The Garden is in

What makes a good garden?

MONEY.

At least that's how it felt this year. But my other house is finally under contract and in a month when we close, I will be back to normal, without having to watch my pennies so carefully.

Most of the garden perennials I purchased were bare root, and they all took, including the little extra root bits that came in the packages. I have those in the 'nursery blocks' in the front with the impatiens. And since I still have access to my previous garden, I lifted a bunch of hosta and heuchera and brought them to the new garden site.

Of course I did have to make my annual pilgrimage to my fave nursery for a few special specimens, but I was frugal and limited myself to one new hosta and two new heuchera, (Caramel and Dressed Up Ball Gown) and their very nice flats of begonia, coleus and impatiens. 

This planting season I really felt my age, not being able to get on my bad knee, or lifting things as I done in the past. So I am being more realistic about what kind of garden I am able to maintain. As this bed matures, there will be less space for annuals and the cubbies in the blocks will have to suffice for flowers. I am not complaining. I think it is going to be wonderful anyway.

But wait, there's more!

 The pots in the front got filled too. I wanted something tall to put in the back and found these large hosta, at a decent price at Walmart. I know from experience and the internet that they will thrive in pots and will become the foundation for the future. I lucked out with that established Sweet Autumn clematis on the trellis, which is practically a weed everywhere in Tennessee and I found this Eclipse Hydrangea at Lowe's for half price. It will get to 3' by 5', so it will get moved into the yard in a couple of years. In the front of these pots I am trying a new trailer, Licorice Plant.

 The other side of the porch has the same plantings, and yesterday I added some Creeping Jenny to the pots which I lifted from the previous house, where it went nuts. I left quite a lot there. Yes, I still have a nice garden going there currently and I am sure it added to the deal.  I will remove those sticky labels on the pots. I just ran out of energy and daylight.

My brother in law John, who has been my right hand man and the solution to all my fixes, has also been the responsible partner in getting this design accomplished. I was hoping to have a flower bed in the actual yard, but reality hit and I changed my mind. It turns out that the barrel planters could do the trick and so I had John move them from the deck where they were being a little too shaded, to this sunnier spot. They contain Stella D'oro daylilies, Crazy Daisies, Yellow Coneflowers and Blue Bedder Salvia. This year I added four bleeding hearts, some Stargazer lilies, and more purple oxalis. The birdbath came along from the old house and I hope to add another bird feeder somewhere in this space. 

I heard that we will be having a drought this year, wouldn't you know it. So my four dogwood and the one Japanese maple (not pictured) are not going to be planted until the fall. I will keep them alive in pots and late yesterday I brought them up to the new barrel bed, where I could maintain their watering needs. 

So that's it. I am done, and earlier than ever this year. I have a few caladium left to find a home, but they have just sprouted, so who knows if I will even keep them, as my sister loves them and I have no more room. 

I have window boxes on my deck railing, and while I had a lovely crop of fancy lettuces, a squirrel had them for lunch, so never mind.  The purple oxalis (from the old house) is doing great and I actually have them in several other spots growing happily. They reseed so easily, are super hardy and drought tolerant, making them a real favorite for me. 

I'm looking forward to a lot of sitting and admiring, in between watering eveything. But I know that the view will be glorious. 

Garden Bed

The day I have anticipated since I moved to this house, has finally arrived! Hurray! Bags and bags of garden soil, mulch and concrete blocks have been delivered and my famous brother in law John is here to do the heavy lifting. 

 All this will soon disappear and be transformed into my shade garden.

 A few hours later and here it is! John is putting the finishing touches on the corner brick. He is very clever and wants it to be 'just so'. I am way appreciative. These blocks are larger than standard with a much bigger opening, making them great for individual plantings. Two layers high give the bed a possible depth of 16 inches, although we really won't be filling it completely, it is possible some of the perennials I plan to put here will root deeply. 

