Bed Construction

I came home from a girls weekend to find a neat stack of cedar 2x6s cut to 4 foot lengths and a 2x2 sitting next to it, ready to be cut to 12 inch lengths for the bed corners. 

Construction was a a tad sketchy, simply due to the lack of a level spot in our backyard to work on. But we made it work, using the first completed box as a staging area for the second.

We moved them to the garden area last night, just as the sun was setting.

My project for tonight, in the 65 degree weather (!!) I hope to figure out their positions and get the boxes leveled so I can fill them and put some seeds in the ground.

You'll notice we propped up the fence. This post is completed rotted through and can't support itself. Another post behind the rhodie is leaning and also got some support.

I'm going to attempt to follow the square foot gardening guidelines for filling my beds: 1/3 vermiculite, 1/3 peat moss, and 1/3 compost. However, the guidelines suggest only 6 inch deep beds, so HALF of what these guys are.  I probably will only fill them 8-10 inches deep in order to keep costs down. I guess that if I want to expand in the future, I could always split one of the beds into two 4'x4'x6" beds for shallow rooted veggies, and keep the other one a full 12" bed for the deeper stuff.

My tomato seeds all sprouted over the weekend. The peppers should soon follow. Only one romaine seed is up; looks like it's time to toss those seeds. Maybe I'll scatter them over a couple of squares in the bed once they get filled as a test.

The Beginning of Beds

It's beginning to feel like spring time in Seattle. I'm been furtively trying to get spring clean up done in the yard between rain showers.  Over a month ago we decided to tackle the english ivy growing up our doug firs out front and cut all of the stems near the ground and started pulling them off the trees.  Those plants are super resilient, because the leaves are just now starting to turn yellow and droop. Maybe once we stop getting an inch of rain per week they'll come off the trees easier.

I just finished my spring pruning. I started two weeks ago and got the blueberries, one of the roses, the hydrangea, and the forsythia.  Oops! The Master Gardner informed me I was supposed to wait until AFTER the flowering shrubs bloomed to prune.  Apparently I got over excited when I was cleaning up the side yard. But in my defense, the forsythia looked like it hadn't been pruned in years and years and really needed some of that dead wood cut out..... maybe.

I only got one of the roses the first time around due to the waning light, but last night I failed to finish pruning the big rose for the second time. I would say that this rose has been neglected, but it looks like someone tried to take care of it, but had no idea what they were doing. It's two stories tall!! Someone pruned it to grow straight up, and then tied the stalks to the house so they wouldn't fall over into the yard. There are several branches that are dead in the middle of the knot. I did what I could with my two foot step stool, but couldn't reach the top, oh, five feet of the rose.  Add rose pruning to the list of reasons why we need an 8 foot step ladder!

The seed starting has begun!! After getting the grow light set up in the shop room, I started three kinds of kale, broccoli, leeks, romaine lettuce, basil, lemon balm, and marigolds two weeks ago. All but the lettuce have spouted - Maybe the seeds were old? Just yesterday I started my tomatoes and peppers. I knew I needed to cut back this year, so I only started three sungolds (one for Sarah), two nova, one indigo rose, two purple calabash, two saucey, two jalapeno peppers, and two anaheim peppers. Is 10 tomatoes really cutting back? I'm conveniently not remembering how many I had last year.  I am sticking to my guns this year and plan to actually snip the second seed in my cells instead of separating and keeping the seedling growing.  That will definitely cut back on the amount of final tomato plants!

George Washington's birthday came and went and I still didn't have my peas in the ground.  My garden area is far from ready to plant, so I found an alternate home for this year's pea crop.  When we first moved in a planted this weed flower bed with strawberries, thyme, and winter savory.  I hope to get a jasmine or clematis or some nice smelling climbing flower to plant along the trellis, but for now it will get peas. Yay, peas!

I recently started on the garden.  I found that putting cardboard down over the lamium didn't really do anything to it. When I pulled up the cardboard there was still happy little green sprouts of lamium completely covering my future garden.  That means lots of back-breaking work with a hoe... or does it?

I started out near the edge of the grass and started working my way towards the fence. At about 5 feet out I found the edge of the landscape fabric I noticed last time I was working outside. After some muscle flexing, I discovered that there are two 3 foot strips of landscape fabric running along the fence, covered in a couple inches of soils and a bunch of weeds. We were able to pull up the outer strip before we lost the light. If the ground would dry out a bit, and I had a strong helper, I would quickly be able to pull the rest of the fabric and begin leveling out the area in preparation for installing raised beds.  I'm currently thinking I will start with two 4x4 beds and try my hand at square foot gardening. This first year will be quite the experiment to see what we can grow in the filtered sunlight.

