Oh that garden!

The weather is finally starting to co-operate and I can now get outside and get cracking on the garden. Every chance I get, I have been outside cleaning up the flower beds - basically pulling out weeds and other garbage so that I can (finally!) get a glimpse of what is living underneath all that yuck. I have discovered that there are a number of great plants in the front and backyard that had been buried under weeds and other yard waste.

A lone tulip!

Loads of hostas popping up all over the yard - one of my favorite plants!

So far I have been able to spot a number of lilies and hostas that are fighting to reclaim their space in the garden, along with several columbine plants. There are also a number of unidentified plants that are making an appearance - unfortunately not knowing what they are makes it hard for me to do the right thing when caring for them!

What are you, mystery flower?! I didn't even notice this in the garden last summer, the area was so overrun with weds!

Last summer I thought this odd little plant was a weed but I left it alone. It happened to be the first plant to pop-up and flower this spring...what is it?!

In the coming weeks I plan on cleaning up the front and back flowerbeds even more, while throwing down more soil and adding a few new plants here and there. Lucky for me, there are far more healthy plants in the yard than I initially thought, which means less for me to buy and plant! But since the snow has left us it has become clear that the front lawn will need a healthy dose of grass seed and fertilizer. Work here is never done!

Saying goodbye to an old friend

I am not one for goodbye's...I am more of a "see ya later" kind of person. But after a great deal of heart stomach ache I must bid farewell to a dear friend...bread. I didn't want it to be true, but it has become painfully apparent that bread and myself cannot be together. At one time bread and I were the best of friends, we had some amazing times with our pals butter, cheese, jam and sob...Nutella! But no more, we just cannot be together. Every time I eat bread I feel pain, a pain that is far too intense for our friendship to endure.

I suppose for a long time now, bread and I have been having difficulties. Not the kind of difficulties a gluten intolerant individual may have, but difficulties nonetheless. Each time bread and I got together we had fun...for a short while. Once the digestion period kicked in bread fought back. No amount of antacid (of any variety) would settle the score between us. Sadly, bread now joins another of my former best friends, banana. Myself and banana went our separate ways about two years ago when it became apparent that after eating the bastard fruit it would fight back with Terminator-like indigestion for an entire day...seriously, I would still feel the wrath of the banana at bed time!

Since goodbye's are difficult for me I won't drag this out any longer. Goodbye bread, my dear friend...maybe we will see each other again one day...

A few more bits of my trip

My recent trip to Ireland was a busy one. There was a great deal of visiting friends and family packed into one week, along with a little bit of sightseeing...oh, and some wedding planning of course! Poor weather along with a packed schedule left little time for the sightseeing and picture taking I wish I was able to do, but I still managed half a day at the beach and a trip to Cork City. 

If you ever find yourself in Cork City you must visit the English Market...and be sure to grab a snack or ten!

I was lucky to have the chance to get inside the church where we will be married! Quite frequently the tiny church is closed to visitors and only open for special masses and ceremonies.

This is an example of the week's weather in Cork...cool, grey, extremely windy and rainy. I shouldn't be surprised, I was in Ireland after all! I suppose it was a change from the first two trips I took to Ireland where I enjoyed warm weather and clear blue skies!

We had less than two full days of sun and blue skies, so we did our best to advantage of some good weather by hitting the beach! It was a bit cool and windy and every so often the clouds would roll in and threaten us with rain, but that didn't stop us from taking a stroll on the beach. There is nothing quite like a breath of fresh ocean air!

What a trip!

I am back! I landed back home yesterday evening after a whirlwind week-long trip to Ireland. Since I am still in a jet-lag zombie haze (and have about 10 loads of laundry to get on with) I won't go into much detail about the trip and all of the family-visiting and wedding-planning activities that took place. For now I will just leave you with a few snapshots from the week that flew past!

What's new?!

So I haven't posted much lately. I suppose this is because I have not been feeling so well - I have had a lingering cold that knocked me out flat for about a week, along with a back that has been in knots. Along with being sick, things have been fairly quiet and boring. I'm still not up and running around much, and the weather is still so very blah...makes for not much to talk about.

