really? that easy?

Switching from living in an apartment to a house comes with a lot of changes.  When we bought our house (way) back in 2009, we knew we needed to get a mower.  

We don't have a huge yard, although compared to the usual yard size where we live, it is a good sized smaller yard.  Obviously, we wanted some sort of push mower...we'd look ridiculous on a riding mower and have no idea how we'd get it in and store it in our yard.  Plus, on backyard is on a slope. 

We also didn't want to worry about getting gas or plugging in a cord.  So we opted for a reel mower. 

We bought a used one from my mom's one co-worker.  It was cheap and we thought this was the answering to our mowing needs.  

It did work...however you had to go over the same section 3 or 4 or 5 times.  And it didn't really cut the grass completely.  It mostly flatten the grass down.  We naively thought that's how it was with reel mowers.  Oh and the plastic adjuster had broken off so the wheels we uneven and wouldn't stay straight.   We knew the blades should be sharpen, but we just didn't get around to doing it.  

Fast forward 2.5 years later:  We have learned the error of our old thinking.  

Driving in the car one afternoon, we passed a guy rapidly mowing his grass using a reel mower.   Grass was flying and he didn't seem to be exerting much effort.  What kind of fantastic mower did he have?

We were near a home improvement store and decided to go in and check out the reel mowers.  We looked at the small selection they had and picked out a 16 inch model for $99.  

We took it home and assembled it.  We were still unsure about how, if any, better it would cut the grass.  We took a quick push and......grass went flying!  

The picture above still amazes me to think that it's that easy.  It's super sharp and so easy to maneuver through the yard and up our hill.  We're in love!

Could we have just sharpen our old mower and saved a little money?  Yes, probably.  But the knob that adjusted the wheels had snapped off and it was a little rusty.  

Could we have just bought a brand new one in the beginning and experienced how easy the reel mower could be from the very start?  Yes, definitely.  Lesson learned!

garden destruction

Before we bought our house in 2009, we had a vegetable garden for a few years at my parents house.  Their house is situated near farmland and isn't fenced in at all.  We grew a variety of tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, melon, eggplant, peas, beans, and other edibles in the garden and had a pretty good success rate.  We'd harvest pounds and pounds of tomatoes during our twice weekly visits during the growing season. 

When we were looking for a house, we had a lot in mind for our backyard.  The major thing was a fairly decent area for a garden.  Our house had a nice size backyard for our area, but it was on a slope.  We set to making raised beds and bought in nice blend of soil and made sure everything was healthy.

Our first growing season (2010), was off to a good start.  Our tomatoes shot up and grew tall and prolific.  

Then, one day we noticed the leaves started to curl up and wilt.  The next day they took a yellow and brown appearance.  The flowers stopped blooming and no more fruit was produced.  We picked maybe 8 tomatoes from those plants before they died off completely.  What was the cause of this?  Blight? Wilt?  

We took a leaf sample and went to our local nursery to talk to the experts.  While they couldn't say for sure, they did ask us if we had any Black Walnut trees close to our property.  We did.  Our neighbors have two Black Walnut trees which are maybe 7 feet from where our tomatoes were.  Evidently, these trees have a chemical called juglone that can be toxic to certain plants, especially tomatoes.  There wasn't much that could be done at that point as we were told you'd need to plant the tomatoes 25 feet away from the trees and even that might not work.  

Despite all this tomato devastation,  we planted a new round this summer.  We love the idea of growing fresh vegetables right outside our door and decided to plant them in a bed even further away from the Black Walnut tree.  Everything was going well until a few weeks again, we noticed the "Walnut Wilt" reappearing.  We didn't panic, we could still get some fruit off the plants if they succumbed again to juglone.  

However, we didn't plan on animals attacking our tomatoes constantly.   The other day, I walked out to check our garden and found this:

This tomato was about the size of two golf ball and we were eagerly awaiting the day to pick it.  But something else got to it first.

So we decided we needed to fence the bed in.  We had some chicken wire left over from a previous project so we used that.  The holes we a little bigger than we wanted, but we figured it would still keep out the critters eying up our produce.  

We were feeling good about this until the following morning:

Obviously we were dealing with a smaller animal or a bird.  We have a family of chipmunks that live in our neighbors yard (or ours it seems), so I leaning towards chipmunks.  (They dig holes all over our flower beds and we can't seem to get rid of them.)  We have since bought new chicken wire with incredibly tiny holes, so nothing can possibly get in through the holes.  So far, so good (fingers crossed).  However, we did witness a hungry squirrel running around the fenced in bed trying to figure a way to get up.  Luckily, he got frustrated and jumped around frantically before running his usual exercise course along our fence and taking off to another yard.  

