Just a girl with a hammer

Category: Uncategorized

  • More gravel. More grasses. More sleeping.

    More gravel. More grasses. More sleeping.

    I’ve been an insomniac my whole life. Last fall everything got way worse and I basically stopped sleeping. Things are a lot better now, thanks to a light box, melatonin, and what they refer to as “sleep hygiene.” At night I cut out blue light which means for the last two hours of my day I live in a world without the internet or TV. I have to read books or work on projects that don’t require the Internet. This means I mostly read books because every project leads back to the Internet.

    I was reading Beth Chatto’s Gravel Garden the other night and I wanted to look up some plants she described . . . but I couldn’t. I just had to jot down a note to research it later. It’s probably for the best, since I’d just end up on Plant Lust, then I’d fall down the rabbit hole of Google Images and various garden blogs. How did people garden before the Internet? And how much more productive could I be without an iPad?

    In our own gravel garden things are chugging along. We’ve figured out where we want the deck and now we just have to figure out how to build it. The original plan was to wait on the deck until next summer but as I had rock being delivered, Greg said, “Maybe we should just do it this summer,” hence my mad scrambling and panic a few weeks back. All of the sudden that vague rectangle on the paper plan needed to be finalized.

    We’ve marked out the spot for the new deck with yellow spikes that I WILL trip over at some point. We’re still deciding whether we want to build the deck before or after the wedding in June.

    The parabola-shaped rock wall was changed to an even curve. Greg thinks this is a downgrade but my brain likes it better.

    I need to retool some of the planting because I totally planted on a grid and I didn’t overlap my plants enough, so I have big blobs of the same plants that don’t meld nicely into the other blobs. Anyway.

    What did I plant?

    The centerpiece of this bed is Arctostaphylos ‘St. Helena.’ I went to Xera and pumped Paul and Greg for their opinions on the very best manzanitas. I originally wanted A. viscida ‘Sweet Adinah’ but they warned me that it’s prone to randomly losing branches and it’s incredibly picky about soil, location, and drainage. St. Helena has those big beautiful leaves and will handle being in a northern aspect (though it’s still getting 6-8 hours of sun a day) better than others. I also like how blue the leaves are.

    Arctostaphylos manzanita ‘St. Helena’

    I wanted this bed to be low water and I wanted a lot of grasses. We’ve got a whole bunch of Schizachyrium ‘The Blues’, Pennisetum spatheolatum, Anemanthele lessoniana, and Festuca roemeri.

    Schizachyrium scoparium ‘The Blues’ in the garden of Greg Shepherd
    Pennisetum spatheolatum send up hundreds of little exclamation points
    Anemanthele lessoniana in my side yard
    Festuca roemeri Photo source: The Evergreen State College

    I have a bunch of Achnatherum calamagrostis on order, which will also get squeezed in here.

    I also shoehorned in smaller shrubs like Baptisia ‘Purple Smoke’ and Hypericum ‘Albury Purple.’ I also rescued a crapload of Salvia ‘May Night’ from the front garden so something in this bed wouldn’t be tiny. Can you tell I love purple?

    I also bought one of those stupid Digiplexis annuals on a whim, which I now regret. I do not like that pink.

    Baptisia ‘Purple Smoke’

    In other parts of the garden, I tore out the flowering currant (Ribes sanguineum) that used to live in between the two clumps of bamboo. I hated the color of the blooms and it’s a pretty boring shrub. I vacillated for years about ripping out this one. It’s drought tolerant and low maintenance but it wasn’t sparking joy, so out it went. I planted a new Ribes in the front garden and it blooms a nice hot pink that plays nicer with all of my orange flowers.

    In its place I planted Tetrapanax papyifera ‘Steroidal Giant’ (which is hiding behind the clump of Acanthus spinosus), Miscanthus purpurescens, a cananna (Canna musafolia), and three Calamagrostis foliosa that I rescued from another part of the garden where they didn’t get enough sun to color up like they should.

