Five Tons of Dirt

One of my goals this spring was to build, fill and grow plants in two raised beds in my back yard.  We built the boxes several weekends ago, per instructions on The Pioneer Woman.  My husband and I spent most of two days building them, with "help" from our 4-year-old.  Thankfully, my 6-month-old cooperated by taking some good naps so that we could get the job done.

Because I've never done a real garden before, I wanted to give myself a shot at success by bringing in good soil.  Gotta love this southern clay/rocky soil we've got here, but it would need a lot of amending to be fertile for vegetables.  We built two boxes, one 6 inches deep for herbs and small vegetables, and the other 12 inches deep, for growing potatoes, carrots and anything else that needs deep roots.

A local landscaping company delivered 5 yards (which my geology genius husband confirms weighs over 5 tons) of "potting soil" (already has sand and compost mixed in - and side note- the first time I typed the previous phrase I wrote "pottying soil".  nice.) and they dumped it on our driveway.  Unfortunately for us, the garden is in the back and all that dirt had to be carted one wheelbarrow-full at a time.  To date, all the dirt has successfully been transported to the back (thanks in part to an industrious young teenage boy looking to earn some money), though about half the dirt is still in mounds and needs to be worked into some landscaping areas.

I am champing at the bit to get my seedlings planted, but it would be prudent to wait another week or so, just to the weather is warm enough.  I did plant some potatoes already, but have yet to see any sprouts.  Its sort of silly how excited I get to see if anything has popped up.   Below is a photo of a couple of squash plants I started from seed a few weeks ago.  Yes, I know the pot is broken.  I have my suspicions as to how it got that way.  :)

In addition to the vegetable garden, I am planning a small succulent garden underneath a willow tree, incorporating it into a little rock wall that separates the back yard from the rest of our little property.  Like the vegetable boxes, I lined this area with newspaper and filled it in with dirt.  The newspaper was about 5-10 layers thick, which should will be enough to block weeds coming up.  My little helper was ready to dump dirt before the area was fully prepped.

A third gardening goal this spring and summer is an easy one... I want to grow a flower garden, not only to soften up all the brick of our house and retaining walls, but also for cutting and bringing fresh zinnias and sunflowers into the house.  Overlooking the driveway from a retaining wall, there was a pathetic little juniper garden, which I ripped out this week (photo below), and now I plan on working some compost and "pottying" soil into the clay and then scattering a mix of seeds out there.  Simple enough, and I hope it will be low maintenance, but high impact.

My last idea for the yard is to plant some sort of border plants along the front of the house and along the rock wall in the back yard.  I don't have anything particular in mind, but I am sure I will fall in love with many options when I hit the nursery next week.

Certainly gardening like this requires some forethought.  I have never built a garden from scratch, though I have inherited two gorgeous perennial gardens in two different homes we previously owned.  I am much more invested in planning and planting now more than before.  In the past, the gardens were burdens to upkeep, rather than something to be enjoyed.  Now I feel like the interest, time and passion is there... I almost feel like I'm working my homestead (inside and out), as opposed to solely focusing on the inside.

What do you think?  Do you enjoy gardening?  Do you enjoy someone else gardening?  What are you planting this year?  Any suggestions for perennial border plants?

Seriously Indecent

I have this awful feeling that the little river that entered our house almost two weeks ago created more than just a flooring problem.

We have now been living with more than 50% of our home in a complete wreck since The Flood.  Our dining room is still packed with an explosion of our hobbies (and the mess is now leaking into the living room), and the basement has no carpet, but has some larger pieces of furniture pushed into the centers of the rooms.  This alone is enough to bother most people, but for me, the organizer, the person who appreciate neatness, beauty and let's face it, control, well, let's just say my game is OFF.  Somehow, even the normal daily operations of the house are mildly jacked up.  Under normal circumstances, I'd never leave dried soap, toothpaste and water on the mirror and countertop in my son's bathroom, but for whatever reason, they've been there for awhile.  Oh well.  I'll get to it.

Since my last post, Serve Pro ended up cutting out a foot of drywall and insulation due to moisture that had gotten up in there.  So, that is on the docket to be repaired before we get to the flooring.  The work is scheduled to begin later this week, which has been enough to keep me optimistic about getting through the chaos.  I just can't wait to get the work going.















