A Tale of Two Gardens

For the first time in my life I have fertile earth to play with. But not as much as I expected. Everything is growing so fast at the cottage, that instead of putting my own stamp on the garden with some of my favourite plants, I am really just thinning and weeding and discovering in the process - ever more plants! Recently, enormous hostas began shooting up everywhere! I am nearly drowning in green things.

 But…my yard at home is a debacle. A desperate lack of topsoil is the first problem. Since our townhome is not an end unit, bringing topsoil in requires much goodwill from the neighbour (which we have) and a lot of energy (which we apparently do not.)

What soil we do have is very acidic -possibly owing to the 200 ft. firs towering all about. What grows well is Oregon grape, ferns, periwinkle, salal, huckleberries - and weeds. 

About 10 years ago - it seems like 2 - we planted three blueberries and some grass and generally tried to impose some order out there. Haven’t done much since though. The blueberries, starved for sunlight, have soldiered on but have never produced more than a handful of berries. The grass is kaput.

But now that I have a real garden, seething with green vitality, fresh motivation has arrived and a cunning plan is dawning.

Step 1: Remove the excess vegetation from my scruffy westcoast backyard. Give the blueberries a second shot at leading a productive life by transplanting them over to the sunny hillside behind our cottage.

Step 2: Bite the bullet (Cottager’s bullet too!) and haul in some topsoil.

Step 3: Try, once again but with feeling, to whip our yard into shape. Draw up a plan that includes a path to the forest trail. Give up on trying to grow sun-loving plants and grass. Split up those ebullant cottage hostas, dig up some of the smaller shade friendly shrubs and transplant iris and other well established plants that have over-reached their potential at the cottage into the least shady areas of my city yard. (That will teach them to be so keen!)

This will allow me to tame the cottage garden - possibly even freeing up some space for a jasmine and a lilac. It will allow me to improve my backyard without a big investment in plants.  It will doubtless please my townhouse neighbours, who have reserved comment - likely with difficulty.

Please don’t imagine this is going to happen quickly. The clearing out and making a plan cannot be rushed.  The topsoil project will have to be pitched to my foreman at just the right time, and probably with top-level incentives. But I’m thinking that this time next year, instead of looking like this….. (Oh the shame!)

 

 

 

 

 It might look more like this…. Yeah, that’s the neighbour’s place…

So really, this is a tale of THREE gardens. 

Theft or Flattery?

I saw some cute little paintings in a local shop, and couldn’t stop thinking about them.

Went back a few times, and the shop always seemed to be closed, and I would look at them through the window; four small, square canvasses painted with summery stripes and one word apiece. 

So I bought two 2-packs of 10 inch ”Buzz” canvasses and ten small acrylic paints at Michaels, and I thought I’d have a go.  I used painter’s masking tape to get my stripes straight, but there was still some bleeding.

I didn’t free-hand my chosen words either: I produced them with WordArt, then cut them into stencils with nail scissors.  Some time after they were up on the wall, I happened past the store again, it was open, and I finally got a chance to inquire about the price:  Fifty dollars - each! 

Mine aren’t quite as nice, but they cost less than thirty-five dollars, all in. So I am alternately happy about my thriftiness, and guilty about my theft of artistic intellectual property. If the artist ever happens upon this post, I hope she doesn’t decide to egg my house. 

Feeling Inspired

I got a lot of great advice from the GardenWeb quilter’s forum and About.com’s quilter’s forum, and met some nice people too. I learned about adding perspective through shading, and definition by way of a machine free-quilting technique, ’couching’ (adding texture by attaching fibres with invisible thread), fabric painting, using netting, and much more. As a largely self-taught, trial-and-error sort of quilter, many of these ideas were entirely new to me. Many who responded included photos of quilts in which they had used these techniques. The projects shared were just amazing.

I feel quite inspired and even a bit spoilt for choice in terms of the ways that I could transform the big green blob into a more accurate representation of the mountains across the lake.  I’ll be sure to post a second photo - that promise alone will help to keep me on track.

About that quilt…

I started this quilt top in a fit of inspiration - but without any real plan - quite a few years back. It depicts my favourite view from the old family cottage porch. Those are my boys jumping off the dock, though they are quite a bit bigger now. And the chair in the foreground is my ‘happy place.’

From time to time I dig this quilt out to add a few more details, but there is a problem that I just can’t get past, and until I do, it will never be finished.

My musings last week on the old cottage collided with my discovery that GardenWeb has a quilters forum, so I dug this out, determined to seek advice, choose a course of action, and - as noted in my blog mandate - “finish that (darn) quilt.”

So here is the problem: Whatever idea I had for the mountain background when I sewed in the green wholecloth outline has deserted me. It desperately needs shading and definition. I have photos to work from, but I can’t figure out how to go about it.

I solved a similar problem in another quilt with 1 inch watercolour squares, but I don’t want to do that again. My best idea at present is to use snippets, but I feel there is a better idea waiting for me out there. 

Please click on the image for a larger view and if you have a thought on how to resolve my dilemma, do share! My adopted weekend community of Gibsons has a Fiber Arts festival each August, and my goal is to finish and submit this quilt for display in the 2009 festival. Thats leaves me about 15 months, and with my busy life, that is a realistic goal.

Thanks for visiting and for any advice you can offer!

Lovely Old Things

I am so happy to have a few items from my grandparents’ home to use and admire at our cottage. This chest of drawers, the mirror and the lamp all came from my mother’s childhood home in Nelson B.C. I grouped them together in one of the bedrooms, where each fulfills a practical purpose, but together they form a bit of a shrine to my grandmother.

I spent part of all the summers of my childhood at her cottage (and still take my family there for a week or two each year) so it is only right that a few of her lovely old things should find a place, all these years later, at mine.