    The back rain garden finally got edged too. It’s always had a soil berm edging it, which just petered out into cedar chips.

    We’re not missing a stone, that’s the overflow notch.

    It looks pretty silly right now because I’m still futzing with the stone placement. Then all the cedar chips in the pathway will get scraped up and replaced with gravel. I still have so much work to do but I’m pleased with how everything is coming along.

    We tested happy hour in the garden this weekend and it still worked! Whew.

  • Garden bloggers’ bloom day April 2015

    Garden bloggers’ bloom day April 2015

    Happy bloom day! 

    It’s April, which means it’s camassia month! Huzzah!

    Camassia leichtlinii ‘Blue Danube’

    Iris x pacifica ‘Civic Pride’

    Iris x pacifica ‘The Eyes Have It’
    Hooker’s fairy bells (Disporum hookeri/Prosartes hookeri)

    Geranium phaeum ‘Darkest of All’

    Epimedium grandiflora ‘Red Queen’

    Tulipa ‘Flair’ with a bird-planted Cotinus coggygria

    Cistus obtusifolius

    Salvia ‘Flame’

    Syringa patula ‘Miss Kim’

    Lewisia cotyledon

    Lewisia cotyledon ‘White Splendor’

    Othonna cheirifolia

    False Soloman’s Seal (Maianthemum racemosum)

    Coronilla v. spp. glauca ‘Variegata’

    The blooms of Darmera peltata emerge before the foliage does.

    A very happy bloom day to you! As always, thank you to our host, Carol, at May Dreams Gardens.

  • Hardscaping is hard.

    Hardscaping is hard.

    We haven’t been very good lately at taking it easy on the weekends. Last weekend they were calling for rain but then on the Thursday before the forecast changed to sun and I was like, “I guess there’s no reason not to tear out the lawn in the backyard.”

    This was back breaking and it sucked so hard that I’m glad we may never have to remove sod at this house again. This was before, with our weird boards showing where a low deck will go.

    As before, we put our sod on craigslist and a bunch of weirdos showed up and took it home. Enjoy your crap lawn! You’re insane. Also, my back hurts.Those rolls were HEAVY. But now I can say I’ve removed every inch of sod from this property.

    Then Greg and I sat here in our mudpit and drank a gin and tonic and bemoaned that our work was just beginning.

    And then we moved two yards of gravel to the backyard . . .

    . . . so that this guy could deliver two tons of rock to me.
    And then Sunday morning I started working on a rock wall.

    And then I had a crisis of confidence and nearly broke down because I couldn’t tell if it was ugly or not. It looked great on paper! I’m still unsure of how to size the deck appropriately. So I pulled out some boards from the garage so I could make a poorly rendered mockup in Photoshop of what the deck might look like. Picture a beautifully stained 4 inch platform deck. And all of the old Home Depot retaining wall stones are going.

    I need to redo the right side of the rock wall and bring it out a bit; I don’t like the angle of the curve the way it is right now. The fake deck is currently 10×14 feet. I’ve looked high and low for some sort of guide for deck sizes (how much room do people need around a dining table? more than three feet?) but every guide is for a mega-deck in a yard where people hate gardening. I vacillate between thinking it’s way too big and fearing it will be too small. Our deck just needs to hold a table that sits four people and our cute little bamboo couch.

