apparently september is almost over.

i dont know what it is about this september, but i have not been interested in blogging about it at all. i dont think its for lack of things to blog about, because i have plenty of that: we've kept busy with a birthday party, a new workout regimen (ok its just p90x again), a new meal planning system, fun projects, a trip to longwood gardens, a crab feast with friends, another birthday party, tattoo touchups, and even a surprise garden update. september has been very good so far.  

 

enjoying the last days of summer at longwood gardens last sunday.

and yet. there are no words about it. no neat little record of the details stored here for me to look back on later. barely any reassurance to my mom that we are alive and well. just a couple posts lamenting my lack of time/energy/desire to blog anything. so i guess that's just how this month will go down in internet history and be remembered by me for years to come - September 2013: the month i didnt feel like documenting.

a quick tour.

do you have two minutes? good because i only have one. but i can't let this week go by without posting about how our driveway currently looks like we're about to open our own landscaping supply business. we've got half a birdbath, some pavers, a metric ton of river rock, and mulch coming out our ears!

 

yes, we're still mulching. and yes we're still excited about it. and no, we're not still using landscape fabric underneath the mulch. mark found a different kind of weed barrier: old plan sets from work. i think he cleaned out the office recycling bin and brought it all home. so far so good, but only time will tell if it can stand up to or maybe even surpass the weed blocking abilities of the fancy fabric in the front beds.

so you want to see what mark has been up to around the house? well over the weekend, two more bushes got removed from the side of the house...

 
and that side bed got some mulch.

the bushes around the deck got to stay...

and both beds around the deck got defined and mulched.

at the end of the weekend, we still had a sizeable pile of mulch in our driveway, so mark took it upon himself to reduce the amount of grass he has to cut, especially under the trees where the grass doesn't grow well anyway. so on Monday... more mulch.

 i just want to note that carefully cropped out of these photos is the firepit area, which is currently overflowing with bushes and other yard waste that is waiting to be burned and completely detracts from any and all improvements that have been made by the mulch... anyone want to come over for a bonfire? we hear that old Christmas trees are especially spectcular to set on fire...

ground zero(ish).

over the weekend, we kept chugging along towards our end goal of having pretty flowerbeds sometime this year. we had a few distractions, challenges, miscommunications, and setbacks along the way, but for what was maybe the first time EVER, we were able to roll with it without any major meltdowns (ok maybe just one minor one) and still turn out a pretty impressive weekend's worth of work.

 

just as a reminder: this is where we were coming from when it came to our front flower beds: pretty much just a giant monster bush and a bunch of weeds.

 

 

by early afternoon on Saturday, we had made it to this point: the monster bush had been cut down. a metric ton of river rocks had been picked out of the bed, along with probably 5 metric tons of small decorative boulders. trips had been made to the landfill, the mall, and Lowes, and i had wasted about 4 hours sitting waiting for mark's car to get its oil changed and brake pads replaced.

 

the rest of the day Saturday, Mark battled the monster stump of the monster bush, while i raked all the weeds out of the rest of the bed, mowed the grass, did some laundry, and made dinner.

in the end, with a lot of hard work and a little help from his dad's truck, Mark was victorious over the stump.

by the time we got the stump out, the hole filled, and everything cleaned up, it was time to go inside, eat dinner, chill out on the couch, and watch the O's game.

 

Sunday was mulch day. to steal the eloquent words of Ron Burgundy: mulch mulch mulch. i love mulch. we got a whole truckload from the landfill for a whopping $10. 

 

in an attempt to hopefully keep the weeds at bay, we used landscape fabric underneath the mulch. one roll covered both front beds with some extra to spare.

it took me a while to get a good handle on the best process for mulch spreading, but i finally settled on using the pitchfork to load the wheelbarrow, a shovel to distribute the mulch, and a garden rake to spread it evenly. and then in less time than i thought, we had mostly empty, freshly mulched front flower beds!

welcome to ground zero: there's nowhere to go but up from here.

 

surprisingly, that's not all we were able to squeeze into our weekend: we also took care of a couple other spaces that were not on our original to-do list.

 

bonus project #1: a bigger fire pit area in the backyard. while Mark was accidentally locked out of the shed while i had his car and the key to the shed at the shop on Saturday, he took the decorative boulders i had picked out of the flower beds and used them to spruce up our little fire pit.

 

its probably not the forever solution for this space, and obviously the rest of the backyard is still in need of a lot of love, but this little upgrade is a nice starting point for this area. hopefully it will also be enough of a kick-in-the-pants type of motivation to keep our outdoor upgrades going so we will hit this area sooner rather than later. i'm already looking forward to bonfires and cookouts and really enjoying our backyard this summer.

 

bonus project #2: a new front yard flower bed. after the front beds were done, we still had some landscape fabric and mulch leftover. so Mark took it upon himself to create a mulched area around the rosebush in the front yard.

