A Tree Surprise

We have a dwarf/ornamental-type tree on the southeast corner of our house, outside of the master bedroom. I had assumed it was a crabapple tree from the shape and size of the branches and from the fruit that Owen enjoyed hurling at the fence last summer. I have been looking forward to seeing it bloom all winter, partly to see what it would do.

The tree bloomed today, and this is no crabapple.


Dogwood, maybe? There are lots of dogwood in bloom right now, but I haven't seen one like this yet.

Flowering Quince

According to Grandma B., these shrubs are only worth having during the spring, as they are messy and ugly the rest of the year.

So I thought I'd better photograph it while it is in its prime.

We will rock you

All of the flower/shrub beds outside of our house are covered in black plastic with rocks on top. When we bought the house, J and I didn't love the rocks, but they promised to be a low maintenance form of weed control, so we called it good enough.

Rocks are not as low maintenance as we'd hoped. They collect leaves and twigs. We've tried rakes and leaf blowers but there is no efficient way to keep the rocks from looking junky. And we were constantly picking rocks out the grass. Plus the grass and chives grow through rocks regardless.

J and I hatched a plan to spiff up the shrub beds, and mulch is the answer. With this, we'd be at least maintaining a bedding material that we like to look at. We also learned that mulch is not advisable next to our house, due to termite issues. And since we wanted to put in beds for shrubs on the southeast and southwest sides of the house (underneath the bedroom windows), we decided to save to rock for those areas. J was jazzed to start this project, and we decided we'd start on the area closest to the patio first.

Please note that the record shows that J's comment prior to the de-rocking project was "Oh, it'll only take a couple or hours, and it'll be fun!"

Ha. Well, fun is relative term. And it took the better part of Sunday. But we have completed this much.



Hmm. This project definitely has a high tedious and sweaty work to landscaping impact ratio.



Here's where we stopped. I buried the cable/internet/phone line (apparently Medicom does not bore through rocks) and put in the stepstones, with the hope that this will remind me not to dig there.



But we have a long way to go. The rocks go to the fenceline.

One last photo.


This is where one of the new flower/shrub beds will be. I put in a snowball viburnum, which is supposed to grow 10 ft x 10 ft and cover the brick between the two windows. We plan to put in an edge border with some artistic swoop to accent the viburnum.

Oh, and it was 80 oF and sunny here this weekend.

Spring Break at Home

Mom and Dad visited last weekend. They helped us paint (and/or entertain O. long enough to enable the painting) the laundry room. It's a sunny yellow color called "linen napkin." Sorry if the photos are framed strangely. I was shooting from odd angles.



This is much better, I think. Bright, warm, and clean.

We did the cabinets and the trim, too. Now all that is left is to replace the door between the laundry room and the garage.


We also burned a good portion of the of the sticks, leaves, etc. collected from our yard during the winter in the outdoor fireplace. O. found this fascinating.


And, because we can't have the excess of combustible materials in our yard dip too low, Dad and J. replenished the firewood supply.

First Day of Spring

And things are changing, yet again.

The grass began turning green about a week ago. Daffodils, snowdrops, crocuses, tulip trees, forscythia, and scilla are in bloom. Everything has buds. Our favorite hardware stores are stocking mulch and compost.

I've potted pansies and purchased a lavender and a rosemary plant for the soon-to-be herb garden.

I think really like this more southernly spring.

Ceiling Fan #1

We installed our first ceiling fan this weekend. This one is located in the guest bedroom. We decided to begin there just in case our installation fails and disaster occurs.
So far, so good.