Garden bloggers' bloom day December 2012, Should I be worried? edition

And one day late, to boot. I've been preoccupied with being cold, hiding out under blankets, knitting, and rewatching the entire run of Gilmore Girls. I am so good at doing winter.

My salvia 'Black and Blue' is still going strong, though the weather isn't always kind to the blooms.

My Mahonia x media 'Arthur Menzies' is gorgeous right now, though it's being overshadowed by an increasingly gnarly looking castor bean plant. I'm waiting for the castor bean to turn to mush so I can get that humongous stalk out of the ground.

Salvia pulchella x involucrata looks like it might finally bloom.

My Knautia macedonica is still pushing out blooms.

Fatsia japonica!

In slightly troubling news, my hellebores are already blooming, which didn't happen until February last year.

My Allium schubertii are poking out of the ground. A lot.

Am I worrying over nothing? Am I going to lose these alliums once the really cold weather gets here? Will Luke and Lorelei ever figure out that they're in love with each other? So many questions.

Please visit our host Carol at May Dreams Gardens for a look at what's blooming in everyone else's gardens.

Surprise!

I've been painting again.

Greg and I always joke that whenever he goes away on business he comes back to find that I've painted a room. I try and wait until he's gone so he doesn't have to deal with paint fumes. Also, I like to sing while I paint and Eternal Flame is still such a good song you guys, but Greg doesn't need to hear that.

Hang on to your hats, this is dramatic (we're looking at the spot above the door).

Before:

After:

I KNOW. I know! It's crazy. The old color was the off-white from Metro Paint, which smells terrible and is made from recycled paint, so the colors were totally different from batch to batch. The new color is White Chocolate by Benjamin Moore, a color that looks exactly like white chocolate. Why would I bother? For starters, there was a spot over the door where I started to paint three years ago, then realized it needed to be patched, so I painted around it, then spackled it, then never painted. And I guess I got rid of the paint can at some point? So I was never going to find a match for that spot.

Then we installed baseboard in the kitchen, which I still can't show you pictures of because Tinkernation has neglected to publish my final post. I am contractually obligated to keep it under wraps until they do. But I had to patch the wall, which means the kitchen really needed to be repainted.

I bought a quart of White Chocolate and put up a swatch above the door, since Greg was away for the night. Then I was having so much fun I decided to paint a little further. Then I realized I was just painting the kitchen that night. I almost had enough paint to finish, too. Instead I had to pop over to Benjamin Moore the next day after work and hustle to get it finished before Greg got home.

It didn't work. He walked in and I was behind the stove with a roller and I weakly yelled, "Surprise!" and he was like, "I see the roller and the paint can but everything looks the same," and I had to explain the minute difference between the two colors.

All of the paint fumes with none of the dramatic impact! You're welcome, baby.

The good news is I really love the color and we have no visible patches. And it turns out I still know all the words to Eternal Flame and Walk Like an Egyptian.

Little improvements

When I decided to make curtains for the front rooms of the house I bought the entire bolt of fabric, or 20 yards. If I'm going to go to the trouble of making curtains that I'm just "meh" about, well I'm going to make 600 of them, damn it. You don't change course mid-stream or something.

I finally got around to making panels for the big window in the dining room and hanging an Ikea Enje blind. I ordered more hardware from JC Penny but screwed up and ordered one fewer than I needed. I also ran out of fabric, so this corner still has ugly, broken, dirty blinds.

Even though the room looks a little silly with just one set of curtains, the amount of extra light that pours through the Enje blind is dramatic. Our house is south-facing and having extra sunshine during the winter (when we can get it) is fantastic.

I think I might actually dye the curtains in this room, even if just to an off-white. I know, exciting times 'round here.

A mystery

Do you watch Ask This Old House? They have a section where they pull out a random tool or gadget and ask "What is it?" and the guys go around thinking up ridiculous ideas for what it could be ("It's a lazy susan for Tommy's sandwiches."). It's super cheesy and I LOVE it.

I could use them right about now.

We have a bolt on our basement floor. It just sticks out of the floor, right in the pathway between the door and the washing machine. It has some sort of electromagnetic force field that draws your foot to it, which means there's a lot of swearing coming from the basement because I always step on it.

It didn't correlate to any parts on the old furnace, though it had been retrofitted for gas at some point, so maybe the original configuration used it?

Original furnace

Greg tried to unscrew it but the thing wouldn't move. It's all of one piece, which makes me think it was put there when the slab was poured.

See how it's right where you want to walk when you're carrying a load of laundry from the dryer?

