garden day

After taking Doodles for a walk this morning, I spent the entire day outside working in the yard. I started by raking up the dead moss from the lawn, then moved on to weeding & aerating the soil in one flower bed. I hadn't anticipated creating a new flower bed today, but nevertheless, I have a new flower bed off the deck. The deck, which I hate, will hopefully have posts & a railing in the not so distant future, creating more of a country-porch feel.

This was what I started with, and actually, it was just the tree & we just planted the boxwood last week & extended the rock border over to the deck. And speaking of rocks as landscaping material ~ HUGE in Juneau. While we're walking Doodles, Honey & I always look in people's yards for ideas. Virtually every yard will have some form of rock landscaping, I imagine because of their wide abundance. Whether they're black & white speckled rocks smoothed from years of glacial activity, or flat, slate-colored rocks from the beach, we have rocks everywhere.

and this was my vision for the little space:

Porter seems to like it, too. Is he not the most gorgeous dog ever?

This is my end product. It still looks horribly bare, but I have to keep reminding myself that the cottage garden I envision in my head takes years to create. Unless you have a lot of money, which I don't. I do love gardening, though. So therapeutic. Man, I can't wait for my plants to start blooming!

Our lawn still needs some serious TLC. Honey sprayed the lawn with moss killer a few days ago, and I don't know what my next step is. More moss killer? Fertilizer? Just grass seed? Mom's coming over tomorrow to assess the situation & to make sure I haven't placed my plants improperly. When it comes to gardening, I learn as I go. And I get lots of tips from my mom, who has been gardening for as long as I can remember. I do have gardening books, but I tend to get so excited about a project that I jump right in without doing my homework first.

Besides a new garden, I also gave myself a nice little sunburn today. (Self portrait taken because Honey is in Gustavus for a bachelor party this weekend) It didn't occur to me to put on sunscreen, nor do I even own any presently. Hopefully tomorrow will be sunny again so I can even things out ;) I don't know if there will be any gardening in my future tomorrow, however. With each passing minute, my poor body gets more & more sore from the hours of digging. If only I could channel Porter's digging for good instead of destruction. I am sure he's still trying to figure out why he is not allowed to dig in the yard and I can. Me, the lowly person responsible for feeding him & cleaning up his poo, can dig but Doodles the Wonder Dog cannot. Yeah, life's just funny that way.

back to *normal* life

Today's forecasted high temp ~ 65 degrees!! Say it isn't so!

For those who didn't see my comment a couple posts back, I was a juror in a murder trial this past week. Yesterday the defense rested, and after the closing arguments, I was randomly dismissed along with one other juror to make the final panel of 12. I thought all along that if I was dismissed as an alternate, I would be disappointed to not see this process through to the end, but it turns out it was a huge relief on many levels. I will describe my experience (no gross details, I promise) in another post, but right now payroll beckons.

TG

yet another first

hello my friends ~
Even though it's already been a week since my last post (my, how time flies when your life turns insane all at once), I will not likely be writing much in the next week or so. I have something incredibly huge going on, and it will be too hard to not write about it. But I promise that as soon as this is all over, I will share in great length what all the secrecy is about.

Happy birthday to Honey, who turned 26 yesterday. Honey, who loves to remind me that he will always be younger.

pink thursday

today's post is getting out there a little late, but i have my priorities. 2-hour grey's anatomy ~ hello!

i thought i would have a hard time finding pink in my house, and while pink is not a prevelant color scheme in my home, i do loves my pink dishes.

my small collection began with this sweet pitcher & glasses. i didn't take a close-up, but they have a floral design etched in. when i spied them in the display case in a sellwood, oregon antique shop, i knew i had to have them. my grandpa bought me the pitcher and i bought the glasses. if you knew my grandpa, you are aware that this was a monumental ocassion as he was not prone to spending money on a whim. except for my wedding gift, which is an exquisite pitcher with etched stars that belonged to his mother, this was the only gift i remember him buying for me so it's all the more special. unfortunately, i am afraid to use them but i imagine them being used on a summer evening, on a perfectly-cottaged front porch, serving a lovely after-dinner cocktail. can you picture it?

of course, there would be dessert of something cool & fruity, and they would be served in these little beauties. at the moment i can't for the life of me remember where i got them or who may have given them to me. i'm thinking they were from my mom, who i really need to have come over & help me inventory all my family heirlooms. at any rate, i love the detail on them. they don't quite match the pitcher & glasses but that's the best part of a dishware collection. and i cannot have enough dishware, despite what my husband says. these dessert cups get used pretty frequently. they're great for dips, but they really love to house german raspberries, which are just so yummy.

i do know the pink dessert plates were from mom one christmas. she likes to get creative with the holidays, and this particular year us kids each had a theme. mine was entertaining. since adam doesn't eat sweets (just wrong, i know), we generally don't eat a lot of cake or pie or anything requiring a dessert plate. they have, however, become the official plate for birthday cake.

the pink platter was also from mom, picked out special for me from my grandparent's belongings. it is the palest of pale pinks & i love it.

up until a couple weeks ago, my house was still decidedly fallish, requiring a spring-decorating fix pronto. what's a girl to do? lay out as much pink as possible! these are all from mom ~are you sensing a trend here? the hanky in the middle photo was from jerusalem's etsy shop, as well as the spring nest in the background. just promise me that when you check out her shop, you'll leave some goodies for me.

till tomorrow!

sooner or later...

everything comes back into style.

who remembers bubble skirts??

green wednesday

day three ~ green!

my favorite plant ~ started from a plant belonging to my mom, which came from her grandmother. apparently, the grandkids got a plant while the great-grandkids got a quilt. my mother felt jilted for years, and never told me the quilt i loved as a child was actually mine until last year! anyway, the plant refused to grow for months. it just sat there, doing nothing. i swear we didn't do anything differently, but one day it just started to grow & hasn't stopped since.

a really lovely clock i purchased in leavenworth, washington last summer. as much as i love it, it pained me to see it in a catalog for less than half the price. ouch. the candlestick is part of a set that we got as a wedding gift. you can see bits of my favorite plant, and the wall in this photo (you'll see befores & afters eventually, I promise) is painted saybrook sage, and says "cottage" perfectly. even my mom says so.

this last photo, also worthy of a before & after, is of my entertainment center door. it was one of the first projects i did when we moved into the house, and one that i actually finished. except that it still needs shelves built where there used to be drawers. currently, we are using leftover flooring as the shelves. crafty, eh? the knob is from anthropology ~ don't they have the coolest stuff?

red tuesday

day 2 of jerusalem's week of color ~

who doesn't love roses? these were from honey a few weeks ago. the rotary clubs sell them every year, and he is sweet enough to buy them for me every year.

i used to have a lot of red in my last apartment. well, i had a red kitchen, anyway. it was very red indeed. red walls even, with a pale yellow wall as an accent. i loved it for a time, but a red kitchen grows old quickly. now all that is left are these remnants: my red toaster, my red kitchen aide, and this little collection of always-used ingredients on a tole tray purchased off e-bay, kept next to the stove.