It’s “Sow” Beautiful!

October 30, 2016October 30, 2016 / Earth and Oils / 1 Comment

One day until Halloween! I hope everyone is having a spooktacular holiday!! I decided to actually dress up the exterior of our home for Halloween this year. I have kind of neglected full-on Halloween decorating the past years and just kept my fall display up. Since my daughter was really getting into it this year, I figured I would make it fun. So, as I have skeletons coming out of my window boxes!

Besides getting creative with decor, I have been fortunate to have 70 degrees temps for pretty much the whole fall. We have had significant rain in Western New York (and we are still considered in a drought!) this fall as well, and that has left the soil very easy to work with.

As I had wrote in my garden journal, I wanted to work on the front of my yard. For the past 8 years, I have been so busy landscaping the back yard (because it was a disaster– NOTHING was there but a sandy outline of a once-upon-a-time pool ), that all I have done is keep the flower beds in tact out front. Well, that has changed! I have done my homework, and I am very happy with the initial stage!

I started digging that nice, soft soil and I am going to plant directly in front of the hedgerow. There is SO much potential there, and I am finally going to tap into it! The front yard is a dry shade, but after further review, every part of the tiny place gets SOME sun, so I started with some full sun/part shade spring bulbs, and then, as I did out back, it will grow from there, I know!!

This pack of 40 bulbs cost $20. It is a very cheap way to add a little color to your landscape!

I love daffodils, and this variety pack caught my eye. I have to be careful of what I plant because of my deer problem.

I had a little helper yesterday with my bulb planting. After the bulbs were planted, I manually took the big chunks of dirt I dug up and loosened them to cover all of my bulbs. It was a lot of work, but it did the job. Now, I just have to hope that the squirrels won’t get my bulbs…

I am actually looking forward to next spring even more so to see what my little daffodils will do! I figure I will use the bulbs as a bench mark, and then design from there.

Overall, this fall has been full of seed collecting and bulb planting, as usual. Not as much as last year, but definitely making an improvement on the front yard. It’s a start!

That’s exactly what it is, a start. Everybody deserves a “start”. Gardening takes years, and lots of work, but SO worth it. Make your little part of the world yours by investing in the future of your home.

All the little things you do for your landscape will be “sow” beautiful. I promise!

That’s a Wrap — A Growing Season “Summer”y

October 18, 2015 / Earth and Oils / 4 Comments

We got our first snowflakes today! Overall, this weekend has been very cold, but after snowflakes flew this morning, it ended up being nice and sunny, so I went out and took a hike in an area park to get some nice autumn pictures.

Ellicott Creek in the fall.

Because it was so cold, I am thankful I got most of my yard work done when I did, even though now I am questioning myself as to whether or not I planted my spring bulbs too early this year. My parents came up to visit us (the first time since my daughter’s birthday in April– their social calendar is busier than mine), and I wanted to show my mom all my work that I had done in my back yard, and I came across this:

My bulbs are confused by the warm fall weather we are having.

I noticed that in the new extended spring bulb bed that I made, that some of them are popping up. I hope this doesn’t mean that I have lost them until the following spring. Western New York has had an unseasonably warm October, with temps in the 60s and 70s, I have even notice that my clematis and a few of my coneflower varieties have new blooms!

I just hope they still manage to come up in the spring. Good thing it was only a few bulbs and not a lot. After seeing this yesterday, I went out this morning with my daughter and noticed that the deer ate a good part of my ryusen weeping japanese maple. That depressed me a little, but I know it’s too early to start wrapping things up, so I will do the “wait and see” for the next couple of days. If it becomes more frequent, I will have to start covering things earlier than I would like.

The deer are now taking a liking to my little Japanese Maple.

Looking at this carnage somehow got me thinking about the past growing season– what I did right, what I did wrong, and I what I would do better next year.

Most Improved Duty: Watering

Yes, I must say, I worked really hard this year, especially after purchasing three trees, to make sure everything was watered. I learned my lesson last year when I didn’t water my arborvitae enough and they died over the winter because they lost more water than they had. I want to make sure everything has an adequate water supply as we go into the winter. I am even watering in the fall here, when we go without rain for extended periods of time.