 

we didnt have quite enough fabric to cover the whole area, so we opted to use what we had under the rosebush, to hopefully minimize the amount of weeding that will need to be done in under those thorny branches. (i took a thorn to the index finger on Sunday during the one part of the day i opted not to wear my gloves. not fun.)

we used every last bit of the mulch pile to fill this space - down to the very last half of a wheelbarrow-full. we couldnt have planned it more perfectly if we had tried, so i'm kind of glad we didnt waste any time trying to calculate just the right amount of mulch or just the right size of bed. Mark just eyeballed it to try and have it look decent and be easier to mow around. success!

oh, see that nasty looking tree in the background that is eating the OTHER front corner of the house? dont worry. its already on the list.

2013: the year of the outdoors.



one of my non-resolutions for this year (which is actually one that carried over from last year) is to have pretty flowerbeds. we have lived in our house for almost three years, and in those three years we have been so focused on inside projects that we have given hardly any thought or time or energy to the outside of the house. in fact, we just barely managed to keep the grass mowed. but no more! we are finally at a good place inside (aka no big painting or drywall or bathroom projects for a while) that we can focus our attention elsewhere. so this is the year of the outdoors. the year i will finally have pretty flowerbeds. or at least flowerbeds that are filled with something other than weeds and dead things.

 

as with any good project, we're starting with demo. there were a few bushes around our house that had to go, because they just weren't doing it for me. so i made a list. and then i gave that list to the hubs and spent the weekend chillin' in New York City.

 

i didn't have have a chance to take any updated before pictures, so i went back through my archives and found these from last year when i painted our front door and weeded that one time. i even went so far as to highlight the offending bushes for your viewing convenience.

 

two bushes by the front door



overgrown lavender bush in the backyard

 

giant angry bush that would eat the entire house if we let it

 

since i was out of town, i was at the mercy of the hubs for process pictures. i got one. and i was never so happy to see an empty hole in the ground.

 

 



when i got home on Sunday, i was THRILLED to see all of the progress that had been made, and all of the things that had been crossed off the list. in addition to a few smaller items like raking up some leftover leaves and picking up all the sticks in the yard, the bushes in the front of the house were gone! its kind of wild to see just how much visual space their removal has opened up on the front porch.

 

 

and i can practically hear my works-at-a-lavender-farm sister's heart breaking in two over this picture, but that bush in our backyard was in bad shape. in fact, it didnt really have any shape at all. AND there was giant ugly grass that grew up the middle of it that was impossible to pull. mark claims that he did not see the family of bunnies that in the past has been known to live in the lavender bush and scare the life out of me by bolting out from under it any time i got too close to it with the lawnmower. i do feel a little bad about evicting them, but i'm more excited about planning something new to plant in this spot and disguise the well.

 

mark didnt have time to deal with the giant angry bush on the corner while i was gone, or maybe he didnt want to take it on by himself, but man oh man do we have PLANS for this weekend! so exciting!!

fresh from the garden.

so, our little turnip that we harvested before vacation never got eaten. we Mark followed all the suggestions for how to store it, but it still got mushy before we had a chance to eat it. it was so sad, since it was the first thing we Mark had picked from our Mark's first ever garden.

but now we can finally say that we have eaten something that we Mark grew - a cucumber!

and a giant one at that. the thing was about the size of my forearm! i'm not usually a big cucumber eater, but i figured since we Mark went to all the trouble to grow the thing, the least i could do would be to spend a few minutes on pinterest searching for a recipe that called for cucumbers. so that's what i did.

i used this recipe for tilapia with cucumber salad. and you should try it sometime. it was seriously good. and that's quite a compliment coming from me, who is historically not a cucumber fan.

as a bonus along the way, with the help of the internets i also learned how to chop green onions, and how to chop fresh cilantro. (neither of which came from our Mark's garden) i'm not linking to the videos i used because its a little bit embarrasing how simple they are. if i ever thought that i was even the littlest bit proficient in the kitchen, needing to watch those videos wiped away every last bit of pride i might have been holding onto. by far, the coolest thing i learned was how to store my extra cilantro in the fridge.

it seems like such a clever little trick, (i'm kind of surprised i havent seen it all over pinterest)(ok so i just searched 'store cilantro' on pinterest and came up with a zillion pins. nvm.) so far its working great, but now i think i might need to do some more research to find recipes that use cilantro!  

our garden.

wait. scratch that. from now on, let's just call it Mark's garden. because as much as i would like to take a little bit of credit for this thing, you know since we both own the house and we'll both be eating whatever we manage to harvest out of there, i really have nothing to do with it. he has done all of the planning, sprouting, planting, watering, and de-bugging, and i have stayed very far away from the whole operation. and there is a very good reason for this: i have a black thumb.

i kill everything i touch, whether it be a strawberry plant, rose bush, or the lovely impatiens that Mark bought me last year. all dead within a few months. you doubt? a demonstration! this is was the oregano plant that Mark's aunt brought to our house as a house-warming present on mothers day:

it only took me 6 weeks to turn it into a pile of dead brown sticks. that might be a new record.

so in contrast, now let's all marvel in amazement at all the things we Mark is growing out in the garden (and keeping alive!)

our Mark's garden. 

 lettuce.

adorable little green tomato! 

crazy giant beans. 

corn! 