When I realized I couldn't pull up the heavy fabric on my own last night, I switched to the back corner bed.  The bed itself doesn't seem to be in bad shape once the weeds got pulled.  However, there are blackberries coming at it from two sides.  I think that the corner of my neighbor's yard was once an attempt at a compost pile, but it never got hot enough to kill the weeds and now it's a blackberry haven.  The other option is that the corner diagonal from us is overgrown with blackberries and they've taken over the old compost heap. Or a combination of the two. Either way, it will be a constant battle to keep the blackberry suckers from taking over. I'm going to put rhubarb back there, and while the flavors go well together, keep those pokey bushes away from my edibles!!

Needed a lifeline

The needles have been flying. 

Aside from all the baby hat knitting for Christmas, I also knocked out a hat for my future brother in law.

A stash buster, busted out at the last minute. A decent hat pattern, too. Might make it again.



I'm knitting table runners for the wedding. I'm assuming we'll have about 160 people, at 8 people to a table, so about 20 tables.  I started in early December. Now, in the middle of February I have 18.6 runners completed.

A couple of people told me I was crazy when I first started, but who's laughing now??

Muuuahahahhahaha.

Granted, when people scoffed, they were thinking big long hurking things, and I'm only knitting them to be 3 feet long.

Hoping I can stitch them together pretty enough to be a blanket after the wedding.



I'm also knitting a shawl.  It's my lunch time knitting at work and I'm making pretty good progress on it. Until Monday, that is. I took it to happy hour and did a whole pattern repeat, only to realize right before leaving that I had messed up a row or two back.  After some swearing, I figured out my issue and was able to tink back to the issue.

I kept working on it at home for a few rows after I fixed my problem later that night. The next day I picked up the project at lunch, knit three rows, then realized that my stitch count was off. SOn of a..... Took me three more days to get back to a row that I knew was knit correctly.

Now I'm going to go home and learn how to add a lifeline, because that would have saved me a helluva lot of time and swearing.

Lamium Eradication

Our backyard is definitely going to be a work in progress.  It slopes gently to the west and is surrounded by a large douglas fir to the north by the house, several hemlocks to the west, and a douglas fir and some sort of deciduous tree with red leaves in the neighbor's yard to the east. The south side currently has a hurricane wire fence that is mostly falling over.

Southeast corner of yard in September. Taken from deck.

After some monitoring and discussion with the MG, we decided the best place to put my garden is along the south fence line.  This area will get the most sun. Not a lot of sun, mind you, but hopefully enough for lettuce, peas, kale, etc. Tomatoes and peppers might not be in the cards for the next few years until a tree or five are taken out.

South west corner of yard.

 Unfortunately, this area is covered in the invasive Lamium. Lamium is in the mint family and spreads basically every way possible - ants carry seeds across the yard, runners, stems that touch the ground can root, etc. I'm not sure where it was first planted, but it is currently throughout my potential garden space and in the back of the neighbor's yard.

I spent about an hour yesterday working on this patch.  I started in the south east corner and was doing a really good job of pulling up everything I found by the roots. After a significant amount of time, I realized I hadn't made it past a small corner, maybe 1/6 of the bed, and gave up on being thorough.  From there out I mostly pulled foliage and stems, only digging up the occasional root ball when it was easy. And it still took me over an hour.

Lamium patch after an hour of weeding

I gave up when the Seahawks game started. Luckily, we had lots of cardboard on hand after the holidays, so I broke down a couple of boxes to set over the weeded areas in an attempt to block the sunlight and kill the remaining plants. I'm not too hopeful it will work.  My online research shows that the best methods of control are chickens (who will eat the foliage, but won't get down to the roots so it will keep growing back), manual weeding, and roundup.

One potential stroke of luck - there appears to be landscape fabric under at least part of this lamium patch.  There are several inches of soil over it, but with some effort we might be able to pull up the fabric and dislodge the ALL of the lamium by the root. It will take big muscles, but it might be possible.

If all else fails I will probably buy a bottle of roundup and attack the area when it's dry out.

Here is the stuff in another patch under the doug fir growing through our deck.

I've heard that flowering starts really early in our area, so pulling the foliage now before it blooms and spread seed is a must!

Three Baby Hats!

I was asked to knit a baby hat from a picture months ago. I was given this as an example.

Super cute. But try as I might, I could NOT find a pattern that was similar. Ugh. So I made one up.

I started with one baby hat pattern that didn't have ear flaps and one that did, but neither were close. I took the stitch count from one and cast on for the ear flaps. I must have started this dang hat four times before I decided things had to change. Now I can't even remember what I did, but I know I started at the bottom of the ear flaps and went from there. 

 

 Ugh. Not my best work. It turned out really wide and really short. I tried it on my nephew and it was... well, wide and short. And he's about 9 months older than the intended recipient. 

I hated it. It look me weeks to bring myself to sew in the ends because I was so disappointed.

Enter the Baby Earflap Hat. I had just finished knitting it for a friend's baby shower and I loved it.

Simple stockinette stitch hat with ear flaps, braided tassels, and a pom. Easy to knit. Clear, concise pattern. SO MUCH BETTER.

Back to the stash for more baby girl-colored yarn. I came up with cream and purple (good thing her parents are Husky fans).