Lucky for me, I am starting to feel better (for the most part) because I have a trip fast approaching. Jeremiah and myself will be setting off to Ireland to visit his family and to get a bit of wedding planning taken care of. Since it is early in the travel season flight options were limited, so we will be heading to England (and spending some quality time sitting on airport benches!) before getting a flight to Dublin. From Dublin we will be heading to Cork by car. There will definitely be a lot of travelling crammed into one week! I am looking forward to the trip, but as usual I get a bit anxious in the weeks leading up to a flight. I'm not a big fan of flying, but what I dread most is the airport - getting to the airport on time, the lineups, security and the fear I am forgetting something. Usually in the weeks approaching a flight I have dreams nightmares that I arrive at the airport only to realize I have lost my passport or have someone else's passport, and (my favorite) the nightmare where I am being rushed out the door to make it to my flight on time, but I am not packed and must run to the airport in my pajamas. Anyone else ever have this happen?!

Anyway, despite the nightmares, I am fairly well prepared for the trip...well...kind of prepared...okay, maybe not. Like I mentioned, this trip is to visit family and plan our wedding. I am prepared for the visiting family part but not for the wedding planning part. As I may have mentioned in the past, wedding planning is not for me. I have taken care of probably the biggest task, which was finding a venue for the wedding. The church is booked and the reception venue is 99% arranged (during this trip we will visit the venue, meet the owners and if all goes well we will book). But that is where things stop. Even for our tiniest of weddings, there is still a lot more to do and I don't know where to begin. We need to decide on the menu, look at entertainment, flowers, cakes, decorations and invitations, a dress (help me!), not to mention the actual paperwork that needs to be arranged for us to get married in Ireland. Maybe it is not as complicated as it sounds, but when I read the information sent to me from the parish where we are getting married, my eyes glaze over and I usually find myself drifting away from the church website over to YouTube to watch videos of cats...before I know it hours have passed, I have watched videos of goats that sound like humans, been to the weirdest (and by weirdest I of course mean best!) websites out there, played 10 games of Tetris, have diagnosed myself with 15 different diseases from WebMD and have forgot all about planning a wedding.

My hope is that by the end of this upcoming trip a few more major wedding details will be arranged, and by getting the ball rolling (and seeing the venue in person) I will get the kick in the butt I need to finish making the arrangements. Now, off to pack and clean the house...you never want to come back from a trip to a dirty house!

What's going on Spring?!

Why is Spring not arriving already?! We have had a few mild and sunny days and just when it looks like we are headed into full blown SPRING mother nature blasts us with more cold! I am getting anxious now, I want to get into the garden and get going on things, but the weather says no. Although we haven't had any proper ground-sticking snow for a few weeks, there are still patches of snow lingering in the yard (in shaded areas) and the ground is a lumpy wet mess. Between the weather being too cold and windy and the ground that threatens to swallow me whole, I am powerless when it comes to getting moving on the garden!

I have started a number of plants from seed indoors and they are really taking off. Just a few days after planting the seeds (early March) I saw signs of life! Buster is really curious about the plants and is obviously waiting until they get a bit bigger before he attacks. They will need to move up to bigger pots soon, and if they keep growing at their current rate, they should be big and strong enough to be planted outdoors in a matter of weeks...if the weather cooperates! Below is a shot of the seedlings over a week ago, a variety of herbs, tomatoes and wildflowers.

This morning I tried to do a bit of cleaning in the garden - mostly picking up garbage that has blown into the yard over the winter and toys from the previous owners kids/dog that had been hidden under plant life last summer. Since I can't do much else garden-wise, I will stick to my garden planning/research and keep my fingers crossed that the weather will smarten up!

Happy Easter!

Wishing everyone a Happy Easter! I have been absent for a while, battling a nasty cold coupled with some painful back problems. Thanks to my ailments, I have had a chance to become one with the couch and crappy daytime TV (boo)! Hopefully I will be feeling better soon so I can get back to a normal life and get back to posting!

It's that time of year again!

The time of year where I have had my fill of the cold and snow and just want spring to hurry up! I don't mind the winter but a day comes when you are tired of being in hibernation mode and you just want to get outside. I also need to get cracking on the garden and until the lingering snow melts, the ground dries up and the weather gets a bit warmer, I can't get outside and get down to work.

When we moved into the house last August, our main focus was cleaning and decorating on the inside, and unfortunately the garden was ignored. Now that the major work is done in the house, I can focus some attention on the backyard so that we can enjoy the outdoor space we have. First things first, the yard needs a good clean up! There is an attempted flowerbed against the neighbors shed and it is overrun with weeds, garbage and dog bones (not the bones of a dog, but bones a dog has been chewing on...you know what I mean!). I need to get out there and determine what is a weed and what is a plant to keep. Once that bed is cleaned up I will look at adding a few new plants.

Hidden under garbage and weeds there are signs of real plant life! I am not sure what the purple plant is on the left, but it looks fairly sturdy. It may be hard to see, but there are the beginnings of some Irises in the photo on the right.