    We have two stupid things and one serious thing dictating the size and location of the deck. The serious thing is the drip line of the cedar, which we need to dig outside of, so it can’t shift left any more, unless we cantilever the deck over the footings. The two stupid things are what-ifs that we never do:

    1. Really large dinner parties. Though we host barbecues, we’ve never had a large dinner party in the summer (I hate cooking when it’s hot) and a long table could be moved to the open gravel area IF that ever happened. 
    2. Movie viewings. We don’t own a screen but we borrowed a friend’s screen ONCE four years ago and hosted a movie night. Greg wants me to leave this wall clear so we can hang the screen we may never borrow again:
    The view from the deck
    I’m sort of inclined to move the rock wall out even further, movie screen be damned (the front plants will be short, anyway). My main goal with this project is to get as much planting space as humanly possible while getting a slightly raised area for wining and dining (that may get a pergola or cover at some point). 
    I’m already happy because we won’t have a dormant lawn, come July. It made the backyard look so desiccated and sad all summer. All of the new plantings for the rock wall area will be drought-tolerant because I hate watering.
    If anyone has opinions or advice, I’m all ears. Bigger deck? Smaller? Cantilevered? Get rid of it all and put in sod? I just don’t know anymore.
  • Toiling in the basement. Again.

    Toiling in the basement. Again.

    Back when we had our earthquake retrofit, they had to cut into the drywall in our basement. That happened almost two years ago and yet I haven’t wanted to patch this area because I hate drywall repair.

    At some point in 2014 Greg screwed the old pieces back into place and I threw one compulsory layer of joint compound on top. It sat like that for a very long time, and every time we watched a movie down there I’d say, “I should really do something about that,” and then I would ignore it. Because patching is the pits.

    Because we did a shitty job getting the drywall pieces back in place, I had to do one billion layers of joint compound, with all the sanding that comes between coats. Of all the projects in the house, I really wish I had hired the drywall mudding and cornering out. I hate it and I’m not good at it. I’ve spent months of my life working on the walls in this room and they still look like shit.

    Anyway! It became very clear that the entire room was in need of repainting and since I am trying to be a little less of a dictator around the house, I relented to Greg’s one constant request: to paint the basement dark.

    As I’ve covered before, Greg hasn’t always felt like this was OUR house. I bought it, I picked out all the decor, and I just let him live here. We have this frequent push-pull where he complains, “You never let me choose anything in the house!” and then I run through the house pointing out all the things we’ve purchased together, and then he says, “I want to paint the basement black,” and I screech “NO!” and then he’s proven his point. And you know what? He doesn’t really want a black basement but we’re both stubborn enough to go through with painting it that way, just to spite each other.

    If this isn’t clear, I’m so excited to marry Greg. I’m crazy about him and I can’t wait to be his wife.

    When it became clear that the whole basement needed to be repainted, I suggested painting it navy blue. We tried a number of different colors that looked great in other people’s rooms but didn’t work for us. We finally settled on Blue Note by Benjamin Moore. If I wasn’t already marrying Greg I would marry this color. It’s so delicious and it’s perfect for a room where we watch movies. It’s so much darker than I’d ever choose normally, so Greg gets a gold star for this one.

    But first I had to deal with the windows, which had never been painted or trimmed out.

    And we needed to deal with Hall and Oates/Beavis and Butthead over the fireplace (free artwork left by the previous owners).

    I haven’t replaced the window hardware because I’m afraid it will disintegrate into rusty pieces and I’ll never find a replacement.

    I think, for never having done this before, I did a pretty good job. We then spent a Saturday installing baseboard and window trim.

    And Hall and Oates got replaced with a new cover. I want to repaint it black because I feel like it needs to be darker. We’re toying with the idea of building a teak mantel over the fireplace, which will fix that whole missing brick issue.

    And we hung a sweet bamboo curtain to obscure the storage area and provide some texture. Now we’d like to stash a bar in there.

    We spent another Saturday hauling the old couch up the stairs, and boy, was that fun! The pleather was peeling and splitting or we would’ve just kept it down there. Instead we bought the comfiest (though not the most attractive) couch we could find at Ikea: the Kivik. This room is for watching movies, so function trumped form.

    I also mounted and hung the tiki masks we bought in Hawaii. I glued lights inside so their mouths light up.

