Thanks Mom and Dad!

Last weekend my parents and my youngest sister, Jolie came to visit. We had a great time despite the nasty weather we had for a few days there. (We've had yet another cold snap...it was 40-something for a few nights!) They got to see what we've done with house since moving in. The last time they were in town we were *still* sanding the floors. The highlight of the weekend was going to the Tennessee Renaissance Festival. Every weekend in May each year the Freeman family about 20 miles outside of Franklin open their home for tours and in the field across from their castle are food, games, shows, and Renaissance-thingies to buy. This was my third visit to the Ren Fest and I finally made it for the castle tour. Unfortunately, I didn't take my camera with me, so I'll have to wait for Mom to post hers to facebook before I can share.    :-(

One of the real reasons you go to Ren Fest: Deep-fried Oreos!

One of the beautiful fountains from a local coppersmith. It was a bit too much, but I did get a copper rose.

And most visitors come dressed appropriately. And if you don't have any appropriate garb, there's plenty for sale.

Sunday was rather lazy since it was cold and gray and we were beat from walking all Saturday. We went for traditional Krispy Kreme (there's not one where my parents live) and they came over and gave me a TON of plants and bulbs! My dad works for the plant that packages and ships these bulbs to Home Depots and Lowe's all over ther company. Seriously, look at the bottom of the packaging and it will most likely say "Van Zyverden, Meridian, MS". The best part is at the end of a season the employees can take home whatever is left over and they brought me a few things.

Now where am I going to put all these?!

I've figured out a plan for most of them and planted a few yesterday. I'm really excited about the blue potatoes, but who knows if they'll turn out, I've never attempted to grow potatoes before!

Not quite a month...

since my last post but darn close. These past couple of weeks have been extremely tough and tiring for our little family. Two days after my last post a huge outbreak of tornados swept across our region. It was exhausting going in and out of the bathtub (our safe place) with the animals to checking the radar on tv, and then checking the live streams of the tv stations where we have family and friends. A tornado touched down about a mile from my grandmother's house and where my sister works in Meridian, then the huge one that tracked across North Alabama was about a mile away from our old house there. That night and the next day was spent trying to get ahold of folks to make sure they were okay and to see if we could help them out. Then we find out a family member is sick and it may be serious but we don't know yet. The next day Ben gets a phone call saying he didn't get the promotion he was trying for. I can't even remember the other little bad things that kept happening, but it has seriously been one crappy thing after another. I had joked if only April would get over with maybe things would look up, but May has been just as tough on us. Turns out that family member is seriously ill, and will have to start extreme treaments. And I just found out yesterday a friend of the family had passed away.

I know the Lord only gives us what we can handle, but I really could use a break! It's tough work trying to keep positive and not cry when everyone around you is so sad about what's happening. Thankfully we've had a lot of company lately. My parents and sister just left after visiting for the weekend, and some of my friends from Huntsville have been up to visit a couple of times. Once, just to get away from not having electricity and having a city-wide curfew!

House-wise not much has happened, I've mostly been working outside: I bricked out and mulched the rest of our front yard, cleaned the gutters, set up our vegetable garden, and cleaned up our window boxes.



The other half of our front yard's flower beds.





Our veggie garden! Soon we'll have tomatoes, yellow tommy toes, cucumbers (for pickling), black eyed peas, butter beans, and sweet potato leaves (and I guess sweet potatoes if someone else wants them).

 


The forests of maple saplings that were growing in our gutters. Ben said he felt like he was destroying whole civilzations pulling them out.




Petunias in the window boxes. Might build real window boxes one day...




Even Foster's been busy, just look at those holes he dug! Don't know if he wants me to plant something there, or he thought I didn't have enough to do and wants me to fill them. What a sweet dog...haha.



Oh my gosh, update!

Okay, let's see...since last we talked it's been really nice outside (and really tornado-y!) and I've done a ton outside. Ben's dad came to visit and help with some little fixes that we couldn't figure out, couldn't find help with and were too cheap to hire someone. The biggie being fixing our saggy floor. The shower in the extra bathroom has had a leak for years and became a slight mold issue and caused one of the beams underneath the floor nearby to give way a little. And once they fixed that, our back door no longer closes correctly and the deadbolt won't work. Still haven't figure out that one yet, but soon! Ben and his dad also cleared out most of the junk the previous owners left behind: three doors, an outdoor table (kept), empty boxes, and a keyboard w/ stand (broken, unfortunately). They also: replaced the rotting crawlspace door, cleared out the culvert, rigged the gate to stay open when we need it open and hauled a lot of dirt and mulch to the house. Hooray!

Ben and I then bought our first lawn mower, about which I learned yes, you want a self-propelled mower. I also had to learn how to turn a push mower on; my parents had a riding mower for their yard and cows for the pasture when I was growing up. Learned that you can't easily tell your backyard is overrun with weeds if you mow everything low enough...haha.

I finished cleaning up one flowerbed and mulched it, and the weather has kept me from finishing the other :(

My daffodils finally bloomed like crazy!