However.

My husband and I were all set to clean and drylock the exposed cinderblock to just ensure that this doesn't happen again.  We figured that drylock, along with reshaping the contour of our back yard and some maintenance on the french drain should be sufficient to keep us dry.  Well, my husband reached up behind the drywall tonight and discovered there is more moisture behind the insulation that is still there.  We don't totally know what that means yet, but while looking at all this we also discovered additional evidence of a longer-term moisture problem.

The next step is to have our contractor take a look at that, since he hasn't actually seen the basement since the drywall and insulation were removed.  Worst case scenario (I guess) is that we will lose more/all drywall and insulation, and the yard will have to be dug up to see why moisture is coming in there.  Best case scenario... um... I don't know.  My mind isn't really on best case at this point.

Still, though, there is that teeny part of me that is still relishing the idea of buying some new area rugs.  I gotta keep the positivity, man.

Pop Over to YHL

Since I am a little buried with work related to our basement flooding, along with all the normal operations of the house, instead of writing a big post, I'll pass along an interesting blog post from my favorite blog, Young House Love.  Their blog is about a young married couple who is renovating and updating their ranch home in Virginia.  They write about decor, demolition, construction, shopping and so on.  Recently, they've had a couple of good posts on cleaning out closets.  I think I might steal their gift wrap idea.  Do you have any favorite closet features that you can share?  Love to get new ideas!

Did You Ever Feel Like Ripping Out Carpet at 10:00 at Night?

Dude, I am so hopped up on caffeine right now.

I can hardly think straight. Seriously.

But, that could be because I am looking forward to redoing our basement floors.  Oh, the possibilities.  Ack!  I am beside myself.

I would not have chosen this particular timing to start a major home renovation... a recent death in the family, a subsequent long-distance trip, a recent trauma with our 4-year-old (okay, major for *us*... our first ER trip with him), a newborn baby, 2 birthdays, etc.  Nothing about the month of March here screams, "hey start a new reno!"  I haven't even finished getting my garden started, though we already built the raised beds.

Well, so, timing is bad, but our basement flooded last night due to massive rain in the area that created white water rapids through the woods behind our house.  Clearly, a flooded basement requires immediate decisions and immediate action.  My husband and I typically are those people who think about major purchases or projects for quite some time.   We weigh all the options, take some time to get expert input, call our dads,.  You know.

So, last night, at 9:30 at night, we have a water clean up guy here and he's quoting a boat load of money to do the clean up, which would entail ripping up carpet, cleaning it and reinstalling.  Hmmm.

We do not *love* that carpet.  It is stained in the major traffic areas (hello, take your shoes off, people) and we've talked about installing new flooring.  Some day.  Like, when the baby is older.  Or when our parents are visiting and can help us out.  Or whatever.

Anyhow, it seemed like a gross waste of $1200 to reinstall carpet that we don't love.  We still need the water clean-up people to get rid of all the moisture, but we thought if we could save that much money by demo-ing the carpet, let's go for it.

Armed with crowbars, hammer, knife, wet vac, broom... we headed down to the basement at 10:00 last night.  (We made time for ice cream and thin mints after the water clean-up guy left.)  We removed 2 rooms of carpeting in about an hour and half.  My husband ripped out the carpeting and padding and I went to town on the carpet tack strips.  Oh yeah, I love swinging a hammer.  Something very gratifying about physical labor for me these days.  It must be me getting in touch with my farming roots.  Way to go, Dad, your agricultural mechanization degree rubbed off on me a little.

In the remaining room, the family room, we removed all the carpeting this morning.  Our 4-year-old even got in on the action, ripping out the foam padding and hauling it to our growing trash pile in the garage.

The water clean-up crew arrived as I was typing; the basement is about to be transformed into a wind tunnel. More updates to come.

P.S.  Would you call this "indecent order???"  This is our dining room, which now houses most of our basement stuff... its like all of our hobbies exploded.   Let's play a game.  Can you spot any of our hobbies in this cell-phone photo?!!