Anybody seen anything like this is an old house? Is this a portal to hell? An important bolt for an underground natural gas line? Does it involve the post right there? Any ideas? My foot is bruised and sore and I'm ready to take a jackhammer to it.

Hug a panicky bird

 

Did you have a good Thanksgiving?

We had a good long weekend. Greg and I played video games and watched bad movies and agreed that we left the house entirely too much. I cooked a big turkey for our friends but didn't eat any because I'm not crazy about it. Then I had to get on a plane on Sunday for a work meeting. But first I froze my butt off in the garden.

And now I need your advice.

This is the side entrance to the yard. It used to be in complete shade because my next-door neighbor's Ceanothus and Douglas Fir stretched into my yard and shaded this area. It was good and I planted all the ferns and hellebores I could get my hands on. Then my neighbor started going senile and thought I hated her Doug Fir and she had everything trimmed along the property line. Then this area was shady on the left but sunny on the right in the afternoon. Everything was fine until this August when we got a weekend of 100+ temperatures and then everything fried and flopped and looked like this.

This weekend I played whack a mole with my plants. I'd dig up one, decide to move it to another area, but then a different plant would be in its way, so I'd dig up that one . . . on and on. Right now the side yard has become a weird mishmash of plants, some of which will stay, others that will not.

This area badly needs height and some contrast. I gave it an enormous plastic pot of grass on top of an old kitchen stool. Sorry side yard, but not everyone gets to be an astronaut; someone has to fry the burgers.

The sweetbox (Sarcococca ruscifolia) has been there for over a year, stubbornly staying small. It's evergreen and fragrant and somehow escaped the blistering sun this summer, despite being a plant that is happiest in shade. So I think I wanna keep it here. I had toyed with the idea of an Acanthus hungaricus here but then I was given an Acanthus spinosus division from Ricki (whose gorgeous banners for your garden would make a terrific Christmas present) and that seemed like a reasonable replacement.

The Chinese fringeflower (Loropetalum chinense 'Sizzling Pink') was removed from another part of the yard and is hanging out here until I find a better place for it.

What would you plant here? It's fairly dry because of the Douglas Fir in the my neighbor's yard, and it sits in shade until the hottest part of the day, at which time it cooks. It's very narrow (less than 18"). It's a pain in the ass to get the hose over here, so moisture-loving ferns were never a good idea. 

Coming into the yard, where it's full sun almost all the time, I've put in Mexican feather grass, some salvias, and sedum 'Autumn Joy.' I ripped out the hops I had planted here because they couldn't climb this strange fence. I need something that can climb up anything. Would it be irresponsible to plant Virginia creeper? Would it even climb this?

Who has my inspiration?

Hark!

Disco Jesus wept . . . for his aluminum tree was awesome.

I am reluctantly getting into the spirit but I really just want to hibernate.

I can't leave well enough alone

This is our entry way. It was fine but I've been itching to paint the doors black. I'd been resisting this because black doors are de rigueur right now and I try to avoid trends. But then I realized I was being a stupid hipster and it's okay to follow trends sometimes. It's just paint.

So I painted the doors here and in the kitchen and I freaking loved them.

But then I started looking at the paint job in here and how the previous owner didn't even cover the old orange paint in the area between the front door trim and the coat closet trim. I started to get itchy to repaint the walls. Thanksgiving won't be perfect if I don't repaint the entryway!

Greg was like, "Wait, what, you're painting again? I thought you were all done." and I was like, "La la la, MORE PAINT FUMES HOORAY!" I had pinned this image a while back onto my "awesome paint colors" board. It's 'Peaceful Night' by Behr.

Image from Design*Sponge

I went to Home Depot and grabbed a gallon because I was like, "Oh, it will be so awesome I'll want to use it everywhere!" Without testing it first. Do you see where this is going?

Uh, that's not the same color. I know, Internet browsers, photography filters, blah blah, I should have tested the color first. Because it's electric cobalt blue. Cobalt blue is having a moment, so our entry way is totally on-trend but it doesn't really fit with the color scheme of the rest of our house.

I ran to Ikea and bought the largest natural wood frame I could find and threw a Fatsia japonica leaf in it (think it will last until Thanksgiving?) and tried to break up the blue with some scavenged artwork. No dice, it's still crazy blue. So we're going to have to repaint it. I don't hate the color (as I'm sitting here I'm realizing it's very similar to LeAnn's garage, which looks amazing) but it stands out from the rest of our house. We employ a pretty consistent color value throughout our house and this is off the charts in comparison.

If you're in love with this color and want the almost-gallon I have, just let me know. It's all yours. And then I am not allowed back at the Home Depot for at least a month.