Planted my very own first real gardenia! Hope it can actually survive here. And Zoey helped.

Also got some other interesting plants, a fuchsia:

And some strawberries in hanging pots.


So excited about these!

Finally finished our picture wall, for now...



And I did a lot of cleaning. You can finally walk into the extra bathroom now that I've taken all the tools out and put them away in the shed. Straightened the bathroom closet quite a bit.

But in the last month there's also been a lot of life getting in the way. We've had three severe weather days, two of those were bad enough to get into the bathtub. Between the two of us, we were sick for three weeks, which cancelled our trip to Austin and SXSW. Found out we have a huge carpenter bee problem (which also meant finding out what a carpenter bee was) and I'm trying to fix it right now. And this guy escaped into the neighbors yard briefly...

Which doesn't sound bad, except Ceti turns into a feral lion when he gets a little taste of freedom. That pitiful look is only after he tried twice to bite a hunk out of me and was screaming like a bobcat for ten minutes! Ben had to come home from work to get him. And of course when he gets there, Ceti just walks right to him and lets him pick him up. 

In better news, Ben got two job opportunities recently. One with a company in Nashville that would mean less pay, but it wouldn't be retail and it would be a set schedule. The other would be with his current employer. The store in Huntsville recently lost their general manager and Ben has already applied. I'm kinda hoping for Huntsville to happen because it would mean a lot more money than he makes now, he would have some control over his schedule, and we both have friends there. Franklin's great, but I don't really know anyone here except Ben's family and friends. Even my boss is Ben's old college roommate!

So that's what we've been up to lately. Hopefully, I can start balancing completing projects and blogging about them!

Hello, Sun!

Today was b-e-a-utiful! And you can bet your sweet bippy I took advantage of it. Let's see...

I pruned a few shrubs, including two very neglected forsythias.


Before



After

I know it doesn't look that great, but you'll just have to trust me on this. It had to be done! These two shrubs were beginning to get big enough they were touching the house, growing even more shrubs, and half of them were dead. I was really afraid to prune these guys since I've never really pruned anything except for a couple of box shrubs at my parent's old house. I had to take out any branches that were 3/4" or thicker, anything touching the ground, anything dead, and anything that was really criss-crossed. (And, boy, do these suckers get tangled!)

I also fertilized the front yard, but Ben tells me that the "grass" that I like in the yard isn't grass at all. He said the nice looking stuff is actually the weeds and that really scratchy stuff is the real grass. Herumph! If that's really what crabgrass is, how strange is it that I would prefer a yard full of it? I hope he's not right and it's just two types of grass in our yard.

And the thing I'm most excited about, I got some edging stones for the flower bed! Now that I'm thinking about it, there's no flowers in it, so should it be a shrub bed? Anyhoo, the edging really makes a difference, see?

Before. This is only half of it, forgot to take a picture of all of it before...oops.



After!

Ahhh, such definition! I wasn't such if I should get these or the red, since we'll probably paint the house one day. I'm hoping that either they'll go with whatever colors we choose, or if they don't we can stain them if we have to. But for now I'm loving them! Now the flower bed just needs some work and maybe even some flowers.

Daffodils: Bed, Container, What?!

The past two days have been been beautiful and warmer, so all of us shut-ins have been out and about. I've been trying to spend this glorious reprieve from the snow wisely, but it's a little difficult when you don't know exactly what you're doing and you don't have the tools to do it. I cleaned out most of the gutters (what I could reach anyway, although I'm tempted to just climb onto the roof and try it that way next time), raked and bagged the backyard (and I'm not sure the city is still taking leaves, but guess I'll figure something out) and pondered about daffodils.


Photo by: cathrund

My dad works for a bulb-packaging plant and he brings truckloads of the unwanted bulbs at the end of a season home. And at "Christmas" I nabbed two boxes of daffodils and a couple of bags of gladiolas, but I'm not sure what to do with them. It was already technically too late to plant them when I got them, but I've read as long as they go through *a* frost they'll do fine. Now where to put them?

Photo by: sirpete(?)

I grew up with daffodil-lined driveways (not the one above!), which I love, but I've also heard they're a pain if you don't put them in a bed because you can't mow around them. I'll have to ask my mom how they had them along the driveway, I bet she weed-whacked around them...

Then there's the possibility of building a flowerbed around the huge maple in the backyard. Then I could use both kinds of bulbs. But would it make our tiny backyard look even smaller?


Photo by: Corstorphine House

Or there's always containers, and they would look nice on our little front portico...

Photo by: Doug Green

And we do have window boxes that need flowers...


Photo by: morganchele

Oh I don't know, there's just too many choices! All I know is I must have them. Somewhere. Maybe then Ben will stop harassing me about them. When Ben and I were first dating, he brought me a handful of daffodils once. Of course, being the bratty not-quite-twenty-year-old I was, I turned my nose up at them. I knew he had picked them out of my mother's flowers, and I wasn't wise enough to think it was cute. So now Ben gives me a hard time whenever I mention daffodils or if we even see some. I'm hoping having some around will help him forgive me for being such a brat   :-P