The area behind the garage and our shed needs a good clean up too. It is pretty wild when everything comes to life, in fact until I snapped this photo I didn't even know there was a downspout form the garage roof back there - it was completely hidden behind a mass of leaves last summer!

To get a jump on things I have some seeds starting indoors - an assortment of herbs, wildflowers and tomatoes. My goal is to get some wildflowers into the flowerbed once it is cleared up and to get the tomatoes and herbs in pots and planters on the deck. There is a lone planter built into the deck that is currently home to some sort of bush but I have no clue what is is! The bush looked like it was in agony last summer, it clearly should not be confined to such a small, dry container. I am hoping it has survived the winter so I can relocate it to a more suitable space in the yard...I can then make better use of that planter.

When we viewed this house last May, we spotted a birds nest wedged in a space between an outdoor speaker and a downspout attached to the garage. When we moved in months later the birds were still there, minding their nest. Every once in a while the parents would leave and I would see the baby...it was one HUGE baby bird! I don't know much about Morning Doves, but the massive baby was making no attempt to leave the nest and the parents never stopped doting on it. I didn't mind the doves, but was hoping they would leave so I could move the nest and get rid of the useless speakers. Unfortunately by the time they did leave it was too cold and rainy to get outside and clean the space so I left it, thinking I could do it in the spring. But early one morning a couple of weeks back guess who reappeared?! They are back and have reclaimed their nest...so much for cleaning that space up! They were only gone for about 3 months, and if they make a repeat of last year I will have them hanging around (pooping on the deck) until next November.

Well that didn't last long!

How stupid I was to think I could keep a houseplant alive and well in my home...the home I share with the world's most destructive cat! Everything had been going so well, I haven't over/under watered the plants and they are getting as much sun as they can at this time of year. But that was short lived. I just popped into my tiny studio (home of the plants) to drop some papers on my desk. I was just going to brush my teeth and head back into the studio, so I left the door open (stupid move). Part way through brushing my teeth I realized the cat that had been hovering around, watching me brush my teeth was gone, but he had not gone far. He was in the studio. I stuck my head in the open door, his eyes met mine and he bolted - he knew he had done something bad and ran, and I didn't need to look at the plants to know what had happened.

In only 30 seconds Buster managed to maul three leaves. Sure, it may not be the end of the plant (I hope) but it goes to show that nothing is safe when that cat is around. And here I was hoping he may get over his plant chewing ways so I could have some plants around the house, rather than keep them locked away in one room! What a disappointment.

Something else I had considered way back was getting hanging plants, something that would be out of reach from Buster. But I just don't trust that he wouldn't still try to get at a plant that is suspended from the ceiling. I can picture him climbing up onto nearby furniture and jumping for a leaf...and knowing this cat, he would either get the plant and destroy it or destroy the furniture trying (or both). In the past, when my mum has cat-sat him, she placed any/all tempting plants up high or behind a closed door. Putting plants up high was not enough of a deterrent; he was caught red-pawed teetering on the edge of the dining room table, positioned and ready to launch himself to the top of the china cabinet where a plant had been moved for safe keeping! And more recently I have been finding evidence that Buster has been climbing up on the tops of the kitchen cabinets when no one is around (or when he thinks no one is around - I caught him Saturday night!). He jumps onto the stove (safe, right?!) then up to the fridge, then from the fridge to the cabinets. I have no idea how long he has been doing this. It seems he just has to get into everything, and everywhere he goes he leaves a trail of destruction, paw prints and fur. What am I to do?!

Giving it another go!

Okay, I hope this doesn't make me a bad person, but I have gone out and got myself a few more houseplants. Why would that make me a bad person you ask?! If you recall, I don't have the best track record of keeping houseplants (succulents in particular) alive. It's something to do with wanting to show the plants my love by watering them...and apparently I am showing too much love to my cacti?! Also there is the problem with the cat...as soon as there is a plant in sight, he must paw at it, rub up against it or try to eat it. 

This one (above) is going to be the biggest challenge, since Buster was successful at demolishing a similar plant at my mum's house a couple of Christmases ago. He silently chewed off the ends of every leaf in one evening, I have no idea if the plant was safe for him to chomp on, but he showed no signs of illness. I am protecting this plant from the cat by keeping it in the studio, which is basically a cat-free-zone. I am also doing my best not to over-water these guys (below). Fingers crossed!

Buster has rubbed up against a cactus before, he didn't seemed phased by it, but the spikes were not terribly sharp. These two cacti are much tougher, should he try to rub his chin on these, he would be in for a painful surprise!