    We still need sconces over the TV, a skirt board along the staircase, new stair carpeting, a new area rug, a perfect mid-century modern credenza under the tiki masks, window treatments . . . there’s still so much to do. I also kind of want to drywall over the wood paneling in the stairwell even though I really don’t want to mud any more drywall seams. And it would be a total bitch to drywall around the stair risers. And yet . . .

    Maybe I’ll just wait for a super nice weekend to do that.

    To recap, when I moved in:

    After the first go-around with redoing the room:

    And now:

    We’re getting there.

  • A visit to Little Prince of Oregon Nursery

    A visit to Little Prince of Oregon Nursery

    A few weeks back I had the good luck to be included in a group blogger visit to Little Prince of Oregon Nursery. You might recognize their name because you’ve seen Stepables (walkable groundcovers) or their huge line of sedums and sempervivums. Or maybe you’ve noticed the hundreds of other plants they grow, because you’re not living in a cave like I am.

    The team at Little Prince of Oregon. Photo source

    I had no idea that Little Prince sold such a wide variety of plants. Agaves! Natives! Ground covers! Ferns! Edibles! Grasses! I went with a short list of plants to buy but ended up with the largest haul of anyone because I kept finding more plants I needed. What did I get?

    The biggest Tillandsia xerographica known to man. I was blown away by their tillandsia collection. It was hard to choose just one. This guy is hanging in an impromptu swing in the bathroom.

    This is bigger than my head, if the photo belies the size.

    Epimedium ‘Black Sea’. I have had a really hard time finding this epimedium. I bought three pots from Dancing Oaks a few summers back but they have been slow to bulk up. I freaked out a little when I saw that Little Prince offers them, and I snatched up five more. The leaves turn deep purple in the fall and winter, giving them their name. Little Prince has a pretty great variety of epimediums in their Fit for a King line.

    Mahonia nervosa. I bought a clump of this NW native a few years back and plopped it in the front rain garden. It gets full scorching sun and no water and it’s been flawless. It’s just as happy in shade. I bought a flat and a half to fill the side entry to the back garden, where the hose won’t reach and it alternates between searing sun and full shade. This plant is bullet-proof and I couldn’t love it more.

    Mahonia nervosa in winter

    Autumn fern (Dryopteris erythrosora). This evergreen fern was my favorite plant this winter, where it looked absolutely perfect, no matter the weather. It erupts into bronzy hues in the fall and continues all winter.

    Stipa tenuissima. My driveway strip is a little onesie-twosie and I’ve been wanting a mass-planted grass to unify the whole space.

    I thought, “What’s the weediest, messiest grass I could choose?” and went with this one. I have three of them already and the seedlings pop up in the funniest places. The heart wants what it wants, I don’t know.

    Our driveway. Don’t judge.

    Woodwardia unigemmata or Chain Fern.

    Polypodium pseudo-aureum ‘Virginia Blue’. If I had more than three square feet of moist shade, I would’ve bought more of this one. Those wavy blue leaves make me weak in the knees.




    Jovibarba hirta ‘Bulgaria’. I couldn’t leave Little Prince without some hen-and-chicks, and I’d never heard of this one.

    Agave franzosinii. If I wasn’t already planning to marry Greg (in June!) I would marry this beauty. Loree got some great shots of large specimens at the Ruth Bancroft Garden. This is my favorite agave right now. It’s hardy to 15-20 degrees, which means we’ll definitely get a super cold winter next year. Because life is cruel and sometimes it wants you to buy replacement plants.

    Agave gentryi ‘Jaws’. I’ve wanted this one forever, thanks to Gerhard and Loree. I finally have one!

    Agave parryi ssp. huachucensis. I had one of these (it was my favorite agave) and last winter turned it to mush. Again, because I planted this, next winter will be miserable. I’m so sorry!

    Agave utahenesis ssp utahensis. Look at those gorgeous chompers.

    I am still kicking myself for not getting more plants. Why didn’t I pick up a Silver Surfer agave when I’ve wanted one forever?!? What is wrong with me?