Ready to Go Gifts

In the past, preparing for a trip could be stressful for me and I almost always forget to pack semi-important stuff (hello, you do need your toothbrush when you go away).  A few years ago, I made a master packing list, a la Flylady (mine was a much simplified version) and I now need to re-do my list since there is another person in the family.  Until then, though, I made a list of needed items for an upcoming trip ::  

One item I wanted to be sure to pack was a gift for my husband's cousin's family since they let us crash at their house as we made our way north.  (We didn't want to do a 10+ hour trip in one day with two little kids, so we invited ourselves over to their home... wasn't that nice?)  Anyhow, since we *did* invite ourselves, it was appropriate to plan on bringing a gift and it happens that the hostess is expecting a baby in the next few weeks.  Perfect, it is so easy to whip up some baby gifts.  

Well, unless you need to whip up baby gifts, then of course its an impossibility.  Do you know what I'm saying here?  It seems I have plenty of time for sewing or organizing or whatever unless I have some sort of deadline.  In the last several days, for whatever reason, my two children have been a little, ahem, "high needs."  Which basically means that there hasn't been a ton of time for extras.  

It happens, though, that I have a dedicated shelf in my sewing room for storing gifts ready to give.  It even has a label on the actual shelf that says "gifts ready to give" (surprise, I love my label-maker).  Since I haven't had time to sit down and sew, I went shopping at my gift shelf and found some forgotten flannel burp cloths (leftovers from a baby-item sale I did), a quilted bib (an extra from a bib-sewing extravaganza for my own little one), and a nursing cover (which I made for someone before I found out she already had one).  I stacked the four little baby items and secured them with a ribbon.  Hostess gift  ::  done.  

Art for the Train Room :: Part Two

On a recent trip to Atlanta, I stopped by Ballard's Backroom, the outlet store of Ballard Designs. I was looking for super sale items and ran across a table of art work that was from catalog photo shoots.  Everything was $9.99, plus 20% off.  I have been scouring in the internet for art for my mantle, so I looked through every single poster.  I didn't find the right art for my living room, but I did find a great square poster of a rustic looking map of the United States with a couple of trains super imposed on top.   I picked it up, remembering an art project on one of my favorite blogs, Young House Love.   

A few days later, it was time to tackle the project, and my 4-year-old was more than willing to help out.  I gathered my supplies  ::  the poster, paper cutter, mod podge, t-square, mini paint roller, mini paint tray, painters tape, black craft paint, and a square piece of wood that has been floating around my house for months now.  The wood came in the bottom of a box that contained a side table from Pottery Barn and I held on to it because it looked so cool and distressed.  It is very thin, maybe 1/8 or less of an inch thick and I have no idea what kind of wood it is.  The worn look of it was going to be a perfect mounting surface for the new Ballard train poster.

Using the t-square, I marked and taped off a border around the piece of wood.  This was going to become a black "frame."  

In the photo below, note one of my favorite tools  ::  Susan Sargent scissors.    They can handle just about anything.  If you live in the Northeast and you like color in your decor, you should plan on attending her yearly Memorial Day sale out at her warehouse near Manchester Vermont.  Years ago, I loaded up on these scissors for an absolute steal and I still give them away as gifts.  Just a heads up, the sale is a seriously cut-throat event for all kinds of fancy ladies.  Its dog-eat-dog for the best sheets, dishware, fabric remnants, one-of-a-kind furniture pieces, etc.  

My son helped roll the tape down to make sure there were no air bubbles.  Then, we created our frame with black craft paint.

After the paint dried, we removed the tape and applied mod podge to the back of the poster using the little paint roller.

Technically, you're supposed to adhere the paper to your surface with the mod podge and let it dry before you mod podge the rest of the piece.  I did not obey these instructions and had a heart-sinking moment where I thought I ruined the poster because it bubbled up on the edges when I applied the glue on top.  Instructions, people!  Turns out they are important.  Thankfully, as the piece dried, the bubbles smoothed themselves out and I didn't have to throw our project away and cry.  

Though it was not on purpose, I love how using the paint roller (instead of a brush) gave the dried mod podge a subtle leather-looking texture.  

Once everything was dry, the outcome was better than I hoped. Unfortunately, it is not yet hanging in my son's room, because we have to figure out a creative way to attach hanging hardware to such a thin piece of wood.  And by "we,"  I mean my husband.

Sum total of this project was about $8 for the poster... all of the other supplies were on hand. 

What kind of DIY art projects have you done?  Do you involve your children or prefer to create quietly and alone?  Thanks for reading!