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!

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!

Snowy Saturday

We got our first real snow storm in quite a few years this weekend. This is how we awoke today. Our car was barely visible! The snow starting the night before, but we were at work. We had to clean off a good number of inches from our car at 9pm, so this was just from about 9:30pm to around 10am!






We only have one snow shovel. Realizing that this snow would be way too much work (and take twice as long!), I remembered I thought there might be an extra shovel in the shed left by the people who lived here before us. So I shoveled a path out to the shed to take a look and found not just one, but two snow shovels! (A little beaten, but nonetheless they proved to be quite useful!) As you can see, the snow was to my knees. Luckily, it was still pretty light and fluffy, so shoveling wasn't too much hard work.



Here's our fence in the backyard with all the snow piled up.



This is a shot of our snow covered backyard. You can see our birdfeeder poking out a little and the black railing along the steps in the center of our yard. Other than that, it's just snow.


The snow piled on top of our little shed. Talk about a lot of snow!



I measured about 18 and a half inches. This was taken at the edge of our back porch. Could possibly be more, but 18.5 is definitely a lot of snow!