    I’ve got almost all of my plants in the ground now and I’ve been thrilled with how healthy and well-rooted they’ve all been. Keep your eyes peeled for LPoO when you visit your local nursery, and if you see something on their website that your nursery doesn’t carry, let them know you want it. And a huge thank you to Mark and the Little Prince of Oregon crew, who so generously opened their greenhouses to us.

    To see more coverage from our visit, check out:

    Danger Garden
    Gravy Lessons
    MulchMaid
    plant lust
    Rainy Day Gardener
    Sprig To Twig

  • Garden bloggers’ bloom day March 2015

    Garden bloggers’ bloom day March 2015

    I may be late but many of my blooms are early this year. We have tulips already, for Pete’s sake! The daphnes, hellebores, and Pieris are all still going, making this month feel especially floriferous.

    Tulipa ‘Flair’
    Tulipa ‘Come Back’

    Bigroot geranium (Geranium macrorrhizum)

    Ribes sanguineum ‘Variegata’

    Ribes sanguineum
    Rhubarb (Rheum x hybridium ‘Victoria’)

    Vaccinium ‘Sunshine Blue’

    Epimedium ‘Black Sea’

    Aucuba japonica ‘Rozannie’

    Fothergilla gardenii ‘Jane Platt’

    A happy bloom day to you! Thanks to our host, Carol.

  • Etta James lied

    Etta James lied

    There’s no fun to be had in the basement. A few weekends back the weather was terrible and I suggested to Greg that we watch House of Cards all weekend on the couch and he was like, “Yeah! Let’s do that.”

    Greg almost always spends his weekends working. I tend to spend it puttering in the garden. Our only daytime interaction tends to be me knocking on the office window, and screaming, “You should come outsiiiiiide! It’s so pretty out!”

    So we had a nice plan to spend the day together. Then he said, “I just have to answer a couple of emails,” and I said, “I’m going to vacuum the laundry room.” (Don’t judge.) Fast forward six hours and we hadn’t spent any time together and I had demo’ed this closet in the laundry room.

    It wasn’t original to the house and it was completely useless. It was so deep that things would just disappear into it. At some point we decided we should get rid of it. I’ve been decluttering the house for the last couple of months, and there was so much crap we didn’t need hiding in here. Somehow vacuuming led to pulling everything of this cabinet.

    Like a jerk, I ran upstairs and said, “Instead of watching Netflix all day in our jammies, how about we demo that cabinet in the laundry room?” and Greg stared at me and silently calculated whether he actually wants to marry me. But because I am a jerk, I was like, “This crazy train has left the station and this shit is happening!” and I just demo’ed it myself.

    It turns out that the cabinet was rotting, which made it really easy to tear apart. Also, the emergency water we had stored in the bottom had leaked and we had mold underneath. It was gross and I’ll spare you any photos. Armed with my respirator mask, I attacked it with bleach, the air purifier, and the dehumidifier.

    The only thing that was dicey about the whole endeavor was the fact that the cabinet was built right next to our water main. Which has an electrical ground for the living room attached to it. No pressure.

    Greg picked up more of the resin shelves we already had and filled them with all of his stuff. I know this probably doesn’t look better to other people, but it makes me SO happy every time I go in the basement. We have airflow to the floor, which is always good in a basement.

    Also? Our basement doesn’t smell musty anymore. The nervous, superstitious part of me thinks the musty smell will come back (it IS a basement) but for now I am so relieved to have that mold harboring cabinet out of there. And now our emergency water is stored on a metal rack over by the floor drain.

    We’ve also go you covered on tonic water, should an emergency hit and you need a mixer for your gin. Priorities!

  • Garden bloggers’ bloom day February 2015.

    Garden bloggers’ bloom day February 2015.

    I missed bloom day in January, even though I had but three things to post. It doesn’t get much easier than January. Also, so many people are buried in terrible weather, why wouldn’t you celebrate having blooms in your garden?

