I missed bloomsday and probably your birthday

So I missed garden bloggers' bloom day, even though I still have things blooming in my garden. I have been incredibly distracted lately, flitting from one thing to the next.

I'm hosting Thanksgiving, so I'm in full-on house-crazy mode. A couple of years ago I decided to install a range hood and patch the hole in my kitchen ceiling right before Thanksgiving. Lately I've been obsessing over decor in the living room, as if anyone is going to notice any of that. People will notice whether the turkey was dry or if we ran out of wine.

If we're being honest, having enough wine means no one notices the turkey.

My brain tends to home in on one thing, as if THAT'S the reason I can't [fill in the achievement]. Of course I didn't get a raise! How could I when my living room mantel is such a mess? Thanksgiving will be a disaster if I don't repaint the front door! Nevermind that I haven't answered emails all week, many of them ABOUT THANKSGIVING, that door! That door.

That mantel.

Last weekend I didn't really feel like working in the garden but I had 200 bulbs to plant. So I got out there and it turned out to be one of my favorite types of day for gardening. It was cold and brisk but I could get by with just a sweatshirt. I planted crocuses, camassia in the rain garden, tulips and alliums in the lab, and daffodils under the coreopsis. I'm hoping the coreopsis will hide the dying foliage of the daffs but I'm skeptical of my placement.

I also moved and removed a lot of plants. My Phylica pubescens that I was so excited about? I killed it. I don't feel so bad since there was a vigorous conversation about this plant on Scott's Facebook page.

I hate that plant! It dies if you look at it wrong!
You can't under-water it. But you also can't over-water it. Or it will die.
That plant drinks all the milk and then puts the empty carton back in the fridge.
Don't look at it, period. Or it will die. 
Phylica pubescens watches you while you sleep.

At least I'm in good company. I swapped it out for some of my cannas. I swapped those cannas out for some different cannas from the backyard. Clear as mud? Moving on!

I thought I ordered three New Zealand wind grasses last spring. I actually ordered three New Zealand sedges. They are fine sedges but they don't have the height and color I wanted for this area.

I moved two to the berm but I suspect I'll rip them out, come spring.

 

I'd write more but I need to sand that chemical burn out of the coffee table or Greg will never marry me. Happy Friday, happy bloom day!

Garden fever, part deux

It was almost a year ago that I posted I was suffering from garden fever.

It's back, the garden fever. All day at work I'm thinking in the back of my head about what I could plant along the back side of the house. Do I have a place for another viburnum? What's a good low-growing evergreen for the area with the weird willow? Could I turn that suckering stump into a birdbath? Is 28 ferns enough? (No.)

It honestly makes me feel very manic. Fall and spring are really creative times for me, when I get very excited about EVERYTHING. I have a stack of interior design books, a pile of yardscaping guides, new music on the iPod, crude sketches everywhere . . . I catch myself bouncing in my seat when I catch wind of another plant sale. Everything feels full of possibility.

I was flipping through a plant encyclopedia at lunch one day and I felt like I would just die if I didn't get a goatsbeard (Aruncus) under the conifer in the backyard. I called Marbott's after work and found out that they don't carry it and I was so sad. I didn't want to drive all the way out to Portland Nursery during rush hour, either.

I saw this picture in this yardscape book of gas water heater flue baffles used in the garden and I. had. to. have. some.

Yanked from The Revolutionary Yardscape, p. 160

Do you know how freakishly hard it is to find those? Nary a hardware store in Portland (not even Wink's!) carries them, there weren't any at The Rebuilding Center, and the online stores that carry them (Sears, mainly) don't include the dimensions or a picture. Stymied again!

That's why it makes me feel so much better when I hear from friends who are just as antsy to get out in the mud to start planting. And then I saw this, from A Way to Garden.

"I garden because I can't help myself."


On Being a Gardener: From "And I Shall Have Some Peace There" from Margaret Roach on Vimeo.

That's exactly how I feel. I can't help myself--what am I going to do, just not garden? That's not an option. I honestly don't understand how people DON'T get excited by gardening.

In other news, I think this mystery bush might be a dwarf Canadian hemlock. Maybe? Either way, I want to move it somewhere else. That's the bedroom off the deck there and I want something that smells good so the scent will waft in through the screen door that I'll have someday. Can someone drop a hint to the boy that a screen door would be an excellent birthday present?

And one of these. WANT. 

'Fireworks' fountain grass

The dining room, or how I spent my labor day weekend.

My dining room is odd.  When I bought the house the trim was missing from an entire wall where there had clearly been water damage at some point.  I figured I'd have to spend the next year visiting The Rebuilding Center looking for matching trim.  Then there's the half carpet situation.  The wood floor actually extends underneath and beyond where the carpet ends, but only by 8 inches.

I have a theory about this.  My realtor thinks I'm crazy.

In Portland Maps, under the section where they break down the square footage, there's a carport that measures 140 square feet.  I don't have a carport.  I think this section of the dining room used to be the carport. 

It would explain why I have an electrical panel in the dining room. It would explain why there's wood flooring only in half the room. 

Anyhoosy, the dining room was a bit of a mess.  Paint that didn't meet the corners, missing trim, electrical outlets hanging out of the wall.  That first week I was working on the house my electrician friend Josh came and took care of all the safety hazards.  He cleaned up the bad wiring in the attic, anchored the electrical outlets properly, and did a once-over to make sure I didn't go up in smoke.  One day I was home, recovering from dental work, when I noticed some boards high on a shelf in my garage.

The missing trim! It was all there!  Once I got that up I was motivated to paint the trim.

Once the trim was painted I got the bug to paint the whole room.  I had originally wanted to paint the dining room a steel blue and the living room a deep warm orange.  But I sort of liked having the rooftop painting against the green . . . it made parts of the painting pop in a way I didn't think they would on a blue wall.  So I put some paint samples up and found a pale green I liked.

A funny thing happened at the Home Depot.  The color swatch I put on the wall was a Glidden paint sample.  When I went to purchase a full gallon I asked for it to be put in a Behr base. I figured they'd grab the color coding from the Glidden paint and just put it in the Behr base.  Instead they used the color matching computer program.  The resulting paint did NOT match the paint sample I put on the wall.  It had a sick fluorescent tinge to it.

It was the color of toothpaste!  Seriously:

It made me crazy, so crazy I couldn't stand it.  The next day I went and bought more paint samples.  Two days later, Labor Day, I went back to Home Depot and got a new paint color.  It wasn't as gray as I wanted, but I could live with it.  It's very pretty in the morning light.  At night it almost has a metallic sheen.

 

 

Soon I'll reupholster the chairs with a more vibrant pattern in an orange or yellow tone.  Someday I'll have the floors refinished and extended so I can get rid of that crazy zigzag carpet.  For now the paint demons have been quieted, though I'm sure they'll start screaming again soon.  I never though I was compulsive until I bought a house; now I'm pretty sure I could paint trim for a millennium and I don't know if I'd be in heaven or hell.  I'm learning so much about myself, mainly that there's a lot of crazy in here.  Or maybe that's the paint fumes talking.