This week’s Garden Appreciation Society bouquet is a first for me on two counts. For one, it is the first time I’ve ever had enough roses to make a bouquet from my own garden. And secondly, it is the first time I’ve endured serious pain to make a bouquet. Holy smokes these roses are thorny! These Oso Easy roses (I ...
Last week I promised that I’d take you on an as-it-is garden tour. I’ve never done this before because I hate people to see the garden unless it’s looking in tip-top shape, which, frankly, it rarely is. But I figured after I showed you this, the state of my garden couldn’t shock you that badly (and unlike that other post, there ...
Well, the friend or foe mystery is, I guess, solved. The mystery plant has bloomed and it’s not one I’m familiar with. It has these insignificant maroon-colored, cup-shaped flowers and, well, that’s about it. I STILL haven’t dug it out of the garden but I blame that more on running out of time to do everything this weekend than anything else. Still, ...
It’s raining again. Go figure. I had to quick run outside this morning during a lull and cut a quick bouquet for this week’s Garden Appreciation Society. I think you’d be hard pressed to find a better cut flower than a peony. I mean, it’s a no brainer kind of flower, isn’t it? OK, maybe I’d put hydrangeas on top ...
I have a confession. I might be growing huge weeds in my garden on purpose. Well, sort of on purpose. Gardening guru Margaret Roach likes to identify her weeds and her reasoning makes sense: If you know what it is, you will know how to get rid of it. And I can safely say that I know most of the ...
I know gardeners (and particularly Midwestern gardeners) will find any excuse to complain about the weather so I’m trying not to be fussy, but a lot of people are experiencing a rather dramatic spring and early summer. The lines of thunderstorms south of us seem to come day after day and I’m sure there are a lot of gardens suffering ...
We’re having a houseguest over the weekend. We pretty much never have houseguests. In fact, this might be the fourth time in 11 years that someone has slept at our house. And this time it’s someone we don’t know, staying at our house for an event related to Mr. Much More Patient’s job. You know how you clean your house ...
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Monday was the big day for the renovation: the day they pulled the top off half the house. Up until now they’ve been doing a lot of preparatory work getting ready for the tear-off. I swung by at mid-day to see just how it our house would look as a ranch. Hopefully we’re all done […]
You know how the folks over at Young House Love are always out crashing houses? Well, here’s my take on it. Welcome to Garden Crashing! This is a garden that was actually spotted from the road on a bike ride. You know a garden is good when it’s so impressive from the road that you […]
Here’s a before and after for you that I had absolutely nothing to do with. The husband gets to take credit for this one. We have two big dogs. Two very big dogs, in fact. We’re talking massive here (a tumbleweed of hair, such as those that regularly roll across my living despite almost daily […]
Look at what I got: My very own fandeck! After stopping at the local True Value store (which is the area Benjamin Moore dealer) almost every day to pick up paint chips, I finally decided it would be a heck of a lot easier to just buy a fandeck. I use those paint chips for […]
Yesterday I was feeling a little bit like I had betrayed our old home. Like somehow I was telling it it’s not good enough for us. I actually felt a little guilty. I realize this is crazy but I adore this house and want desperately to do right by it. Today, I almost feel like […]
The long-awaited house remodel is finally underway. It’s amazing to think that this was a project we wanted to do from when we bought the house (eight years ago) and seriously started talking about a year and a half ago and all of a sudden it’s here. It’s actually rather shocking; I spent so long […]
This is Part 2 of a series on how I changed a brand new (but flawed) table into just what I needed. You can find Part 1 here. With the table the right length (and the legs in the right place), it was time to finish it. Like a lot of furniture refinishing, the concern […]
Hi all, Just wanted to send out a message that the computer woes have been solved and things are back in track. I’ll have the rest of the table finished post up for you tomorrow morning. And construction has begun in earnest so you know there will be updates coming on that.
If you’re not following The Impatient Gardener on Facebook you’re probably wondering what the deal with not posting the second half of the table re-do is. Well, here’s the ugly truth: Thursday night I was enjoying a glass of wine while doing a bit of computing and the next thing I knew, the glass of […]
When we started on the mini-kitchen redo last fall, I knew two things: I wanted a banquette and table that would allow us to easily slide in and out. That meant I was looking for either a pedestal or trestle style and after looking at what seemed like thousands of photos of tables online, I […]
Nope, not a move for us, but for a good friend. This Blue Angel hosta was the first plant I planted here, seven years ago. It has performed beautifully here, where it anchored a corner of the garden. I think a conservative estimate of its size is 5 and a half feet wide. My neighbor […]
Thank goodness for cameras on phones, right? Since I don’t always walk around with a camera but I almost always have my phone with me, it’s so nice to be able to snap a shot of something great, even if people are staring at you for taking a picture of a chair. That’s what happened […]
I added a window box under the kitchen windows this summer and I just love it. Our all-white house really needed a shot of color and interest and the window box was just the ticket. But as you know, containers change through the season. I thought it would be interesting to look back and see […]
I’m not sure it’s right to even call it a construction update, since no construction has technically begun, but it’s all related, right? Here’s the background: If you’re new to the blog the deal is that we are about to embark on a partial renovation of our house. We’ll (and I don’t literally mean “we&
