BookLust

Garden Girl

Hopefully soon I'll post some pictures and talk about the progress of my garden. But in the mean time, I thought I'd take a trip down memory lane, and show that even back when I was a kid, I had a wee bit of the garden bug.

Both my parents were very gifted when it came to gardening. If memory serves me correctly (and I'm sure if I'm wrong they'll tell me) my mom worked on the flower beds and vegetable garden, and my dad looked after all our trees. I am not exaggerating when I say that our front and backyard was astounding. Not only was there a multitude of flowers and shrubs and rock gardens all over our property, but we also had a very rich vegetable garden bursting with tomatoes, lettuce, chives, beans, carrots and I can't remember what else. We also had strawberry beds, and grapevines, and apple, pear and peach trees. I used to love to sit under our one large apple tree in the backyard and read and dream and play with my pet rabbits.

I loved our property, but other than trimming the hedges and  the grass I didn't do any real garden work, except for one year when on a whim I planted some sunflower seeds from my hamster's food just to see what would happen. Imagine my surprise and delight when great big beautiful sunflowers came bursting through the soil! I'm glad that my dad took this picture of me standing proud next to my sunflowers – for unfortunately, not long after this photo was taken, some smartass kids in the neighbourhood came into our backyard and ripped the sunflowers apart. Boy did I ever weep over that. Tough lesson to learn as a kid, that there will be people in your life who will very happily lop the heads off of your creative endeavours (I was to learn the same tough lesson a few years later as a teenager). Of course the other very important lesson to learn is that after you've dried your tears, you get out there and plant more damn sunflowers, over and over and over again, until all you can see for miles and miles are glorious heads of brown and gold.

Look Out, Martha

4 paint brushes:  $25.00

2 containers paint varsol:  $16.00

6 Gallons of outdoor paint:  $300.00

The look of ecstasy on the crazy wife's face:  priceless.

Ok, here's a little reminder. The garden shed before:

The garden shed after:

Not too shabby, huh? Gawd I'm pooped.

Gettin' Nailed – Part Three

All found yesterday while fracturing the soil in front of our garden shed.

This is really starting to freak me out.

Gettin' Nailed – The Sequel

All found in one day, digging a flower bed by the back fence.

Is this normal???

If You Were A Tree...

...what kind of tree would you be? I know, I know – what an asinine question. How's this for a better question? If you were offered a free tree by the City of Toronto, what kind of tree would you choose? How 'bout a Freeman Maple? Sound good? 'Cuz that's what we got today! Whoo-hoo!

Gettin' Nailed

An assortment of nails found in the past year while digging garden beds and cleaning up the garden shed.

Mmmmmmm.....

...Gardenporn....can't wait to start planting! How 'bout you?

Colour Me Happy 2

Although I did recently ask any GardenSluts out there what flowers look good with orange lilies, I really already had the answer right in front of me, in a gorgeous gardening book entitled P. Allen Smith's Colors for the Garden. Being the garden novice that I am, I had no clue who this P. Allen Smith dude was – he looks a tad fey in the cover pic, like at any moment he's gonna sprout gossamer wings and scatter fairy dust all over those lovely tulips – but damn if he don't know his colours, and well, everything there is to know about designing a visually stunning garden.

My colour designing worries are officially over. Mr. Smith has laid out a wide variety of warm, cool, and neutral colour flowers and plants to choose from in a very detailed directory list, which includes the plant name, quick facts (how hardy it is, dimensions, and whether it's an annual or perennial) as well as a delightful description to whet your gardening appetite. Using a multitude of heavenly photographs, Mr. Smith provides luscious plant combinations for whatever mood you're trying to capture in your garden. This is an excellent reference book. Pretty darn nice coffee table book, too! (Even with that fey pic on the front!)

Quick observation. I had no idea that Cosmos came in orange!!

There's an Old Piano, and They Play it Hot Behind the Green Door

Remember when I told the story of how I made my own garden shed door? Well, here's a picture of the beast.

Yes, yes, I know. It ain't particularly grand, but I never said it was a work of art, now, did I? Keep in mind that I had never done anything like this before, and there was no measuring to speak of. Just eyeballed everything, and slapped it together in the pouring rain. Not everyone is impressed when they see it, but I don't care. I'm still pleased as punch with myself.

Oh, and now you can see just how nasty our garden shed really is! But after lots of questions with various paint people, I have been assured that just some good solid outdoor paint (after some priming, of course) will do the trick. It probably won't last for more than three years or so, but by then I'll have various climbing flowers and creepers all over it, so that hopefully it won't be so butt-freakin' ugly.

The goal is to paint it white, and then add a bit of light green trim around the window which faces north (in the photo I'm facing east). And yes, that lovely door will also be painted green.

So whaddya think? Yes? No? Oh, and fyi, tearing it down and building a new shed is not an option. Not after I made such a beautiful door, honey!

Colour Me Happy

Lately I've been feeling kinda blue because I've been so darn busy I haven't had much time to blog or even to really relax and enjoy our home. I know, I know, be careful what you wish for, yada, yada, yada.... I wanted lots of work, and by golly, I got it in spades!

But as of today I'm almost caught up with all my deadlines, and so the hubby (who has some time off – hooray!) and I are going on an adventure to downtown Toronto, to shop and explore, something that we haven't done in a while. But before I go, I wanted to share some pics I took of our yard a while ago. It's not amazing (yet); that will hopefully come next year with careful planning.

The previous owners of our house were not gardeners at all, so things kinda were a little out of control when we came in on the scene. Lots of weeds, and pretty much nothing else worth mentioning. But I did have one small delightful surprise:

Lilies! We have lilies! Oh these are definite keepers, I tell you! I can't take any credit for these beauties – they were already here in all their glory. Let's just hope I can help them stay this lovely, hmmmm?

So all you GardenSluts out there.... what goes well with orange lilies?