What A Gift!

A quick post this morning to show off my garden.
A long row of green beans, carrots, 4 tomato plants, and 3 ea of green and red pepper plants. The rest is hills of 2 kinds of squash, some ornamental gourds and cantelope. I can't tell you how great it feels to have that dirt under my fingernails again!!

Now all I need is some nice rain to really get everything going.




The iris are well-established bulbs. All colors from purple, coral, pink, lavender, white and some really unique 2-tone purple and white.










The garden is really beginning to pop. About 6 poppies have bloomed - they are gorgeous! And one lone peony. Looks like all will be white. But how beautiful they are!



















What a gift Edna Anhalt left for us!!!

That's it for today. THE CLUB is meeting in Waterloo for lunch at Olive Garden. Sandy will drive up from Cedar Rapids. We'll miss you, Donna - maybe next time.

Tough Week!!!

Thursday came and went and no one from the nursery was able to make it out. Sister Mary and I walked around the gardens and tried to find some things in my book, but decided maybe it was a little premature. In a couple of weeks more things will be blossomed and easier to identify. She insisted on staying and helping me rip out some ground cover. That's back breaking work, but we made more room for vegetables. She went home and I went back to working on the raspberries. There's lots and lots of dandelions and thistles. The only way is to use a hand spade and dig down to get the tap root. Slow process.


Here it is before I started.........




Here it is after!!!









Friday Chuck was off, and spent the morning cleaning up the outside at 1617 12th Street. I cleaned house. The realtor is having an open house on Sunday. It's the pits trying to keep up with both places. Those of you who know me well would agree that keeping a spotless house is not typically my focus. Definitely not my idea of being creative.

After lunch we went to the country and attacked that garden together!! It took us 4 hours but we got most of it ready for planting.


Saturday, Chuck and Rick traveled to Waterloo to pick up a small excavator that they used to get rid of some of the bushes and trees. They took out a total of 18 shrubs/trees -- 11 of which were planted WITHIN the garden! Most were overgrown or had severe winter kill.

We took out the 'Gateway to the Garden'. Now I'm looking for something prettier. The debate is on between something made from wood (manly) or something iron (girly). Don't know what it will be.


Resting on Sunday was not an option since the Open House was going on back at 1617 12th Street. We decided, heck we'd just go out and keep working at the 'other place'. However, we just couldn't seem to get anything going. Didn't realize just how tired we were, I guess. Rick and his dad come to finish pulling out a few more things and we had burgers and stuff for lunch. When they left, we just sat in the lawn chairs and waited for 2:30 to come.

It was a long, tough weekend. The heat and wind were murder!! But we're through the worst of it now, and WE'RE STILL STANDING!!!

Well, Maybe Not 50.....

Wow, long time since I blogged! After 4 days of rain last week, Chuck and I were stomping at the bit to get out to our place and start digging in the dirt! It had to wait, tho' since we had already planned to drive to Kansas City on Friday. Olivia had a soccer game on Saturday morning and we had been waiting for a chance to see her play this year. It was a cold, rainy morning, but the game went on. I took some really good pictures with my phone camera, but can't figure out how to get them from email to my blog. The game was great and Olivia played really good. It's her first year and she is very motivated! We left after lunch and stopped off in Des Moines to catch Carson's 4:00 baseball game. More good pictures that I can't download. He's quite the player. Mostly plays shortstop, but we had a chance to see him pitch and he did really good. He will be playing most of the summer, so hope we can get there again during vacation.

Sunday: First project -- planting the strawberry
bed. I wanted to save the hollyhocks so we moved them to the back of the flower bed in the back yard. 8 good, healthy plants, already budded. Then cleaned the weeds out and planted 40 strawberry plants. My mouth is watering already, tho' I know there won't be any to speak of this year.








Here they are! 40 little plants all in a row. This should be the perfect place for them. They will get full sun all day facing the south. I can't wait!




Amanda and Braylon came in the afternoon to help with the planting. Braylon spent his time in the shade. He's sitting up good now and what a winning smile. He really enjoyed watching all the movement of the trees and the birds. What a cutie!





Monday: Chuck back to work, so I decided to tackle this area to the side of the 4-seasons porch. Mostly weeds, but a bush in the corner and an immensely overgrown patch of chives. The chives have really spread so I got rid of some and all the weeds and decided to plant an herb garden.







Not sure if there's going to be enough sun, but it looks nicer. By Tuesday morning, I'm feeling anything but 50. More like my own age, but determined that each day I'll be less tired.




Tuesday: Not much energy today. I spent a couple of hours pulling and cutting dead seed pods and blossoms off some of the perennials. I notice the iris are starting to bloom in big garden. I'll get some pictures of those tomorrow. It was a short day as I ran out of steam in a hurry.