If only critters and Black Walnut trees attacking our tomatoes were the only gardening problem we have.  

On Friday morning, after Kinsey got back from his morning run, he checked on our garden and everything was fine.  Less than 40 minutes later, I went out to water before we left for work and was met with complete pepper massacre:

In all, our two tallest and most flowered pepper plants were snapped in half, two more were pulled straight up from the ground, and the remaining six were fallen over and trampled on.  We have no idea what happened.  A little chipmunk (our usual garden suspect) couldn't have done this massive work.  A squirrel doesn't seem likely either.  A rabid raccoon?  A skunk?  A bear? (We haven't seen any of these in our yard ever.  I doubt the bear, but there have been bear sightings in the boro we live in about 5 times in the last 18 months.)

So we're down to 8 peppers still in the ground (we started with 13 at the beginning).  I'm not sure how damaged these remaining ones are, but hopefully we get a pepper or two.  This bed will obviously be fenced in immediately.  

backyard garden projects

Last week, we decided to make another flower bed in our backyard.  This is the first tiny step in what we hope to be a massive backyard renovation.  Two major things we'd like to do include:

1-  Build a new patio.  Either by putting stone pavers over our existing concrete one or removing (which I assume would be very time consuming and not to mention rather backbreaking!) the concrete and laying flagstone in a free form pattern. 

Here's our current patio...

 I really like these pictures of what the flagstone could look like. 

2- building a shed.  The shed we have now is a small plastic one and isn't really too practical for storing garden tools, containers, and really anything other than our bicycles.  Ideally, we'd like to building on the very back of the yard in the far right hand side of the picture below.

Which brings us to our current project of the new flower bed.  We already have a small bed along the left side of our yard, so we decided to put this one on the right side along the rail fence.  We eventually want to make the bed a lot bigger and more in a half circle shape.  Possibly even with a bird bath in the middle once the ground is level.  But for now, we opted for a simple rectangle to get things started. 

First, we started by making shovel indents in the grass where the bed would be.  

Next, came over turning all the grass clumps and digging through and removing all the various objects we find in our yard....glass pieces, huge rocks, marbles, broken pottery, plastic lions, and the usual things. 

Once the soil was nice and clean of debris, I planted the new flowers I got from Kinsey's mother that morning.  

More plants, including my new favorite: Lamb's Ear (front center)

Rose Campion

Columbine (one of my new favorites)

These are not in our yard, but Kinsey's parents.  I love the circular shape inside the flowers and this dark color.  We plan on getting some in these color for our yard soon.

"Moonless Night" daylilies, which are supposed to have a dark maroon and black flower.  

Here's Kinsey giving the new transplants a nice long drink. 

Here's the finished bed after putting some leaf mulch around the plants.  (The green at the close right side by the post is daffodils.  They bloom along every post by this fence in the early spring.)

early may flower garden

Here's some spring pictures from our flower garden we took recently.  About this time every year, I always wish I could take the next four months off and do nothing but gardening (and crafting of course!).  Maybe someday.

Nice mix of colors on this tulip.

I love the shape and color of this tulip.  We have two of these in our flower bed and they always are the last tulips to bloom.

Ants crawling on the peony blooms.  As alarming as this can look, it's actually a good sign.  It means the flower is nice and healthy.

 Here's two poppy heads getting ready to bloom.  I won't lie - last year I pulled all the poppies out except one because I thought they were weeds.  I definitely learned from that mistake!  Poppies are some of my favorite flowers, so I was pretty disappointed after learning this.  Can't wait to actually see them bloom this year.

I'm not fully sure what kind of flowers these are.  Although I'm pretty sure they're a type of bluebell.

Another favorite tulip.

No idea what kind of plant this is.  I actually thought it was just a weed, but it has such pretty blooms all over and is about 20 inches tall.

Here's our very first ever blossom on our Betsy Ross lilac bush.  We got this from a friend when we moved into our house in the fall of 2009.  It was just a stick when we got it and then just had green leaves last year, and now it looks like an actually lilac bush!

 This sedum I got from the local nursery at the end of the season last year on sale.  I wasn't sure how it would transplant at the time, but it's really growing now.

