"Where you tend a rose, my lad, A thistle cannot grow."

Although, I wouldn't mind having a patch of teasel someday...  

Instead, I have these:

Catalpa tree blossoms...  Last year it was a bit Dr Seuss-ian, two tall thin trunks with a poofy cluster of leaves at the very tips.  It's filled out a bit since I cut down some of the privets that were blocking the sun.  So much so that the weight of the leaves has bent one of the trunks down low enough that I can touch it!  

A few wildflowers, nasturtiums, roses...

The produce section... chard, carrots, beets, onions, cucumbers up in the planter box,
Tomato, zucchini and yellow squash, brussel sprouts, basil, lettuce, beans and peas down below... More tomatoes, herbs, squash (yellow/zucchini/white) and gourds are elsewhere...

This thing was just freakishly huge... And I'm such an idiot, I just killed it!!!  Waaaaaahhhhh!!!!

I finally gave in and let the berries grow.  Not sure yet what kind they are, but they've snuck over from my neighbors yard.  There's another vine/branch that's climbed over the fence and through the birch tree and reaches halfway to the house.  I put up a string for it to climb so I wouldn't keep walking facefirst into it... You can just barely see it in the June 09 picture below...

View from the back door out towards the yard...  It's grown up a bit just in the couple weeks since I took that last picture.  The sunflowers against the house are now almost touching the eaves and I had to put taller cages around the tomatoes...

I forgot to take a picture when I first moved in, there was ivy covering the back fence, both planter boxes, and about four feet out into the lawn... It took me a few months to get it all cleared out.  Of course, it's still on the other side of the fence, so I have to keep an eye out for evil little vines sneaking through and over the fence.  Grrrrrr...

The placement of the 'flowerbed' was determined when the bulbs came up in a swath across the back of the yard.  I just moved a few bulbs to make a path up to the bench...  I was debating whether to keep the lawn or not, but the thought of wasting water on it and having to drag out the weedwacker to mow such a small space just didn't appeal to me.  I'd already put down weed barrier cloth and woodchips in the front yard, so I decided to do the same in the back.  Then I discovered that the whole backyard already had a layer of plastic about four inches down!  So instead of spending money on the weed barrier, I spent a couple of days digging out all the dirt from the middle section.  Of course, the shovel ripped holes in the plastic (which shall henceforth be known as "puddle prevention perforations") so I had to dig out the whole thing with a trowel.  Oye!  

Brand new nasties...  I went a bit nuts with them, they're ALL OVER the yard.  Can't wait until they're all in bloom :-P

This is my backyard, so far...  Yesterday I finished landscaping the last 5 feet of the front yard, all the way over to the neighbors driveway.  I put down more weed barrier and woodchips, a few plants.  It finally looks finished, no big swath of dead grass anymore.  Yay!!!  Pictures of it may or may not follow...

terrible, slow loveliness...

To start out the weekend, I sanded and painted my new kitchen cabinet (thanks grandma) and stenciled some fuschias on it. Still needs a bit of work cleaning up the edges, the paint ran :(

But now I have a 'tea drawer', and a nice dark place for my wine and potatoes.  

The sun was playing out in the backyard when I woke up.  
So...  I joined it.










The backyard is a bit of a mess, I'm still trying to figure out what goes where.  I got some seeds planted, weeded a bit...  Everything's coming back to life.  Last week, the little oak tree was bare.  A few flowers have come up too, tulip, hyacinth, daffodils, grape hyacinth, cal. poppies, even a couple rose buds have started.

In a few months I should have a cascade of little nasties :)


Thora was very disappointed that she couldn't join me outside. I'll have to put the cat-run up soon so she can come out and play with the birdies...


The catalpa tree (seen here being fondled by the neighbors birch tree) has the most gorgeous flowers in summer/fall.


There's a whole swath of these little white flowers (possibly a pushkinia or scilla?) across the backyard.  Buddha seems quite happy with them.

So now I'm a bit sore, but the yard is a little more organized.  When I weeded the flowerbed, I also planted a few more things, and made a border out of the privet trees/branches I've been slowly exterminating.  

Ivy is Evil!!