The rough dimensions are 8 inches high, 12 inches wide and sixteen inches long. I've used these before in several gardens and they work beautifully. We got them from Lowe's. John also used rebar to stabilize the perimeter, and I don't anticipate much settling since the base underneath is clay and gravel. The first layer to go in was mulch, which works l as a leveling agent for the blocks and helps with drainage.  The fill for the bed was Stay Green garden soil which is currently on sale, as is the mulch. 80 1 cu. bags of soil and 16 2 cu bags of mulch which is also to be used in the front yard.

There is a vent to the crawl space which needed to be open to the air, so John constructed this separator. What a guy! He also configured a hidden solution for the gutter drain pipe. I am so blessed to have this engineer construct my garden. But I must say that is was so difficult not to do this all myself, but my old legs just can't anymore, so I stayed indoors and tried to keep busy.  

 And here it is all filled and ready to water in and then plant. Just as I imagined, the soil reaches the base of the deck and covers all the unsightly stuff like the concrete and clay underneath the deck floor. 

I am thrilled! It has been ages since I had a shade garden which is one of my fave things, plant wise.  Lots of specimen hostas, heucheras and caladiums will form the structure and I have also pre-rooted nasturtiums seeds which have sprouted and will go in some of the block openings. Begonias, astilbe, tiarellas,  celandine poppys,  elephant ears, and maybe hydrangea, are on my shopping list... oooooooh!

 The grass has grown like crazy and we just had a full day of rain this past week, so the once miserably junked up yard is a thing of the past. 

A little pocket tutorial

 I've used this side seam pocket on a lot of my clothes in the past and everytime I do I have to rethink how I did it before. Well, this post will be my reference in the future.

Step 1. Cut the curve for the pocket about 7 inches below the armscye. This time I made a little template to keep the shape the same on both sides.

Step 2. I used a pocket pattern from some previous pattern and it works for everything so I keep it pinned to my design wall. It's about 9-10 inches long on the straight side and about 6" wide on the curve. Cut two, one for each side, and serge the curved edge.

 Step 3. Make some bias strips, 1 3/4 inches wide. I  used cotton duck for this dress and since it is a bit heavier I thought I would 'face' the pocket with the bias as a single layer instead of doubled as the white bias is above. (That bias is for the neckline and armholes)

 Step 4. Sew the bias on the front side of the pocket opening, using a 1/4" seam. 

 Step 5. Fold over the seam allowance, press and stitch from the wrong side about 1/2 inch from the edge.

This is how it looks on the front. Trim the excess even with the side edge of the dress.

 Step 6. Place the single layer pocket over the curved pocket opening. lining it up with the side seams. Pin in place and stitch from the wrong side around the curved edge. 

 Voila! it is done. The raw edge of the pocket will be the serged into the side seam.  

Here is the finished side seam, with the scissors inserted to show the finished pocket. I prefer this style of pocket, because it lies flat, no protruding bulge, is fast to do and easy, if you can remember how to do it. With lighter weight fabrics I would double the binding and sew it to the wrong side of the fabric, fold it over and topstitch it from the front . 

Here's the pattern I kinda used. I eliminated the sleeves, added a bust dart at the arm opening, lowered the neckline, lengthened it quite a bit, added side seam pockets and devised the underbust seam because I was using two leftover fabrics. In the final dress,/jumper/pinafore, I added a casing in the back for narrow elastic. 

 

Two more examples of the side seam pockets. On the left is another iteration of the same devised pattern, only this one has a pleat down the front and back. 

And the pants...can't find the original pattern, but of course it got adjusted a zillion times, so nevermind. 

Trying to be patient

It's been a waiting game here these past two weeks. I have my other house on the market and while I have had two offers, both have fallen through. And the comments from multiple buyers has been that the floors are squishy. What that means is that they are uneven and need to be fixed. It may be due to the flood, or just age, as the house is 65 years old. My realtor and I agree that this must be remedied, to the tune of $9000.00 Gulp, I hate to have to put more into this house but needs must. 

Second, in my current house (THE last house) the grass has been planted and it is up and looking so green, which only makes it more enticing to think about gardening. 

To that end I have potted up about 75 hostas and caladiums.

I also have received my order of three Southern Comfort Heuchera, which are in the bottom corner of that photo.