watermelon on the left. and i think the tall one is a cucumber? zuchinni? 

eggplant! 

peas! 

and a turnip! (anyone know how to eat these?) 

i know that the garden also has broccoli, carrots, and garlic in it, and possibly a few other things that i don't remember. all i know is that i'm pretty much in awe over this whole gardening thing, and pretty excited to get to eat things that we Mark grew in our own backyard.

garden updates.

ok. so you might have noticed that i've spent all of this week telling you about things that we did last weekend. what can i say? that's kind of how we roll. our weeknights tend to be filled with things like laundry and dinner and jazzercise and reading and (sometimes) cleaning and tv and all sorts of other boring daily-grind type of things that honestly aren't all that exciting. our exciting stuff just naturally tends to happen on the weekends, when we have full days all to ourselves to do whatever we want to do and tackle bigger projects and not worry as much about bedtime and just generally depart from the regimented schedule that is our monday thru friday.

so that being said, i havent really told you anything about Mark's weekend, which was largely spent focusing on the garden. if you remember back a few months to our freakishly-mild winter, he was able to get his garden bed built and filled with dirt in January. at that time, he just wrapped some wire mesh around the whole thing to keep it from becoming a community litter box for all the stray cats, and called it a day.

on Saturday, he made the wire cage more permanent, functional, and much better looking. the cage got stretched across the back of the bed and the two short sides, and stapled to the vertical support pieces. the front of the cage is now a separate piece that can be removed for easy access to the plants. it is held on by a few strategically placed screws that keep everything securely in place, but also allow Mark to lift the front panel off whenever he needs.

after he finished the cage, he spent a good deal of time actually planting things in the garden! he has been reading up on all the different types of seeds that he is planting, paying attention to when he is allowed to put them outside based on what can survive the last few frosts of the season. most everything was started indoors, sprouted on damp paper towels or in little pots by the window, but some were planted by just putting the seeds straight into the dirt. and so far, so good! things are sprouting and growing!

i think this is the garlic.

i would have to ask Mark to be sure, but as far as i can remember so far there is broccoli, lettuce, carrots, garlic, and maybe something else outside in the bed. we still have tomatoes, eggplants, and peppers that are growing inside for now, but on nice days they get to be outside for a while too before they get taken back in for the night. i wish they would stop bringing so many ants back into the house with them at the end of the day, but they seem to like this system pretty well, and are growing like mad. 

right now they're all staked up with pencils and twine.

so that's our garden. we're hoping to keep it alive and actually be able to eat the things that we grow. i am doing my part by taking care of photo-documentation, keeping my black thumb away from any actual growing thing, and thinking of fun new ways to cook and eat all these veggies in the future.

i hope you all have a good weekend! it's supposed to rain here, which is fine by me since i'll be spending all my time packing and cleaning and trying really really hard not to completely freak out as i attempt to cross off all the things on my pre-vacation to-do list. (and maybe i'll finally make some time to repaint my toenails!)

in the dirt.

are you ready for the most anti-climactic before-and-after ever in the history of before-and-afters? because i've got it right here for you.

first things first, lets take care of the befores, shall we? care to tour the grounds with me? as we make our way around the house, please take note of the clever way that we have enabled overgrowth and death to intermingle in our flower beds. this creates a unique atmosphere that has been years in the making, and gives off an impression of complete and utter neglect.

there's a flower bed in this picture?

 

the flowers on that hydrangea are all dead.

 

this is where we store all our dead leaves for the winter.

 

so. many. weeds.

 

there used to be a GIANT ornamental grass in that big empty spot.

i spent about 6-8 hours on Saturday battling creepy insects, monster weeds, and the return of my seasonal allergies in an attempt to make some sort of progress in these areas that were formerly known as flower beds. i pulled weeds, and picked rocks, and bagged leaves, and made some pretty good progress on my tan. so here's what you've all been waiting for: the afters. see if you can spot the differences!

look! a flower bed that's not full of grass!

the dirt is very welcoming. honest.

the view from the end of the driveway

i really hope those bushes arent dead.

i spent way more time in this area than this picture lets on.

HUGE difference, right?! hardly looks like the same place! ok fine, so it looks pretty much the same, just now with less green and more dirt. the look we were going for was "blank slate," and i think we pretty much nailed it, dont you? our future plans for the flower beds/general outdoor space is still evolving, but this is kind of what we're thinking so far:

- tear out the bushes closest to the front door.

- also get rid of the giant ugly bush on the corner of the house closest to the driveway.

- remove all the white rocks around the perimeter of the house, replace with something less weed-y.

- lots and lots of mulch.

- figure out what kinds of shrubbery/flowers will work best.

- better define and fill the flower beds around the deck.

- powerwash the deck.

- make a patio area between the deck and the basement doors.

- define an area for the fire bowl.

so long story short: we've got more updates planned for our outdoor space, but for now we're back to ground zero. so the good news is there's nowhere to go but up! if any of you would like to be a part of this awesomeness, just let us know and we'll plan a bush removal/mulching/planting day sometime after vacation and make sure that you're invited! or if you're a sane person who would like to stay as far away as possible, then i totally understand.