I'm not talking about poison ivy, just yer plain ole Hedera Helix.  It was completely covering a huge chunk of my yard (if you count the planterboxes as 'yard'), the wood underneath is soft and most likely won't last too much longer.  So far I have filled three huge trash bins to overflowing with the ivy I've pulled out of my backyard.  My neighbor generously offered use of his last week.  And I still have at least one more bin's worth to go.  But I did get it out of half of the planterboxes, and off the fence.  I transplanted my zucchini and yellow squash there, along with a couple watermelon, since it gets good sun most of the day.  One of these days I'll get the rest of the ivy out...  
 
(that entire back part was covered from the top of the fence, across the 3' planterbox, down the front of that, and had grown about 3 feet out into the yard.  The newer part of the fence didn't have ivy on it, since it had been torn off when the fence was replaced not too long ago...)

But instead, I've been cleaning, unpacking, figuring out where things go...  I made the most awesome covers for the pillows on my couch.  Pictures coming one of these days.  

I let K talk me into having a game night/house warming party this weekend while my mom is out visiting, so I have to speed up the unpacking process a bit.  Last weekend I finally got something up on the walls in the kitchen, doesn't look so bare now.

 On the back wall (on the left of the pictures) I put a little hanging shelf, the perfect place for my glass polar bear collection.  I just need to get some sticky stuff for their feet so they don't go on walkabout while I'm not looking...  On the other wall (on the right of the pictures) I put my grouping of little mirrors, mixed with some small artwork...  Better for a small space, I think, than one big piece.  


This is directly out the back door (you have to go through the garage to get to the backyard) Last weekend I also got most of my succulents arranged, and up off the ground.  They seem to like it better here.  I'd dug up the onions I'd grown from seed and brought them from my old place.  They immediately started blooming the day I moved in and have been in full poofy bloom ever since  :)

From the garage door, looking out towards the backyard. 


And since I had to leave all my other sunflowers behind, I bought some...  Because every house needs sunflowers.

Not the best pictures, I know.
My camera is still packed away in some box Ihaven't gone through yet.
I'm going to have my mom take some pictures while she's here.

And it's driving me absolutely batty to have a studio and not be in it making art!!!  There's just too much other stuff to do first.  Have to's before want to's.  That's what my dad always said.  Which is good for actually prioritizing what 'needs' to get done, but....  I've been trying to quelch it by doing 'interior decorating', and sewing, but... but I want to paint!!! Oh yeah, I did a little screen printing on one of the pillows though. More on that later.

When I'm good, I'm very very good...

And 27% evil. Hehehe.

www.olava.org is 57% evil. Who knew?

But I am now 100% moved out of the old digs, into the new!!!  K and L helped me the first weekend, then I borrowed my grandparents van to finish up. And my grandma and cousin and her new hubby helped on Sunday.  But I'm still only about 30% unpacked.  

I'm still sort of in awe that I found this place.  It's got two bedrooms, which means I finally have my very own studio!!!  And it has wood floors, central heating, a bathtub, closets, and a 'real' kitchen!!!  With dishwasher, cabinets, and room for a table!!  And a garage (with washer/dryer) for my car!  No, the washer/dryer aren't for my car, the garage is!   Well, it's full of boxes and plants at the moment (actually got most of the plants outside yesterday afternoon) but I'll be able to park in it once I'm unpacked.  I have a hall closet!!!  I have a HALL!!!

Way more than I was initially looking for or even thought I could find in my price range.  I almost went for another studio, twice as big as my last place, but still a studio...  But K told me to hold out for what I really wanted, with a separate space for a studio.  She was right (yet again, that girl's invaluable).  I really wasn't counting on them offering me this place, because there were a lot of people at the open house, and one was even a former student of the owner.  
But I guess they must not have behaved themselves in class, cuz now it's MINE!

And there's surprising few places for rent in this area right now.  They're either total dumps or one bedroom apartments/studios (with no yard) for about what I was paying before, or 6 bedroom 'estates' with rent more than my entire income!   I don't have many criteria, but those I do have are non-negotiable. (Has to allow a cat, and have room for a studio and a garden all my own.  And it couldn't be a soul-less box in a huge complex...) 
Since I found this place (second week of April) I've kept an eye on what else is out there, and there's absolutely nothing that I would even be remotely interested in living in!  I was actually even considering the possibility of having to live in an apartment, or moving to Santa Rosa or Rohnert Park.  K tells me that I live a charmed life.  She may be right.