Here's a picture of the huge farm kitchen. The eating area is equally as large. I'll be able to stretch my round oak table out to accommodate the 9 leaves and still have room to walk around it. No need for a dining room.




The four seasons porch is right off the kitchen/dining area and looks over the back yard. My mind is spinning with all the ideas I have for this place. One of the first will be to replace the PURPLE carpeting out here. Even Chuck says he can't live with that. Besides, it's sun faded. Why would you choose such a dark color with so much sunlight pouring in?


Today (Thursday) I'm feeling pretty chipper. No more aches and pains. I woke up at 4am with no interruptions in my sleep last night. Lots to do. Someone is coming out this morning from the nursery to help me identify some of things growing in the beds. Then I'm going to work on cleaning out the asparagus and raspberry bushes. This weekend we're planting the vegetable garden. And on and on and on......

Thanks to all you have been faithfully following this post. It's so fun to be able to share with you our process.

More to come.......

The Dream Has Come True!!

We have it all! At least, that's how we are feeling right now. Here's the house. This was taken the end of February and you really can't see any of the gardens, etc. If it ever quits raining, I'll be back out to take more pictures. There's a bedroom on the front side of the house and the living room (where the porch is). Everything else is to the back and looks over the gardens on the east, west and back side of the house.





To the left is Chuck's shed. He's so happy about that and already shopping for a tractor and loader so he'll be ready for moving snow next winter.

After the auction on Saturday we couldn't stop pacing and talking about it. So we decided to spend the day shopping for 'farm' stuff. First - a riding lawnmower, sprayer, all that yard stuff. Then he looked at a small John Deere Tractor with a loader on it. Then we went to the farm store to check out wheel barrows, lastly to the nursery and we bought 4 dozen strawberry plants. The strawberries will be planted on the end of the shed. There's a raised bed there with some hollyhocks in that I'll have to transplant but it will be perfect since it will get south sun all summer. My mouth is watering.

Don't have any pictures yet of the inside, but I will do that maybe this week. Not much to see except that huge farm kitchen. And where my sewing room is going to be.

The realtor was here last nite at 6pm to write up the listing and they actually showed the house to someone at 7. They were here for an hour while we drove around in the rain. Today at 2:30 they are showing it again. Hope this is a good sign.

About it for now. Have a quick throw I'm going to work on this week. I have it ear marked for the sun room and shouldn't take me long to do. That may be the end of my quilting until fall.

Thanks, everyone, for all your good thoughts and listening to me go on, and on, and on about this new chapter in our lives. We feel like we're 50 again!!!

Later

Planting Is Done....for now

After a couple of weeks of running to the nursery, I've finally finished with my plantings for here. Everything looks really nice. Now I hear we are going to get frost over the weekend so I'll have to get everything covered.

The auction of the acreage is this Saturday @ 9:30am. Hopefully we'll have a direction by noon. The sellers have established a 'no sale amount' so the property may not even sell then. If that happens, don't know what the procedure will be. All I know is, I was out there again last week and the gardens and flower beds are an absolute mess!! Dandelions in everything, all the old dead stuff from last year is still standing and the new growth is trying to come up. Chuck says he is becoming increasingly disenchanted with every visit. It's going to be a BIG JOB!!!


In the meantime, I continue to keep stitching. This cute little pincushion is an unusual design. It is a Chessie and Me pattern and begins as an octagon. However, when you stitch the 2 pieces together and stuff it turns into this really cute shape. The back has 2010 on it and the scissor FOB has my initials on the back. It's really springy-looking and I'll use it until the summer. Then it will become part of my pincushion collection.



This is a really cool pincushion. Another Blackbird
Designs. It's big - 8" and stitched on some really cool linen that has been significantly 'aged'. I usually try to find old buttons or at least buttons that look old for the center of the pincushion, but didn't have any in my stash and this one really needed a big button. I'll have to see if I can find something to put on it that will give it that look I like. I always add some real old buttons to my pincushions. They are usually from a box of buttons that were my mother's or from Chuck's grandmother. It's interesting for me to find these as usually there will be a string of matching buttons on an old thread. They probably came from a shirt or dress that was worn out and you know those women kept everything. My mom didn't sew, but she kept buttons as I'm sure her mother did. I do use all of the pincushions I make for a short time. I really don't want them to show a lot of wear so I then put them away for someone else to claim later on in my life when I'm ready to give them away.

I have finished the infamous quilt I've been talking about. I will finish piecing the back today and it will be ready for my machine quilter. Also, I've been working on an applique'd table top quilt; a kit I purchased in 2004, so I feel good about that. Only have 5 more leaves to add and will get that done this afternoon so that it also can make the trip to Mindy. Yeah!!!! I'll have pictures of both when I get them back.

Lots to do today. I'll be posting again next week to show pictures of our 'new home' if we get it.