And perhaps maybe, one of the most anticipated things of the spring garden...our strawberry plants!  This one is getting so close!  Hopefully we can get to it before the rabbits, or squirrels, or birds, or chipmunks, or any other critters that come into our yard!

spring cleaning

 The past couple days here have been so beautiful!  Temperatures in the 80's and sunny.  Perfect spring weather for outside gardening and cleaning, as well as allergies.  Headaches and runny noses aside, Monday marked the first journey of the lawn mower.  Our grass needed mowed before this but every time we had the day off, it would rain.  A lot.  We got our mower used when we moved to our current house and really haven't had any problems with it, aside from needing to sharpen the blade desperately.   

Here's a overlay of almost all the backyard flower garden (the right side is only half showing).  Right before we left for Richmond (April 16th) all the red tulips were just about to bloom and when we returned a few days later, they were in full bloom. 

 We have a number of different varieties in our yard.  I  like the ones that come a little later in the season.  I have no idea what their official name is, but the edges are sort of frayed and the flower itself is orange.

(This picture is from last year.)

Bleeding hearts in bloom.  These are actually planted in the pot on the top of the steps to the right in the picture above.  These along with the other pot (which contain tiger lilies) are from the previous owners.  I don't know why, but we haven't moved these planters.  I'd like to transplant the bleeding hearts to the right side along the fence, but haven't gotten around to it.  I love the shape of this flower!

More red tulips along the left side of the yard.  If you look closely in the middle right, you'll notice two smaller pink and white tulips in bloom.  These are some of my favorite flowers we have.

Here's a picture of my in the process of moving around some of our ferns.  I love ferns.  A lot.  But the right side of our flower garden is overtaken by them.  At this stage they are rather manageable- not too big, not too small.  Big enough to enjoy but not big enough to block the view.  Give them a few weeks.  Or as it seems after just looking at them, a few days.  They get really big and seem to take over.  My plan is to move most to the far right side and against the lower fence (which you can't see in this picture).  This way the ferns won't block the other flowers, but be more natural grouped densely together. 

New Pins!

I've been making a bunch of new pins lately.  Some are in the shop and some I'm holding back for spring craft shows. 

This one is a little ode to spring and the succulent:

I love these plants!  I'm so looking forward to getting some seeds and plants started in the next week or so.

corn and what appears to be a jungle....

Hands down my favorite summer vegetable is sweet corn.  Well...zucchini is a favorite too.   And of course a nice, fresh, crisp cucumber.  But corn is easily in my top 5 summer vegetables.  Anyway, my aunt and uncle have a really large corn field in their yard.  I'm not entirely sure what they do with all this corn.  But the past two summers they've given us lots and lots of their sweet corn.  We've always gladly accepted this offer and proceed to them spend a few hours husking all of it, boiling it, and them freezing it.  We recently put corn away for the season, which was just in time because we were fast approaching our last bag from the freezer of last year's corn. 

 Here's our progress a few bags in:

The corn is grown organically, so there's always the chance of a few bugs or worms along the way.  Here's a bright green one that I found happily chewing away as I peeled back the husks:

The corn was dropped off at my parents'  house, so while we were there, we checked out the decline of what used to be a garden last year.  Yes, these are weeds that are taller than me.  Last year at this time, there were tomato plants and zucchini planted here.  A few random tomatoes did come up from seed this year.  There's a plant in the front right side of this picture.

.  Actually, there is a zucchini plant in the front of the picture below.  In May, there were rows and rows of sugar peas planted here.  We harvested many, many baskets of them.  It's sort of crazy to think how different this area was a mere three months ago.  Not sure how high these weeds will grow....

gardens, wedding, donuts, and owls.....

This past weekend was Kinsey's sister's wedding. The ceremony was held outside in the Hershey Gardens, in Hershey Pa. The weather was beautiful and was quite an enjoyable time.


Here's the rehearsal. They got married beneath the archway.



These were the centerpieces on the tables. Yes, donuts. The reception was all breakfast foods catered by the Hershey Hotel, which is a Rice favorite for breakfast. Yum!



Here's my sister in law, Hilary and my new brother in law, Shawn (Shawnzie).



Here's Kinsey and I after the ceremony.


Just one of the many butterflies hanging out.


This tree was in the Japanese gardens. I love how curvy it is.


Hello owl!

This is the first of two sibling weddings K and I will be attending this year. My brother is getting married in October. This was actually the first wedding we've been to since we got married ourselves. It's nice to just be able to sit back and get a chance to talk to people who you never see and eat the food at the reception. I found that I hardly had time to eat much of anything at our reception and could barely say more than hello to everyone that came. It's hard to believe that it's almost been 3 years already!


Our wedding in September of 2007.