The desk is also useful and fits perfectly into this corner near the kitchen. My grandfather made it for my mother more than 60 years ago. He was a housebuilder and carpenter, and she saw him making it in the basement, without any idea that it was meant for her. On Christmas morning, there it was, beside the tree. There are a few places on the desk where his carpenter’s pencil lines are preserved under the varnish like a fossil in amber.

My grandfather was born in 1884 and served in Belgium in the Great War until discharged at age 34. He became a father in his late 50’s and lived into his 90’s.

When I was a little girl, he would sit on the porch at his cottage and watch us swim in the lake. When I’d had too much sun, he would let me beat him at cribbage. He once bought me a packet of stickers with my name on them and I stuck the biggest, shiniest one on his dashboard so he would think of me each time he got in his car.

I never miss a chance to tell my sons about the memories I associate with some of the things that have been passed down to me. While it isn’t possible or practical to preserve everything, I like to think that something now in our cottage will someday find a lasting home with one of my boys, and will serve as a connection to memories of this time and this place. 

 

Sweet Olive! Thanks GardenWeb

While I appreciate your help, House Bloggers, I had to go to the experts. I signed up at GardenWeb and went straight to the Name That Plant forum to post my query. Went to bed, dreamt sweet dreams, and this morning I have my answer: My unknown tree is actually a shrub called Osmanthus Delavayi or Delavay Tea Olive or, by its common name, Sweet Olive. Apparently, I am in for a treat this Friday, when the day is meant to be fine and I should find my shrub in full bloom and exuding a sweet ‘Daphne-like aroma.”

Great Plant Picks says this is a fragrant, blooming evergreen shrub that adds interest to the garden year round. It is easy to grow in full sun or part shade, drought tolerant once established, adapts to a wide range of soil types, and can be easily maintained through summer pruning.

I’m very relieved to know that it is “quite amenable to trimming” as one nursery site noted, since I intend to give it a jolly good haircut after it has done blooming. While I didn’t find too much information about the root structure, I am prepared to adopt Cottager’s position that so long as the septic is working, we shouldn’t worry about it. Besides, what are the options? Cut down my Delavay Tea Olive? Not on your life!

Gardeners Please ID this tree

Please have a look at these two photos and let me know if you recognize this. It has small, dark green, leaves with pronounced serrations. Much to my surprise, last weekend it came out in thousands of long cream-coloured blossoms. I expect they have opened further since these photos were taken - if so, I’ll add an updated photo next weekend if I’m still in the dark.

I have three reasons for wanting to identify it:

One, I’m curious;

Two, it needs a significant trimming and I’d like to look up the best time of year to do it;

Three, it is growing on my septic field, and I feel I should have an idea of what sort of root structure it might have and how much of a problem that might ultimately pose.

Any opinion or advice greatly appreciated!

Budget Bookcase Debuts

I had a very particular bookcase size in mind. I wanted it to be squat-ish. No more than 40 inches tall. 

I got this dirt cheap, probably because it was covered in dirt. But it is solid wood and had a good coat of faux granite finish under the grime, so I just filled roughly 4 dozen upholstery tack holes, gave it a light sanding and then two coats of some old white paint we had lying about. As we like to say in Canada . . . Voila!

If the walls ever change colour (!), it stays white. If the walls stay white, then it is only primed and it will get two more coats of something very bold - french blue or aqua.

While the paint decision drags on, I am happy to have a place for favorite games and books. Now I am more determined than ever to find something colourful to replace the cat quilt . . . and the rug . . .

What didn’t we do this weekend?

The weather was promised fair for the weekend. We were on the first ferry out on Saturday morning (7:20) and the last back (8:20) on Sunday evening. And in between… what didn’t we do?

We demossed the roof, cleaned the gutters, painted a bookcase, replaced bathroom light fixture and switch, mounted the switchplate (that didn’t get away), repaired dresser drawers, then sanded the dresser runners and waxed them, cleaned out tool shed, measured for screens, chopped dandylions, pulled blackberries . . .

But that’s not all. We also went for a lovely bike ride out to Chaster beach, had a bonfire, went for gelato twice, barbecued burgers (and ate the leftovers for breakfast!), walked on the beach and talked about all kinds of things.

The kids whittled, built Eeyore-style houses on the beach, burned holes in leaves with a magnifying glass and lit dryer lint on fire with a flint and striker (we are in a pyro phase), loafed about in the hammock and occasionally helped out, pushing a broom or chopping wood.

We still found time to read (a bit) and to enjoy morning cake and coffee and afternoon ‘happy hour’ on the deck. On Sunday morning, Cottager and I climbed, for the very first time, to the first look-out on the hiking trails that start just behind our place. The view, as you can see, is spectacular. That’s Vancouver Island in the distance and Gibson’s Landing down below. Over the May long-weekend we plan to pack a lunch and take the boys for a hike to the top. It is a fairly steep 40 minute climb, but the view will be worth it.

 

Frugal Decor

Frugality seems to be a blossoming interest in my home and in those of my friends and neighbours. We are hoping to rent out our cottage on the odd weekend, and for a few weeks over the summer, to help with property taxes and improvements, so this month we are focused on some inexpensive finishing touches to make it both a comfortable and desirable retreat for paying guests.  Window screens and a lockable storage room for our personal effects are the two practical projects that stand out, but let’s not forget ambience. 

I found these 10 inch frosted glass vases at the A&N boutique, marked down to $2.99. The polished stones are from Ikea ($1), as are the large glass ‘Glimma’ tea light sets. Total cost for this pair of decorative candle holders is about $12, including a good supply of large tea lights.

 I like the beach-glass finish of these repurposed vases, their shape - vaguely reminiscent of lighthouses - and the smoothness of the pebbles. They will likely live on the mantle, but could easily be moved to the deck.