Crazy garden

The front garden is finished for this year. I made it about halfway across the hill, but have run out of inspiration. That's probably a good thing, because when I get the bug next year, I'll actually still have somewhere to plant. ;)

Being the dork that I am, I have plotted the layout of my garden in a pdf. Eventually it will also include pruning and fertilizing schedules for each of the plants, but.. that's for some other rainy day. And I won't bore you with that here. Instead, pictures!

The inspiration for this plot was crazy cottage gardens. My color scheme was to be mainly lavender and white, with some yellow here and there. Big plusses for plants with a propensity for spreading rapidly, for attracting butterflies/bees, and with long blooming times.



What cottage garden would be complete without a happy little English Lavender ("Jean Davis")?



Added some Salvia ("May Night" and "Snow Hill"), as well as some wild Bergamot / Bee Balm.




Some creeping thyme precariously placed by the parking pad.. as well as some catmint ("Little Titch") that the neighborhood cats have joyfully destroyed. A bit of baby's breath underneath a silvery juniper. The yellow was taken care of by some tickseed ("Jethro Tull" - pictured in a previous post), and the MD state flower: black-eyed Susan. Neither is blooming at the moment, so no pictures of those...

Then my whole color scheme was destroyed with the addition of another variety of bee balm:



Yes, it really is HOT pink. And I love it. Who knew. I guess it will be a crazy cottage garden after all.

The walkway around the side of the house is quite a sight right now, with lilies blooming in our yard and the neighbor's.



They're far from my favorite color, but are kinda cool paired with the tiger's eye sumac that we planted last year. It's chartreuse. And pink. Wheeee!




For some reason the colors of my photos are different once they've been uploaded by blogger. :/ I tried to get the color on this plant correct, because it really is weird.. but they've thwarted that plan. Oh well.

Happy gardening!

New toy!

I got a new toy for my camera! A Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 II lens. Yay!



I'm going to have lots of fun with this, I think!

Keeping busy

Weeks have been flying by. Friday night brought PJ Harvey and John Parish to the Warner Theater in D.C. Amazing venue. Kick-ass concert. I've had a bit of a crush on PJ for the past 8 years or so. Now it's full-blown love. ;) Oh my.

Lots of knitting:

Boneyard Shawl, from Watch Stephen Knit
less than 2 skeins Garnstudio DROPS Silke-Tweed (droool!)
size 5 Knitpicks Options needles

*Love* this. Started and finished just in time to pack it away for the summer.



And some cute baby knits for co-worker Jackie's upcoming grandbaby:

Baby Surprise Jacket, by Elizabeth Zimmermann
Koigu KPM & KPPM mill ends
size 5 Knitpicks Options needles

Oh-so-retro.




And the as yet unfinished Honeycomb Stroller Blanket.




There hasn't been nearly as much hammock-ing as I'd hoped. We've had lots of rainy days. But the view, when we're able to get one, is great. Too bad I get blurry pictures because the hammock swings.... (Though this one is intentionally blurry. Why fight it?)




Tuck has been doing much window-hunting:




And now it's Hammock Time.

Weekends outside

Gardens are way too much fun. I'm very happy to have a yard. My plants seem very happy to populate the yard. All is well.

I love how vigorously most of the plants came back in the spring, after withering away for the winter. The foxgloves are my favorites right now - I'm horrified to think that I almost tore them out because they were so wimpy last year! The rains we had took down my purple foxglove, but my white one is going strong with 8 wands of flowers.. one of which is at least 4 feet tall. It's stunning.



The weather has been perfect (in between the rainy days), so Ryan and I have spent a lot of time outside. Last weekend we took a spontaneous trip out to western Maryland, to ride the steam train and do some mild hiking. [He has more about the trip on his blog.]



We were surprised this weekend to find ourselves with a new deck. Ryan called on Wednesday to find out when construction might start, and a crew was out the next morning. The deck was finished by Friday afternoon, and a grill was set up on Saturday. So of course we had to celebrate.. twice...



All in all, life's been good. Exhausting, but good. I love spring.

Long weekend...

In short, this:



became..



(..not quite there...)


This!



Unfortunately, that's only about 1/4 of the width of our hill. I still have much to do:



Heartthrob, the neighborhood Watch Cat, proved once again what a helpful guy he is.







At least he's cute.

Whew. Time for Thai!

Done for another year

Well, Sheep & Wool is over 'til next year. We had a blast - I think we visited even more vendors this year. So many talented people out there! I was encouraged by the huge number of people at the fest, even though it was a rainy Saturday. I'm not sure if spending was down, but surely attendance was up!

I scored some awesomely retro-flavored Koigu (my first) at a mill ends sale. The best part about that was that the skeins were all much smaller than usual, so I picked out 5 colors for the price of 2. It's already been cast-on for a Baby Surprise Jacket for a friend's grandbaby. Pictures soon.. I can't even begin to describe the colors.




My only other yarny purchase was 3 skeins of Fleece Artist Blue Face Leicester sock yarn that's the most gorgeous dark silvery blues. This is destined to become an Apres Surf Hoodie. I think.

The rest of the weekend was spent taking Mom and Erin around to our favorite eateries. Of course, we didn't have time to hit them all.. but we gave it our best shot. I really enjoyed having them around - they're so much fun. Plus I get a big kick out of seeing how similar we are in behavior...

I also had a movie buddy in the form of Mom. It's nearly impossible to get Ryan to sit down and watch an entire movie - which kills me because I adore movies. I think Mom likes them even more than I do though.

A post is barely a post without pictures, so I'll have to post some soon. But that seems like entirely too much work at 6 in the morning. ETA: pictures! From Erin. My camera didn't want to brave the rain.

First lessons

I've had my first 2 riding encounters with my new instructor, and am now even more excited to be at the new farm.

Wednesday was a rainy rainy, but since the barn is 40-something miles from the lab, I figured I'd make my way out anyway. The weather cleared up beautifully, but there was a worrisome black storm cloud looming a few miles from the barn. I decided that since no one else was around, let alone tacking a horse, I'd go ahead and ride. (The indoor we have access to on M, T, W, and Sa is Small). Silly me forgot to check the other barn.. Christine was tacking up a very cool grey horse. She was kind enough to invite me into the indoor with her to ride. Since I was all tacked up at that point and it had started pouring, I accepted.

Addy was quite unhappy about the situation. She had never been in an indoor that *enclosed* before (the indoors in FL tend to be just covered, rather than actually indoors). Not to mention that the wind was making papers flutter on the wall (oh my!), the rain was pounding on the tinny roof, and a Big Gray Monster was being lunged (complete with whip popping noises) in the opposite corner. She sucked herself up into a little ball and did her best impression of a spring-loaded racehorse. Completely uncharacteristic for my pony, and not what I wanted Christine to see for her first ride. Oh well. I walked some circles, trying to keep her from exploding, and barely succeeding. When Christine was done lunging her horse, she climbed aboard him and then took control of the situation. Her coaching turned us from a bouncy ball of energy to a bent, almost supple, almost rhythmic pair in about 5 minutes. I was utterly amazed. Her biggest complaint was that I ride like I'm trying not to make any mistakes and "hurt" my pony. Which is spot on.

Yesterday was my first scheduled lesson with Christine, and it was too cool. Again, within minutes of Christine opening her mouth, my pony was a different animal. She bent better than ever, came properly through, and started tracking up under herself at the walk and trot. No work at all, except I actually had to Ride (ie: wrap my legs around her and ride her with my seat). I am completely confident that we have the right instructor to bring us as far as the pair of us can go. Yay!!