    Friends is on Netflix streaming. That’s why. Also, Greg pulled a quilt that his Grandmother made him out of storage and it makes our couch dangerously comfortable.

    Sarcococca ruscifolia

    Hamamelis I. ‘Early Bright’

    Mahonia x media ‘Arthur Menzies’
    But I’m ready to rejoice: I’m finally past the season when Ross had a monkey and the weather has been so delightful lately! I’m getting off the couch, but only for a little bit. 
    Arctostaphylos ‘John Dourley’

    Daphne odora ‘Mae Jima’

    Euphobia ‘Blackbird’

    Crocus chrysanthus ‘Romance’

    All of my hellebores are blooming and all of them look pretty terrible. I wasn’t quick enough to get Sluggo down this year.

    Helleborus orientalis ‘Metallic Blue Lady’

    Othonna cheirifolia

    Rosemary

    Arctostaphylos bakeri ‘Louis Edmonds’

    Helleborus x ‘Black Diamond’
    Daphne odora ‘Aureomarginata’ with a bumble bee!
    Not pictured: Pieris japonica, whose blooms I always miss even though the entire shrub looks gift wrapped and Euphorbia myrsinites.
    Happy bloom day! Spring is near! Thank you to our host, Carol, over at May Dreams Gardens.
  • Garden bloggers’ bloom day, December 2014

    Garden bloggers’ bloom day, December 2014

    I had blooms to show you in November, like this beautiful Crocus speciosus.

    Or my Salvia ‘Amistad’ that was improbably pushing out blooms, despite a freeze.

    Or my Helenium ‘Mardis Gras’.

    But I couldn’t pull my shit together last month (a recurring problem) and now those things have finally succumbed to weather. I’m left with Mahonia x media ‘Arthur Menzies’ outside.

    Indoors I have a few blooms to cheer me up.

    Cuttings of Echeveria diffractens I brought inside are blooming in a sunny window
    An unknown succulent blooms despite a tenacious mealy bug problem.

    Happy bloom day to you and yours! Thank you Carol for hosting us. I for one am looking forward to spring crocuses, hellebores, and a new year.

  • Garden bloggers’ bloom day October 2014

    Garden bloggers’ bloom day October 2014

    “Life starts all over again when it gets crisp in the fall.” –F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

    Ignoring the fact that the quote above is uttered by one awful person to another awful person in a book I didn’t really care for, I agree with the sentiment. Fall weather is finally here! I have been cooking and wearing socks and bringing tender plants indoors and I am so freaking happy about it. The bird feeders are up, my Netflix queue is full and I am so ready to hibernate for a bit. This is that nice time when we’re finally getting rain and cooler nights but the castor beans haven’t died yet and things still look okay.

    All of the salvias and agastaches are still going strong, acting like they just might bloom all winter if you let them. This canna popped up in a pathway and I left it to be a surprisingly effective hosebreak all summer.

    My bloom is sad because someone didn’t water me all summer.

    These Aster oblongifolius are my favorite right now. They cooked all summer next to reflected heat of the chimney without a drop of water and they couldn’t be prettier.

    I’ve spent more time than I’d care to admit internally debating whether Dan Hinkley was on a bender or responding to a dare when he named this Mahonia eurybracteata ‘Soft Caress.’ Its blooms aren’t quite as showy as its relatives but I’ll take them.

    Eutrochium rugosum is sited right next to some large clumps of snowberry, making this fairly uninteresting part of the yard look gift wrapped.

    Eutrochium rugosum and Symphoricarpos albus
    Plectranthus ecklonii was a spring addition to the dry shade under the cedar tree and I’m very happy with the late blooms.

    Is it early for Fatsia japonica to be blooming? It feels like it.

    Happy bloom day and happy fall weather to you! Be sure to visit our host Carol at May Dreams Gardens for the full show.