This Just In....

So much is happening here at Chez Johnson that I have hardly had time to post anything. Luckily I did take pictures of the work, which began on Friday. Here is the master bedroom with 'My Big Mistake' red couch and the queen bed. That couch is now gone to Goodwill Heaven, and I am so relieved. Without missing a beat, we disassembled the queen bed, and Dave began ripping up the BEIGE carpet, pad and tack strips, nailed into the concrete foundation. This is going to be my new ground level studio, and my old upstairs studio is now Dave's music room. We are both so happy with this plan. My new studio will be 16'x16', smaller than the 25'x13.7' of my previous studio, but I have the master bath, and master closet adjacent, which more than makes up for the space I relinquished. Less floor to sweep, no stairs to climb and water so much easier to obtain, for my painting projects. And my windows look out on my garden, so inspiring. Just now we spied a couple of orioles at our feeder.

 
 We finished clearing out that room and began moving out the furniture from the two other carpeted bedrooms.

My bedroom stuff filled the hallway and that carpet came up quickly, so onto the last room, Dave's bedroom, which also got cleared into the hall after returning my furniture. Here's Dave sleeping in his new queen size bed which we got for him 1.5 years ago. It's about time he enjoyed it. His twin bed got moved upstairs to a corner of the music room, as a daybed. When we have guests, they will sleep in my bed and I will go upstairs. What an easy solution.
Our new bedroom & studio floors will be the same Pergo as my old studio, as it is white, impervious to dog nails, spilling accidents etc. Dave has all his stereo stuff, speakers, wire, four guitars and a ukulele, TV, laptop, lounge chairs and privacy. All of it out of sight and needless to say, inflicting less clutter on the main floor decor.

  
All that carpet ripping up and furniture moving was finished in one day, and we were shot. Our friend Carl came and took away all that carpet and pad and the next day, Saturday, Dave was feeling like painting, so I didn't stand in his way.

This house came with an almost full 5 gallon bucket of semi-gloss white ceiling paint. Woowoo! That saved us a bundle and it will more than cover this room. This morning at 6 am, Dave the Wonderful was applying the second coat.
I love a white studio.

In other news, we sold the van to Dave's sister (while they were down here visiting last week) and are now down to one car and one driver, me. Yay! So much more room in the garage. Dave rides his bicycle to golf, which in itself is amazing, and it gives him some modicum of independence.

For My Next Act...

 Now that the garden is in, and watered, I am ready to tackle my next project. Out goes all the beige bedroom carpeting and in comes new Pergo floors. We will also be moving around some room functions. The upstairs studio will be taken over by the wonderful Dave and I will have a new studio downstairs in the former master bedroom, off the great room, and much closer to water for painting.
Speaking of painting, all the rooms will be painted and made glorious, in our humble opinion.
The house will be in an uproar as furniture gets moved out and painters and flooring guys take over.
If I could send Dave away to a rest home for the duration I would. Or maybe make sure he is busy golfing...
 I'll be keeping the blog updated as things move along...or not.

 Adios for now.

Last Day of April

 It is the last day of April, and we have finished the garden prep. Hurray!
All the troughs are painted and we have our lounge chairs in place in our tiny wooded corner where we can take in the garden and RELAX. The weather is cool, but the sun is warm and it is heavenly to just sit and watch the birds and listen to their songs.

 We have roses in bloom, and the daffodils that I planted late continue to open. Our peppers and tomatoes are coming along nicely and yet the green beans are looking sad. It is still too cool at night to keep them happy. I will replant, me thinks.
I have calibrachoa and bacopa to put in the daffodil pot when they have ceased.

 The Proving Ground bed is starting to sprout little seedlings, thrilling me daily. This is my first time to grow zinnias, from plants and seeds and I am so happy to see their enthusiasm. I have Green Envy seeds planted, along with fuchsia and purple zinnias, which will be alongside.      Dazzling!

 I decided we needed a fire pit and came up with this cheap and easy solution. The tub is from Home Depot, $20 and the grate is from Lowes, $17. We used Duraflame logs and cut them into smaller pieces, just to try out the idea. It worked just fine. But we can't stay awake very long (OK we're exhausted) and so a twenty minute fire is enough.

In the front garden, I ripped out two perfectly healthy yet ugly shrubs and replaced them with a hydrangea, Endless Summer, which I had before in my country garden. Very dependable and this one has tons of buds already. Some added begonias will keep it company until it grows bigger.

