardens, and spent a little too much time browsing all the plans.

One hundred dollars and several hours later, I have this:

(Click on the picture for a better look.)

The trees at the front still have to be moved to their permanent homes so I can plant the ornamental grass, the salvia and whatever that stuff is called I chose because they were out of alyssum. I left a small patch of sunflower, because I really do like the sunflower. Just not quite that many in one place. I think I even found my purple cone flower in the mess. Then the kids placed stones in the bird bath bowl for the butterflies to stand on, and I thought the stand by itself made a pretty addition to the garden.

I can't wait to see what it looks like when it has had a chance to grow in a little.

I doubt it looks much like the picture, but flowers and butterflies are pretty either way.

I think I've been bitten by a tsetse fly

Or something. My days are filled with excessive sleepiness. Not exhaustion, really. Just like I really need a nap. I sit down and begin to doze. I lie down to nurse the baby and am asleep before he is. I went to bed shortly after the children two nights in a row, and it seems to be getting worse rather than better.

Maybe I need to stay up until two or three tonight just to get back on track. Maybe then I'll be able to finally wake up.

Sleeping certainly doesn't seem to be getting me anywhere at the moment.

Waging war in my garden

I used to love watching cabbage moths dance about our yard. Their playful flutter was like a ballet in the air.

Then I discovered the first holes in my cabbages and their dance looked less playful.

My brussels sprouts were devoured and their flutter began to look downright menacing.

I've gone over and over my poor, dear, helpless little plants and though the holes seem to multiply before my eyes, I'm yet to find a single caterpillar. I've taken to herding the chickens through the garden a couple times a day in the hope that they will devour what I have missed.

I've waged war on the little buggers and I'm telling you at this point I'd sooner watch my chickens tear up the cabbages in pursuit of a dust bath than watch the leaves slowly disappear to my invisible foe.

I think the next adult I see will find itself in the terrarium. With the frog.

A mouse and a book

My daughter is sitting behind me as I type reading a book. A book I recommended to her. This is huge, people. Huge enough to share with the world. Huge enough to postpone dishes . . . bedtime, even, though it is already 10:42 PM.

(Oops. Maybe I shouldn't admit that, especially since I didn't really notice until I checked just now so I could share the time.)

See, this sweet child is a little too much like her mother and that independent spirit is a bit too strong at times. Not that independence is a bad thing all on its own. It is the one reason I don't worry about her as much as I do my younger children. I know that no one will ever make her do anything she doesn't want to.

It's just that if mom recommends something, the recommendation is met with a shoulder shrug and suddenly she'd sooner read Bug's Dora the Explorer books than any book mom said she might like.

When I recommended Nancy Drew, I may as well have handed her The Federalist Papers. OK, so I like The Federalist Papers. I'm weird like that and hope she will be someday, too, but it is probably a bit much for a ten year old.

Who am I kidding? This child drags out Annals of the War and reads it when she doesn't have a good book about horses. Of course, that is because I told her last year that she wasn't old enough to understand it and she has set out to prove me wrong.

See how these recommendations work?

At any rate, a friend of hers mentioned something about Nancy Drew and suddenly we are looking at the online catalogs of the local library system to try to read every single one of them in order. Oh why did they have to come out with that silly movie? It has revitalized Lincoln's interest in the young sleuth and they are all checked out almost all the time.

It was just checked in! It was just checked in! We have to go to the library now, mom!

Now maybe she actually does remember that mom recommended Nancy Drew first and thus has let down her guard a little. Maybe it is because there is a dog on the cover and she needs some book about dogs to review for her e-zine. I don't know . . . and confess I don't really care.

She's reading Cracker! because her mom said she might like it.

Wow, does a lot change in a week

I didn't even realize it had been that long since I posted. Last week was soooo crazy trying to get ready to close on the house.

And then, just as it was coming together, everything fell through. The house was in worse condition than the bank had realized, we weren't going to be able to get the terms we needed and we had to walk away.

It was a strange sort of feeling. A sense of loss over something that was never really ours. A dream that slipped away, though hopefully only postponed a little.

So now we're just waiting and hoping and praying for our house to sell. Then, I guess, we'll just see.

This is not me under stress

I so think that whoever came to look at our house today should make an offer because I so don't want to go through that again.

After all, I'm not so mechanically dis-inclined that I can't even wash a window without it looking like this:

On a Saturday, less than 24 hours before a showing.

Nor am I the kind of housekeeper who would find the missing spatula when one of the mop strands caught on it under the oven and sent it spinning across the floor. Once in possession of it, there is no way I would have stood there torn for a moment before shoving it in the oven.

Also, I'm a night owl. I work best when the rest of the world is winding down. Therefore it is thoroughly inconceivable that I would have laid down to nurse the baby at such and early hour as eleven and fallen sound asleep, leaving me with way to much to do with young children about.

I'm not the kind of mom who would have sat them down in front of hulu.com to watch episode after episode of Fat Albert while I cleaned and painted and straightened.

After reading about all there is to read about how to show your home, I also would not have spent extra time in the front room, cleaning the entry way and making sure that first impression was the best impression possible only to remember as we were leaving that they would be entering through the back door.

And I'm most certainly not the kind of mom who would near a meltdown fifteen minutes after coming home to an almost perfectly clean house (minus the spatula and pot in the oven) because the kitty litter had already been dumped, clothes were already strewn about the house, bathwater was already being splashed out and somehow a round of cups had migrated to various parts of the house. Because I'm totally the calm, cool and collected type.

At the end of it all, however, I sat in the playroom and nursed the baby while watching Bear and L.E. Fant paint on the back porch. There was something about the blue sky, the gentle breeze tussling their hair and the intentness of their activity that was peaceful.

Pause a moment, take a deep breath and relish in the glory of creation kind of peaceful.

That's how I want our summer days to be. That crazy lady I don't know can go away now. . . and maybe even stay away if those people would only make a decent offer.

Some treasures from our new house

A few treasures from the property we will be closing on next week:

What? That doesn't look like a treasure to you? After all, a good portion of the property looks like that, especially up close to the house where most of our activities will take place. This picture, generously taken by my four year old, was taken in what will be the dog run. I thought it was quite a treasure listening to the imaginations of my children as they attempted to tame the jungle. It got a little too real for Bug, though, who decided maybe their really were lions in there.

The chicken run is in the same shape but some chicken people advised me to "...just leave it. They'll love it!" Saves me a couple days' weeding!

And there are always these, waiting to be uncovered. We've found four and I can't wait to get them painted:

People keep telling us how beautiful this property used to be. Sometimes, it is hard to believe. I mean, the view from here is pretty good.

Sitting by the bridge is like sitting in a nature preserve. I couldn't believe the number of birds I saw during one little picnic and not a single feeder is set up. Just habitat. A lot of good habitat.

But then there is so much of this piled everywhere.


I don't think they ever finished clearing the land after the tornadoes that came through a few years ago. We moved some of it, and guess what we found under one pile?

The remainders of what used to be a lovely flower garden! We even found the old border, mostly buried. A little weeding and mulching and I'm hoping this garden will again see better days, when it doesn't have to fear being buried by branches.

I'll take some more pictures once the place is ours and hopefully you will get to see it take some shape over the next few months. In my mind, it is beautiful, what with the orchard and the geese and the goats and the children running through the field. But there is an awful lot of sweat between now and my dreams...