What I Need to Work On: Plant Placement

Ok, so this one is kind of a misleading title. I mean, gardening itself is a process where you are constantly moving things to another place to see if does better, or transplanting because they are outgrowing their place, etc., etc. I think sometimes I get so plant crazy that I end up planting things too close together and then there isn’t any room for them to grow when they actually mature. Maybe I am just worrying too much, but I just want everything, and with such little space to plant things, I wonder if I am crowding some out!

What I Need Work On: Taking Better Care of my Containers

I will tell you I need to water these better than I do. Containers always dry out faster, and I somehow seem to neglect them. I must be better with this next year!

What I Did Well On: Creating Balance

I can honestly say that I feel I have finally created zen with everything that I have planted. It feels good, nothing is lopsided like it used to be, and it genuinely makes me happy. Even after tearing out everything behind my garage for a third time in two years, I can now say I am satisfied. I actually feel like I know what I am doing.

So, how did your garden do this past growing season? What would you like to do differently next time?

“Mum” is the Word on My Crazy Bulb Obsession and Other Musings

September 30, 2015 / Earth and Oils / 2 Comments

This past weekend was one of the nicest first weekends of fall that I can remember! All of my fall-blooming plants are doing so well– I am so happy that everything is coming along!

My first Morning Glory finally bloomed!

The problem with me is that when the weather is so nice, all I want to do is be outside, which leads to me neglecting my indoor household responsibilities. No worries, Monday and Tuesday were rain-filled days for us, and I was able to get a lot of stuff done inside. Which is the main reason why it’s Wednesday and I am just starting this post!

I was very busy in the garden over the weekend, and I went a little nuts on Friday after work. In a post not too long ago, I talked about Fall Bulbs and which ones I was going to plant. Heheheh ehh……yea, Friday night I went shopping at my local Lowe’s and ended up going bulb crazy! I also made sure to get my mums. I still would like to get a couple more of those as well.

Mums and Bulbs. Went a little crazy!

Yep, I even expanded my flower beds to accommodate the more than 100 bulbs I planted into that particular area!! And that was just one bed! I ended up with a total of 160+ bulbs in the ground by weekend’s end. Really?!!!

I really can’t help it. There are so many different flowers I want to try, and I end up getting the bulbs just to try them. I was lacking in the Spring-blooming plant department, so I pretty much made up for that over the weekend. It was exhausting, but I managed to get it done. I am still waiting for some other Allium bulbs to come in the mail, so when they do, I will be over the 200 mark with Spring bulbs. I think my four-season garden is coming along just fine now!

It dawned on me as I was just finding places to plant some of these bulbs that I needed to mark them in some way, shape or form. The past few years, I have forgotten where I have planted things, and end up digging them up and losing the bulbs.

Here is my tip for you when it comes to marking your bulbs you planted:

*I simply took pictures of the bulb packages in the exact space I planted them.

I planted hyacinths under my old bluebird house.

You may have other ways you mark your bulbs that are more efficient, but for me, to have photo proof keeps me from losing serious bulbs.

The overall effort of this mass bulb planting included purchasing four extra bags of dirt and the aid of a special little helper.

She did a good job, and to show my appreciation, we went to the playground and then sat on the roof of our local ice cream joint. There is no better place to watch the sunset than on top of Mississippi Mudds!

So, this coming weekend has us getting pumpkins–part of my front entryway fall decor. Can’t wait to share!

I love fall and everything that comes with it! I made a trip to Yankee Candle last Friday night to get some wax melts and fell in love with “Autumn Leaves” scent. I just got a coupon in the mail and can’t wait to get some time to run over again and get the big jar candle!

Oh, and my last musing for this post– my sunflowers. I did a whole tutorial last year on sunflowers and how to harvest the seeds. Well, with all the rain we received in the past two days, they collapsed and fell just like last year. I was disappointed this year because my sunflowers didn’t get nearly as big as they did last year. No matter, I cut the heads off to dry and was dragging 6ft. sunflower stalks to the curb. Here’s hoping for a better crop next year!