So now comes the monumental task of unpacking.  
I even got everything out of my storage unit, mostly art supplies, tools, books, records... 
I'm setting things aside as I unpack, so I can have a garage sale this summer...

Here's my new living room, from the door to the kitchen:


It's a work in progress.  I finally, finally, finally get to have my records with me again!!!  That's them on the right, in the bottom of the glass shelves under the window.  Which also happens to be the perfect spot for my orchids.  So far.  They're still alive after two days, we'll see if they still like it there in a few months...  

Next on the agenda is finding a sofa.  I need to get a pull-out, or a futon, so people don't have to sleep on an air mattress on the floor when they come visit.  I kind of need more than one chair for people to sit on.  Fights have almost broken out over that chair, because nobody wants to be the only one on a chair when everyone else is on the floor.  Might be kinda funny if it wasn't so sad :P


It is quite a spectacular chair though, don't you think? It's Swedish, and won a design award.  Mine has a different fabric, due for reupholstering soon. And my stool is in pieces at the moment, need to reassemble that too.

Really, the garden is absolute first on the agenda.  
I felt kind of bad leaving my old garden as bare as I did.  But not really.  It's not as bare as it was when I moved in.  I left the grass and less than a dozen plants (not counting what was already there when I moved in)... but since they're selling the place, I figure they can just plant one or two plants, throw some bark on the rest of it and it'll match the rest of the yards 'landscaping'. (see pictures below)







Move-In, July 2006 





June/September 2007





Move-Out, May 2008




It just seems bare now because I had so much planted. I didn't realize just how much until I had everything out in pots. Yikes!!!  I took almost everything I could reasonably expect to live through replanting. I lost the first wave of rosebuds in the move, but the plants are doing ok, and should sprout new buds in a month or so. Everything else is doing great so far.

I just need to get things in the ground now.  There's planter beds along two sides of my new yard, but at the moment they're overrun with ivy! Kind of pretty, but if I want to plant anything else, it all has to come out. But after two weeks of going nonstop, I just don't have the energy or strength to pull it out right now.
I must have mentioned it to my boss when I was telling her about my new place, because yesterday she came to me and asked me if I wanted the empty planter boxes and barrels on the back deck at work.  I guess when they were in this building years ago they'd had a 'garden committee', and had a bunch of flowers planted in them, but now they're just old wooden boxes filled with nice fluffy dried up dirt.  So I took 5 home yesterday, and got my tomatoes and squash replanted in them.  They'll need to be replanted as they grow bigger, but it'll do for now, better than the little plastic pots.  There's a couple more small boxes that need some work before being used again, the metal band holding the bottoms together is gone, and I'll need help getting the two wine barrels from the front porch...  But that can wait a few weeks.
I also got some plants in the ground out in the front yard yesterday, a couple little rose bushes, lavender, a patch of crocosmia, a couple Heuchera (ok, I'll quit being nerdy, 'Coral Bells') a couple other bulbs that might be Amaryllis?  Only a few more still in pots that need to be planted soon.  The rest can wait until I get the beds cleared.
As soon as I get the plants stable (and off those pesky life support machines) I'll get started on the studio.  Can't wait to start painting again! I'll be able to set up a still life and not have to move it to have room to eat dinner! It's been a while since I had an actual studio, I'm still a little giddy about it :)

The downsides (so far):
No free internet.
The ivy in the planter beds.
Afternoon traffic noise:  it's right on the corner next to Bodega Ave.  
My neighbor smokes in her backyard (right up against mine)

But overall, I'd say the plusses far outweight the minuses...

To Pass The Time 'Til I Return

The sun is back! The grey rainy days are fading away and the last few months of hibernation are almost over...    Just in time for all of my spare time to be taken up with everything but what I want to be doing...  Where'd those lovely lazy weekends go??  



I sometimes worry that I won't have time to build my planter boxes and get my garden in the ground in time. Of course, there's plenty of time, but there's so much to do...

This little beauty came up at the edge of my lawn again this year. One of these days I'll look it up and give it a proper name. For now, it's stuck with an improper name :P


In gardens, beauty is a by-product. The main business is sex and death. ~Sam Llewelyn


BTW, it's "Arum palaestinum", native to Isreal... AKA Israel Black calla, Solomon's lily or Jerusalem lily...