And my barrel planters are coming along great. There are buds already on the day lilies and I recently bought some bare root pink bleeding hearts and they are all up and looking enthusiastic. Unfortunately I have squirrels and today my window boxes got dug into and I'm fit to be tied. I was planning to transplant my lettuce seedlings into them, but now I am not so certain. I'll wait and put them into the proposed new garden bed that I hope to get built by my faithful brother in law John, in the coming week.

My wheelbarrow has a flat tire and my garden fork handle has separated from the fork part so I am prevented from doing any digging myself. My knees are grateful for the reprieve. 

The three dogwoods are in full bloom and I am so thrilled to have have them. Two white and one pink. 

And the Bloodgood Japanese Maple is perky and a long with the dogwoods it's ready to find its home somewhere in my yard. 

In meantime, I have been sewing some clothes. And converting some thrift shop items to fit me better. I love being in my sewing room and using some of the fabrics that have been stashed.

I devised a pattern from a pullover blouse and made a 'pinafore' top. I am using that name because nothing else seems to work. It covers the necessary parts and can be used as a shop coat, sorta. Taking a selfie is difficult and even worse when I see my resting face in the picture. What a grumpy look I have.  Anyway, I am showing the side seam pockets in that selfie.

And then I made a second pinafore out of Japanese panels that I got from my former business partner Laura Wasilowski. about 22 years ago. Seriously. 

They are real batik and my hands turned blue from the dye as I sewed this item.  It will have to be washed separately for sure. Once again I am showing the side seam pocket here, which is difficult to see, for all the patterning. I must have pockets in everything and these are so much easier and faster than even patch pockets. Bias binding is my new friend.

Brother 1034DX Serger

And now for something completely different....

I shop at my local Walmart a lot. Like five out of seven days I have to pick up something I need, and since it is just down the street from me,  it is mostly out of convenience. However, when I buy something that isn't right, or I changed my mind, or for any reason at all, I know I can return it and get a refund with my receipt, which of course I always keep.

Recently in their miniscule fabric department, I notice the Brother sewing machines they have for sale on the shelf, give a smirk, and walk right by. But I have wondered if their serger is any good. Or, how can it be, at that price? 

 I was visiting my sister yesterday and we were trying to get her Babylock serger that she found on Ebay,  to run nicely, with no success.  Now I am not a mechanic, but I have had a bit of serger experience and can usually rethread and adjust the tension and get good results. So when I couldn't, I brought up the idea of maybe getting her the Walmart serger, and if it didn't work, then I would just return it, and mystery solved. 

This is where I would post pictures, but the website won't let me, so the link to everything is here:

I bought the serger and brought it home and carefully unpacked it, and did a test run. It came pre-threaded with four different colored threads.  I admit I was pretty excited and didn't look first at the threads that had been jostled in shipping and two had slipped into one slot, so when I sewed a sample the thread broke and I immediately assumed LEMON! But then I saw my mistake, rethreaded the machine correctly and ran another test sample. Perfection! I kid you not. My heart was pounding! This is amazing. 

The price I paid was only $252.00, and now as you look at the link you will see that since yesterday, it went down to $235.00. Wha??? 

Hrumph. 

Anyway. I packed it up and brought it over to my sister's house and set it up there, changing out the four little spools of colored threads for big spools of white serger thread and rethreaded the thing from scratch to see how difficult it would be if everything came undone. Not bad at all. Seriously. That is always the stumbling block with sergers, but the pictures on the interior show exactly where and how everything goes, and it works just fine. Not noisy, plenty of accessories and even a thread catcher tray which my $$$$ serger doesn't have. 

Lots of folks have sewing machines and want to sew clothes, (or home decor items) but have to finish the seam edges so the fabric doesn't ravel, and that is off-putting. With a serger, sewing the seam and finishing the edges is a one step deal. But sergers have been so expensive for so long or difficult to operate, that sewers convince themselves that they don't really need or want one. Now that is no longer the case. 

I am telling you all this, because it solves a lot of problems and makes sewing a truly enjoyable experience. 80% of my wardrobe was made using my serger, and it was a pleasure to construct the shirts, pants and dresses that I wash and wear with confidence. 

  

 

Just thought I would let you know.