 We put the coral bark maple in the empty spot vacated by the ugly shrub. Perfecto, in my humble opinion. I have never done a nicer front garden, and my arm is getting tired from the constant patting myself on the back.
Since we have so much lysimachia, I cut sprigs and stuck them into lots of bare spots, hoping by next year to have a carpet of lime green between the hostas and azaleas.

Speaking of hostas I found a lone white leafed variety at Lowe's, all battered and sad looking and convinced them to sell it to me for $1. Ha!
I've had one before but the voles ate it. Let's hope we have better luck here.

Bliss

Good Morning, and it is good, cuz it's raining. And that means a well deserved day off. 

 Dave finished painting two more troughs yesterday and now only two are left to paint.

 We enjoyed our first lettuce harvest yesterday, but I couldn't stand to take a whole head, so I carefully cut off the outer leaves and added some spinach we had on hand. It was lovely and so fresh, natch. The onions I have interplanted are coming along just fine. I could harvest a few for scallions. 

We have added a bench from our friend Mary's garage sale. It will get weatherized after the rain stops. Dave has also been weatherizing our fence, so this bench will soon match the color.
My day has been exciting. Laundry, kitchen, napping. Somebody  has to do it.

Finishing Touches

 And then he said, let's go to the paint store...

Wow. What a difference it makes to have these two troughs painted. They look like we have huge terracotta containers now. OK, in our humble opinion. But it does look so much better than the plain silver + Tractor Supply label.

Two down, four more to go. This is Dave's project, and it seems like golf might have to wait.

 I decided to fill the cubbies in the corner bed with leftover plant pots. These are square but flexible enough to coax into diamond shapes, so they stay put in the too-large holes. This will work until the zucchini and watermelon vines get too huge and cover the bed edges. I'll move the pots then.
By the way, that green disc in the ground is a cover for our propane tank. It's always in the way.

The Last Bed of 2015

 Empty and filled. Sigh...so happy. I decided to wait to transplant the roses into this bed until fall and instead used the space for my cucurbits. I planted Ice Box watermelon, Japanese cucumber, yellow zucchini, and cantaloupe.

 I transplanted my heuchera to the back of the new bed, along with some lysimachia which will fill in wherever it can. We ran out of soil so the cubbies in the blocks are empty, so far. I have a flat of petunias, and another of marigolds that need homes. More dirt to come to fill pots and cubbies.

 
 Last year we bought three dogwoods, reduced for clearance and one croaked, but surprisingly the healthiest looking one. Wha? The other two have bloomed and I am delighted to have one of each color.

 The azaleas that came with the house are in bloom and dazzling. Hot pink and lime green, woowoo!

 
The hostas have unfurled and are so grand. I am so relieved to find that I have enough shade to have these beauties again. I don't think I could garden without hostas.

Now the structure of this year's garden is finished, and I can turn my attention to the mess we left all around the yard, in the house, and garage and maybe see if I still have a studio upstairs.

The Plan Was...

Here's the yard when we first bought the house. A blank canvas, ready to make into my dream garden. I collected images, thanks to Pinterest, and wanted to use the whole yard to form nice neat beds, filled with every plant imaginable.

So many ideas, but of course there is one problem. We have no soil. Now that we see what the builders are actually doing to everyone's plot before the house is built, we know they dump rock and cover it lightly with clay and then Bermuda grass. Ugh. So my lovely plans had to be altered. Enter raised beds.

Again, Pinterest provided the idea of using stock tanks as raised beds, and luckily, I convinced Dave to let me do this. He had to help of course, since the heavy lifting is his forte.

And then concrete blocks entered the picture...

These I could practically do myself. At least I could go to Home Depot, pay for them and have the workmen load them into my van. Dave did the transferring into place, as I pointed and directed.
Armed with more planting space and enthusiasm than good sense, I enlarged my ideas and began to invest in more plants.


 The Pink Dogwood, Rhododendrons, Knockout Roses, all of which are fine in pots, temporarily, but will outgrow them very soon, Ah, it was then I realized I needed one more bed.

Double high for deeper roots, and angled to avoid encroaching on the adjacent pear tree. We got the blocks and built them without a sketch! Geniuses, we are. Seconds after we finished, and were sipping our G&Ts, the rain came down again and that was it for the day. Today we fill it with dirt and plants and again, see the light at the end of the tunnel. So happy.