So much better. So. Much. BETTER.

 

 And it fits!!


I ended up sending them both, with my apologies for the pink one and hopes it would fit at some point.

Lesson learned - always follow patterns for baby stuff.

So many options...

I picked up paint chips at Benjamin Moore on my way home from work last week and have been staring at them taped up on all the walls. We are definitely decided on the colors for the bathroom (soft fern) and the office (cedar key), but the living/dining, craft, and master bedrooms are all still in the option stage.

Last night I picked up 8oz paint samplers of four colors for $3 each. Definitely think it was worth spending $15 to double check the paint options, because now I'm totally confused!!

We are thinking gray, or greige, for the living room/dining room and down through the hall. I like gray and think it will go well with the fireplace, but was worried about a cool gray not going with the beige carpet and couch.

The two colors are Benjamin Moore's Light Pewter (lighter) and Revere Pewter (darker). I've seen pictures with Revere pewter in rooms and in no way does it look this dark!!

Granted these pictures were taken at 8pm last night with no natural lighting whatsoever, but still. There Revere is SO DARK!

I think it might have a little more personality than the Light Pewter.

But a whole hallway with Revere Pewter might feel like walking into a cave.

On the other hand, we painted both Light Pewter (left) and Misty Gray (right) in the bedroom.

I couldn't believe it when I put the Light Pewter on the wall.  Compared to the hallway, holy moley, it's super dark in this room!

The Misty Gray is even a little hard to see, but I think it might just need a third coat in order to cover the yellow.


All of our walls are currently a really pale cream/yellow, almost a buttercream. They are light, so I had assumed we wouldn't need to prime, but it is really showing through these light gray colors

Above is Benjamin Moore's Yellow Freeze. It was NOT what I was expecting. I might try out the original yellow I had been thinking for the craft room - Moonlight.

 Just to give you an idea of what I had been thinking, these are pictures of Revere Pewter on the walls.

Traditional Living Room by Decatur Architects & Designers TerraCotta Properties

Contemporary Dining Room by Toronto Interior Designers & Decorators AM Dolce Vita

This is the Misty Gray we liked for the bedroom.

Midcentury Bedroom by Vancouver Interior Designers & Decorators i3 design group

The yellow that got me thinking...

Contemporary Kitchen by Menlo Park Architects & Designers Ana Williamson Architect

The green for the bathroom.

Traditional Living Room by San Marino Interior Designers & Decorators Charmean Neithart Interiors, LLC.

Cedar Key for the office.

Traditional Living Room by Portland Interior Designers & Decorators Garrison Hullinger Interior Design Inc.

Well, what do you think?

The Before Pictures

I last posted in July. Apparently I've been busy. You know, summertime, planning a wedding, blah blah blah.  But now that I'm back in the game, I can show you what I've been working on. That last post, saying all I needed was ribbing on the sleeves to finish my dolman sweater? Yeah, that hasn't happened yet.

What has happened?

BOOM! We bought a house.

So far it's just been a lot of unpacking boxes and setting in and remembering where everything is, but we are about to get to work on some things.

(These are all pictures from the listing, so all the furniture is staged.)

This fireplace? Not doing anything with it.

This one in the basement family room? We are buying a gas insert this weekend. 

This bathroom in the basement with cork floors? Not touching it.

The hall bath upstairs will be getting new tiling sooner rather than later due to a crack or two in the surround. And the faucet already needs a repair...

Our third (!!!) bathroom will stay as is. "As is" as in WONKY! This room has three doors, one to the basement, one to the backyard, and one at the top of the stairs into the hallway. I think the fact that it is the laundry room, too, glosses over the wonky-factor.

Dining room? What kind of updates can you give to a dining room??

Ah, yes, the kitchen.  What you are looking as is an oven that is probably original to the house, i.e. from 1962.  I imagine we will get frustrated with the uneven, slow heating coils and touchy, overly hot oven at some point in the next two years.

I'm sure that from the first picture of the front of the house, the first thing you thought was "What, no garage?" I know that was my first impression of the house (before I went inside and saw the wonky bathroom). I'm still disappointed about the lack of garage, simply for the space for storage and projects. But we do have something almost as good, but a quarter of the size....

The shop room! This room is great. It's unfinished, so we can pretty much do what we want with it. It has a window so it could technically be turned into a bedroom, except there isn't a closet. We will just be using it as a shop for now. I put together two storage racks and now all of our camping, gardening, and snow gear, and even holiday decorations, have a long term home.

Last but not least...

The back yard. Mostly shaded by the douglas fir growing through our deck (yeah, you read that right) and a couple of hemlocks, it is currently mostly moss and mushrooms. The shade doesn't bode well for my future gardening attempts, but that probably won't stop me. I'm anticipating building a few raised beds along the decrepit chicken wire fence. But that's another project on the list...

The first batch of After pictures will be arriving soon. We plan on painting most of the upstairs the week of Thanksgiving.